Chapter Text
The last two people Draco expects to find chopping wood on his property are Ronald Weasley and Harry Potter.
But there they are.
They haven’t seen him yet, and it’s no charmwork, it’s no spell’s doing; he is cowering behind the thick trunk of an old oak tree, just about holding onto his breath. They’re chatting loudly, swinging axes, tossing great big hunks of wood into a pile.
Whack, toss, thud. Whack, toss, thud.
Draco could clear his throat and they’d pay him no notice.
They’re working on a dip in the land below the copse of trees, a clearing with flattened grass and earth, close enough to hear the trickle of nearby water but far enough away that the ground is bone-dry. There’s another dip in the land behind it, a dramatic drop, actually, that offers a view of the rugged skyline and all of its drama: peaks and valleys, the zigzag of streams, craggy rock peeking through plush greenery.
They’re building something. Draco had passed a Muggle vehicle on the way down here; a boxy white thing with scuffs on the doors and no identifiable markings except for its licence plate. He’d assumed it was part of the local Muggle council’s fleet, here for some surveying or tidying up, he’s not really sure what it is they do, but the careful ward work around the boundaries of the Black-owned land is enough to keep them away from this part of the Lakes, the same spellwork keeping Muggle ramblers and campers from walking right through it too.
Fellow Wixen, apparently, are a different issue.
Draco watches as Weasley and Potter march back and forth across the clearing. Weasley can get entire logs over his shoulder. Potter can haul what looks like concrete slabs across the earth, where they are arranged in a neat rectangular formation with little bits of bright blue plastic draped over them, fluttering in the gentle breeze.
They’re both sweating.
Why aren’t you using spellwork? Draco wants to yell down at them in frustration.
But more importantly: what are you building and why are you here?
Merlin and Morgana below, they’re not supposed to be here.
Weasley’s wearing a hat. A soft, woollen black thing, perched on top of coppery red hair that falls past his shoulders. That’s new, and honestly devastating, because it suits him, and Draco never, in his entire life, has looked at Ronald Weasley and thought: that suits you. Unless it’s a bruise or a boil from a well-aimed punch or hex.
Potter has a beard and he’s in a Henley that’s either grey or was white, at some point in time, it’s hard to tell because it’s covered in mucky fingerprints and other stains of indeterminate origin. His wild, curly hair is tied at the nape of his neck in knot and his scar still drags wildly through his tawny skin, from hairline to eyebrow. Nothing new about that, thankfully.
Draco scrambles to recall the last time he saw them. Five years ago? Six? Surely not.
Time is such an odd thing, Draco thinks breathlessly, clinging onto the bark beneath his fingers, his feet planted precariously between knotted roots. One minute, you’re sipping champagne in the same room as the Minister for Magic, the next, you’re hiding behind a tree in the middle of the Lake District staring at a couple of ghosts from a life you thought you’d shed years ago.
Draco likes to think his past self might have marched right down there to give them a piece of his mind.
But that’s never been past Draco.
Draco’s never been that bold, that audacious.
No, past Draco would have kept unseen behind the tree, tossed a few well aimed hexes, a few better aimed insults, and would have seen to that van of theirs parked up on the road, would have damaged it beyond repair and walked off feeling very smug indeed.
But that past Draco is well and truly buried. That Draco isn’t even the Draco from six years ago, when they all worked inside the same building; Potter and Weasley in the Academy, Draco in his own thankless, seemingly endless internship within the Department of International Magical Cooperation, where he spent most of his time fetching coffee and avoiding the leering gaze of his elderly superior, Mr Spink. He’d crashed and burned before he’d even had a chance to get on the permanent payroll.
Probably for the best.
Penance, was what he told himself it was. Rifling through post that wasn’t addressed to him and probably never would be. Setting places at a table he’d never sit at. A table that, in hindsight, he’d never want to sit at anyway.
All whilst watching Potter and Weasley rise through the Academy toward jobs he and the rest of Wizarding society assumed they were made for. The saviour and his sidekick, fighting ‘til the day they die.
