Chapter Text
Draco drove slowly out of the caravan park. But as soon as they reached a long, empty country lane, he let the car soar.
“I like the decorations,” said Harry.
Draco blushed, feeling heat creep up his collar. This was his third car- the one for the ‘family man’ era of his life. In many ways, each of his cars has been a personal sanctuary. Something that was entirely his. His mother hated his cars - thought them dangerous, noisy and unnecessary machines.
His first car as a teenager meant freedom. He would go for long drives through the emptiest countryside he could find and utterly terrorise it with his roaring engine. It had been his chariot of escape from the manor when the memories of tortured screams became too much.
His second car had been a red, sporty beast of a thing. A bright lure as he tried to sweep Astoria off her feet. She always felt jittery in it, but he would often catch her gazing at him with a wide grin as he drove. She said it was because seeing him so happy was catching. They would pop to the city for afternoon tea. Or cruise to the highlands for a break in an ancient cottage.
His third, and current car, he bought a few years after Scorpius was born. When he needed something practical. The number of accessories children require always mystified him.
It was chock-full of trinkets, some inherited from previous cars, and some all its own.
The inert snitch dangling from the rear-view mirror, which Harry now batted with his fingers, was something Draco had moved between each car.
It was the first snitch he had ever caught while playing Quidditch. He had stolen it in honour of his mother. For as long as he could remember, he had spent his childhood being teased by his mother’s own stolen snitch.
She would whisper the story to him whenever he begged for it as his bedtime story: The tale of her first big match at school. She had been the star player straight away, heroically guaranteeing Slytherin’s victory through the riskiest flying manoeuvre the school had seen in years. Then, that very night, she had broken into the Quidditch shed, high on the exhilaration, to steal that first lucky snitch as a keepsake.
At that point in the story, she would always release it, and they would laugh as it zipped around his room. He would climb on the furniture and tumble around, trying to catch it. Gorgeous, winged shadows would dart across the walls as the snitch flitted by the many candles.
Eventually, his mother would smile and catch it within seconds. Then she would tuck him in tight while he promised her, very sincerely, that he would do the same thing when he became a seeker at Hogwarts.
And so, he had. Even though his Quidditch career hadn’t been as easy or exciting as he had hoped. Draco knew his father had no personal love for Quidditch, but he projected a passion for it on Draco’s behalf. Sweet in its own way, but also horribly stifling. From sponsoring the team to making veiled threats to Snape, Lucius had made himself busy in Draco’s dreams. But none of it had ever bought Draco more than a surface level of cold respect from his teammates. He never tasted the warm camaraderie his mother had described.
In the end, much of his time at school had been ‘not as advertised’.
He often wondered if he could have had a better life if he had been in any other year than Harry Potter’s. If he had been born under a different star, a few years earlier or later. Instead of being seemingly fated to be the faded shadow of Potter’s shining star.
“Malfoy! Are you listening to me?”
Draco had not been listening. Fuck.
“Of course.”
“What did I literally just say?”
“I- Potter. I’m concentrating on the road here. Or would you rather have me throw us into a ditch? I’d rather not leave my son as an orphan, no matter what benefits you may have had from the experience.”
The dig had rolled off Draco’s tongue before he could even think clearly about it. Out of the corner of his eye, Draco caught Harry shaking his head and looking out the passenger window.
“I had been asking, before you decided to verbally stab me, if you had stolen that from school?” Harry said, pointing at the snitch.
“How can you tell?”
“Because it’s literally got ‘Property of Hogwarts’ inscribed on it,” Harry said, grabbing it again. He turned it around to prove his point. Draco gave it barely a glance, but humoured Harry with a shrug.
“Who's to say it wasn’t gifted?”
“You should have gone into politics with a tongue as slippery as yours.”
“No one would fucking want or allow that, Potter.”
“Including you? It’s never been something you wanted to explore?”