Draco doesn’t keep up too much with the rumour mill these days, but he does know Potter and Weasley quit their posts as junior Aurors a year into their certification. It’d been all over the papers and hard to avoid: Potter’s fallout, more than Weasley’s, of course. No one really cares about the sidekick.
Their whereabouts since is more hazy. Travelling the world, he’d heard. Making up for lost opportunities at having an adolescence. Parties on beaches under full moons and all of the rest of it, Draco’s not sure.
Without Granger in the picture - she outgrew Wizarding Britain years ago, and quite rightly, now making a name for herself on the international stage as some sort of do-gooder magical creature rights advocate - Potter and Weasley have become attached at the hip, it seems. One cannot exist without the other.
And now they’re here.
Of all the places in the world, they’re here.
Whack, toss, thud. Whack, toss, thud.
Weasley carries his axe to the palette of tools by the edge of the clearing. There’s a strange assemblage of wooden slats on the ground, light wood fixed together in a frame gridded without symmetry. It’s large, and Weasley shouts something over his shoulder at Potter, pointing at it with a frown Draco can just about make out from his spot above them.
Potter’s boots - workman things, with laces and mud splatters - pick their way across the clearing and he joins Weasley by the strange wooden frame.
And then they do something that shocks Draco to his very core.
Whatever Weasley says next makes Potter laugh, and when he does, Weasley’s hand runs the length of Potter’s back, from the nape of his neck to the dip in his spine, just above the waist of his jeans. He gets closer, murmurs something into Potter’s ear, and that hand dips lower to cup Potter’s arse.
Sweet Circe, it can’t be.
Potter tilts his head, doesn’t bat away the touch. No - he’s leaning into it, into Weasley, and when their faces come together in a quick kiss, Draco yelps and spins around against the oak, hands pressed against the rough bark, eyes wide.
He’s seen too much.
Not enough, a small voice in the corner of his brain unhelpfully supplies, and he quickly squashes it down as he makes haste back through the forest, glancing every now and then over his shoulder to make sure he’s not followed.
-
“I definitely saw something.”
Harry pauses, spoonful of bacon and lentil soup halfway to his mouth. “That high up?” he asks, then eats. “Doubt it.”
It’s true. When they checked the lands around the plot before building, it had been clear of property for miles. It’s why they chose it in the first place.
“Maybe it was a deer or… a hare,” Ron says, but he’s still not sure. The shadow in the trees above the clearing had looked distinctly upright, distinctly… human.
Not a deer. Not a hare. Not a giant bloody spider.
He shudders and sits back against the wall, stretching his legs out.
They’re back in the van. The doors are flung open to the empty, winding road ahead of them, forking one way back to Windermere, and the other down to the coast. Ron sits along the length of the hollowed-out interior, and Harry is perched on the little step-stool beside the camping stove.
Ron dips his bread into his soup with one hand, and pushes his fingers through Harry’s dark hair with the other.
After dinner, Ron casts a disillusionment charm on the van and they Apparate to the nearest camping site, towels and toilet bags under arms.
It’s a well practised ritual now: using public showers, brushing their teeth together, elbowing each other playfully in the cramped spaces.
Soon enough, they’ll have their very own shower. An outdoor cubicle with a rainforest showerhead and an overhead trellis, everything built by hand, and made just for them.
The dream, no longer having to fight for space anywhere.
Back in the van with the doors closed, Harry places his glasses on the little shelf fixed to the wall above their mattress, and when he settles onto his side facing Ron, the dim, twinned lumos balls that float above their heads reflect in the dark green irises of his eyes.
They're exhausted. It’s been a long, tiring day full of backbreaking work, but still, somehow, Harry’s hand finds its way to the top of Ron’s head, where it gathers his long, damp hair loosely against his palm. He lets it rest there, warm and solid against the crown of Ron’s head, and they stare at each other across the small, quiet space that is entirely their own.
Harry’s kisses taste like the tube of minty toothpaste they share. Beneath that, they taste just like Harry: fresh pine, woodsmoke, winter air.
Ron remembers the first time they did this, all of those years ago.
Back then, it had hardly come as a surprise, as close as they’d been throughout all of their years together, but he’d still felt nervous beyond belief.
Nervous of fucking it up, nervous of doing something wrong, nervous of saying the wrong thing, nervous of touching Harry wrong… somehow.
It’d been Ron’s first time with another man.
It hadn’t been Harry’s.
A soft kiss on the sand under stars soon turned into shaking fingers fumbling with a hotel room key, with the edges of t-shirts and shorts and thin sheets that were eventually kicked from the bed anyway when Ron’s anxiety swooped up, surprisingly easily, into euphoria as soon as he was on top of and inside of Harry.
Harry had felt like the home Ron had been craving from the moment they both decided to leave England, to move constantly, to wander and fly forever.
Three years ago.
Ron remembers.
“How’s your back?” he mumbles against Harry’s lips when Harry shuffles himself in closer, their knees knocking under the soft pile of blankets they’ve had for those three years and then some.
“Better after showering,” Harry sighs, closing his eyes for a moment as Ron slips his hand down between his shoulder blades and squeezes. He still has the body of a Seeker: strong thighs and compact muscles, a contrast to Ron’s elongated frame.
Perpetually the lankiest person in every room.
He’s built some muscle though, especially since they started building things together. He hasn’t seen his back, but Harry has voiced his approval of it; of the way his muscles bulge and stretch - apparently - beneath the fabric of his flannel. His arms are bigger too, his hands stronger, maybe a bit rougher, and his stomach is hard in places it never used to be.
“Mm,” Harry hums, those green eyes watching him from beneath the fall of his thick, dark lashes.
Ron grins. “Good?”
Harry’s response is to run the side of his foot over Ron’s calf and slide his hand between them, underneath all of those blankets, underneath the loose waistband of his joggers, the tighter waistband of his thermals where Ron is already more than half-hard.
Everything gets shucked off, gets pushed further down the mattress when Harry’s head ends up in Ron’s lap, when Ron’s cock ends up inside the slick heat of Harry’s mouth that still feels so unreal, even after all of these years.
And Ron continues to rub lovingly at Harry’s back, his shoulders, his arms where he can reach them, and he thanks Merlin they’ve finally found somewhere they can, at last, land and call home.
-
Like a photograph in the Prophet, Draco keeps seeing it.
He keeps seeing Weasley’s hand slide down Potter’s back. He keeps seeing their faces hovering closer, and closer, and coming together in a kiss Draco had been too scared to see through.
And then it happens all over again from the beginning, stuck on a hellish loop without a satisfying payoff.
The Gods in all of the earth around, above, and below him couldn’t have prepared him for such a sight. Sweet Merlin, why are they here? Why are they—
—together?
Like that!
Draco is pacing. He’s shaking his hands out like they’re wet, like they’re covered in something he cannot get rid of.
He clicks his thumbs. Plays with his rings, with each knuckle in turn.
Eris is staring at him like he’s lost his marbles.
Maybe he has. Finally, maybe he has.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
She blinks at him slowly. Her tail - long and thin and black - flicks gently where it drapes over the windowsill. She shuffles her body around and turns her back to him.
Damn cats. No bloody loyalty in them.
He stops mid-step and presses his palms to his forehead. He takes what he hopes is a fortifying breath.
It doesn’t work.
He glances across the room, at what once used to be a grand entryway. The chequered tiles are all broken and fractured; nature has long since taken over the space in the way she spills through the window frames, claims the ceilings and walls with her vines and seedlings and buds. The whole manor is being swallowed by the earth. Each day, Draco wakes up to another flower, another root taking space in his landing, his kitchen, his dining room.
One day, he imagines she might take him, too. Sprout from his core, lace up through his ribs and burst from his mouth.
It’s a strangely comforting thought.
He doesn’t really have anywhere else to go, after all.