Harry was staring at him intently now. It made Draco’s skin prickle to be observed so closely by this man he hadn’t spent any real time with for years. Though Draco had, against his will, absorbed numerous details about Harry’s life via the papers and everyday gossip. Enough to feel like the connection had somehow never broken between them.
So much about Harry Potter had been documented for the world to see: The homely wedding at the Burrow. The long list of promotions until Harry hit the heady heights of Head Auror. The Quidditch spectator sightings. Hundreds of paparazzi photos existed, tracing Harry’s evolution from a gaunt child with messy hair to a mature man with equally messy hair, but now with an additional persistent stubble that complemented his brown complexion.
Recent headlines included: The divorce. Moving back to London. Taking a sabbatical that as yet had no end.
“I’m satisfied with the job I have. Not all of us need to escape our responsibilities to find the deeper meaning of life, or whatever you entertain yourself with these days,” Draco said.
Harry snorted. “I just never saw you as the librarian type. I still don’t. Maybe it’s because I’ve never caught you in action. I tried asking for you a few times at the library, actually. I don’t know if you knew that?”
“I knew.”
“So, you were avoiding me on purpose?”
Absolutely, Draco Malfoy had been avoiding Auror Harry Potter at their place of work on purpose. Ever since Draco started working in the Ministry’s library three years ago, it had become a side hustle. He quickly became dedicated to being anywhere other than where Harry was.
In the years after finishing school, Draco had become something of a professional trader in antiquarian books. When he heard about a job going at the Ministry’s own central library, he hadn’t been able to resist applying for it. Especially not after Astoria had cut out the advertisement and placed it in front of him over dinner one night, as if it were a great treasure.
On the one hand, mixing with the Ministry fundamentally went against all his internal promises to himself. But - the lure of those books? Astoria had been very certain he would love it there. And through the contacts he had made in the book community, she knew he had a chance of getting the job.
And that’s where he had stayed working ever since. The library was dark, cold and rundown. But in many ways, it reminded him of the cosy dungeons that housed the Slytherin dorms.
These days, it feels like a home from home.
He worked as part of a team of ten librarians across various floors of the labyrinthine library. Between them, they would keep the collection in order and help guests and Ministry workers find the material they needed. On most days, they also had time to conduct any private research they wanted. Occasionally, they would go on acquisition trips too. The team were regularly on the lookout for ways to expand the library and fuel its hunger for knowledge (a quite literal hunger, but that was a story for another day).
After six months of working at the library and carefully avoiding crossing paths with Harry in other parts of the building, Harry had visited the library and asked for Draco specifically.
Caitlin, the deputy head librarian, had cackled at Draco’s expression when he heard about it afterwards. Luckily, Draco had been off that day.
After that, he made it very clear to his colleagues that he had absolutely no desire to cross paths with Harry. And luckily, they were all fond enough of him by then to cover every time.
On one infamous occasion, his colleague Tav inventively claimed Draco was off work, suffering from purple glowing pustules all over his face. Draco was, in fact, hiding under the desk. Draco had bitten Tav’s ankle out of a savage reflex for violence. But only lightly, because he had immediately felt bad. More of a nibble, really.
Tav had yelped but been a trooper about it. He carried on and told a worried-looking Harry that he had been nibbled by a feral pixie - nothing to worry about! And yes, they had informed the maintenance team. Of course, they had a pixie catcher booked in for this afternoon. Then Tav had swiftly kicked Draco before heading off to get the material Harry wanted.
So, when Harry had started his sabbatical last year, it had been a relief to Draco. He no longer had to hide. But now he was sitting next to the man he had been avoiding for years; it all felt a bit silly.
The world had not fallen apart just because they had spoken to each other. Harry had not speared him through the heart. Yet. He was sure it was coming, though. It had to be.
Draco braced himself and sat up straighter in his seat, his grip tightening on the steering wheel. “Yes, I was avoiding you. Forgive me for some self-preservation. But you have me now. Confined in a small space, with nowhere to go. Whatever things you need to say to me, go for it.”
“Wow. Don’t threaten me with a good time, Malfoy.”
“I’m being serious. I can take it. Salazar knows I deserve it. Or did you want me to apologise first? Because I just - there’s too much - I - where to even start.” Draco could feel his eyes burning with tears he fought to hold back.
Harry leaned towards him, placing a hand on Draco’s arm that made him flinch. “Fuck, Draco. Those times I was asking for you, it was to see if you were okay. I knew you wouldn’t be, but I wanted you to know I hoped you were okay as you could be. After losing her.”
Draco thought hard, a frown flickering over his face. Had it been around that time Harry had first asked for him? Time had been blurry since it happened. Somehow, he still wakes up in the middle of the night, thinking for a moment that she’s still next to him.
But she never is because Astoria has been dead for years.
“Oh,” Draco said.
They both stayed silent for a while after that.
Then the sky grew grey and rain started falling again.
“We should turn back. Hopefully, the boys will be back from their walk and not caught in this…Fuck, I didn’t give Scorpius a key to the caravan.” Draco did a hasty U-turn, putting a hand firmly on the back of Harry’s headrest. Draco turned out of his seat to get a good look around while he did the manoeuvre.
Harry couldn’t help jolting at the speed of Draco’s driving. “Draco - Scorpius will be fine. They’re sensible kids, and Albus has a key to our caravan. I promise they will be tucked up safely there by now.”
“You better be right. If he gets drenched and ill and-”
“Chill! We are on our way back,” Harry said, slowly enunciating each word for emphasis, then sighing, “I can get out and apparate to them, if it makes you feel better?”
Draco opened and closed his mouth before taking a deep breath. “No. It’s fine. We’re not far away. You’re right.”
“I know I am,” Harry said, attempting a cheeky grin and nudging Draco’s knee. “Why don’t you ask me something awkward. Might cheer you up?”
“Really?”
“Really - may as well get all the awkward bits out of the way before we play best friends around the boys for the next two weeks.”
“Why are you on a sabbatical?”
“Because they wouldn’t believe me when I said I wanted to quit. They wanted me to ‘think about it properly’. They all think I’m having a crisis - my friends, my colleagues, the goddamn general public. You name it.”
“And you don’t think you are?”
“Oh, I absolutely am,” Harry said, with a laugh. “I realised that I feel lost in my own story. Like I’ve just been an actor playing the role of Harry Potter. And now the play is done, and I must figure out who I am when I’m not pretending to be a part someone else wrote for me.”
“And that person isn’t Head Auror?”
“Fuck no. He’s not Head Auror. He’s not … a lot of things.”
“Speaking in third person is a new low for you.”
Harry laughed again, a deep throaty thing that Draco could remember over school breakfasts, even from the other side of the hall. “I just spilt my guts out to you, and that’s all you have to comment on.”
“What can I say, I’m a natural arsehole,” Draco said. His posture slackened as stress began to loosen its grip on him. “For what it’s worth, I hope you find the truth you're looking for. Genuinely. You’ve done enough for everyone else. including me, after what you said at my trial. So, be selfish. Explore your identity. We all only have so much time on this earth, may as well try to spend more of it being happy than not.”
“You should really consider spending time with Ginny. She said the same thing to me.”
“No, thank you. I’ll only get horribly jealous about her professional Quidditch career. That was one of my dreams when I was very young, did you know? To be a pro seeker. But I was never good enough for that,” Draco admitted. Hoping to pay Harry’s truths back with one of his own.
“I don’t know. You gave me a run for my money once or twice,” Harry said.
“That’s not saying much - you weren’t pro material either.”
Harry clutched his chest theatrically and made a mock gasp, “Take that the fuck back! I was hot shit on that pitch! I was the fucking captain of my team!”
They spent the rest of the drive playfully bantering about old Quidditch matches.
Perhaps, Draco thought, these next two weeks will be survivable after all.