Until then, though, he survives. He survives by tending the wild garden out back, by cultivating the rare ingredients worth a small fortune to the merchants in London and Edinburgh and York, their trade keeping his pantry full, his two cats fed, and fine enough clothes on his back to keep people from asking him, what happened to the Malfoy fortune.
You’ve cracked, Pansy told him less than tenderly the first time she came to visit him here, when Eris had wound her way through her legs and Iris had pawed at her stompy Muggle platforms. You’re like one of those crazy cat witches. At least you still dress well! Not that you’ve got anyone to impress.
Come back home. You don’t belong here.
He does belong here. He does.
Draco takes himself upstairs and runs a bath. He burns sage, because quite frankly, it is needed, and when he sinks into the clawfoot tub and stretches out in the hot water - opaque and lilac today, laced with lavender salts and catmint - he closes his eyes and—
—Weasley and Potter’s mouths, brushing together. A broad, freckled hand, squeezing Potter’s backside.
Draco stares at the ceiling and swallows. His hair is sticking to his throat, to his collarbones, and he’s starting to get too warm.
His office is two doors down. Beside his ledgers and other paperwork, he knows the little amber light will still be buzzing quietly on the map of the land spread out across the desk he occasionally works from. It’s what alerted him to Potter and Weasley in the first place, what had him stomping through the forest and ready to tell whoever the hell it was encroaching on Black-owned land to bugger off.
Until it had been them.
Them, with their stupid dirty clothing and wild hair and axes and logs and strange Muggle tools and plastics.
Them, who are now apparently shagging or in love or both.
It’s bonkers, is what it is.
Draco doesn’t know what’s stranger: this new discovery of Ronald Weasley’s queerness, or this new discovery of Ronald Weasley’s attractiveness.
“Ugh.”
Draco slips down until the water comes up to his nose. It bubbles against his mouth.
It tastes disgusting.
What about Potter, that dusty, self-loathing little voice in the back of his mind whispers.
Draco sits up again and rubs at his wet chin, wiping away the cloying, fragrant water from his lips.
Potter, in his mucky shirt. His mountain man beard. That sportsman’s body. Draco hadn’t been close enough to see his face in great detail, but he has a feeling it’s still ridiculous; overwhelming; exquisite.
They can’t be here.
It’s too much.
Tomorrow, Draco thinks. After a refreshing sleep, he will approach their camp tomorrow, and he will ask them to leave.
-
Harry’s flying.
He’s high up in the sky, well above the blanket of trees stretching for miles beneath him, their dark leaves and branches shrouded in misty fog, their peaks creeping through. He can hear howling in the distance, the rattle and scatter and scamper of little feet. Creatures, magical and otherwise.
He dips his broomstick down, following the noise, and he spots the castle in the distance.
Fully formed, just like it was when he first stepped foot in it, a whole lifetime ago.
The scampering gets louder.
It’s a tap-tap-tapping sort of sound.
Harry jolts awake.
He sits up and grabs his glasses from the shelf, and Ron, who up until that point had been snoring softly against his shoulder, stirs with a snuffle and a moan.
“Wassat?” he asks against the pillow, pinching an eye open.
“Someone’s tapping on the doors,” Harry whispers, and he looks around wildly for his clothes. He’d slipped back into his pants after they’d had sex last night, but there’s no way he’s stepping out of the van in anything less than his joggers.
He shuffles his hoodie on first after finding it in a ball above his head, and his joggers next, which he lies back to pull on as Ron rubs tiredly at his face but otherwise makes no concerted effort to get up.
Fine.
The sharp what is all but perched on the tip of Harry’s tongue as he pushes open the doors, but there’s no need for it really, because he’s all but bowled over by a tufty-eared and angry looking eagle owl and its proffered scroll of parchment it drops, unceremoniously, onto Ron’s bare legs.
“What the bloody hell was that?” Ron asks groggily, groping around his thighs and picking up the scroll as the owl flies back out of the van, disappearing over the line of trees outside.
Ron sits up. His hair hangs in wild red tendrils around his face. He unscrolls the parchment and clears his throat.
“Dear Potter and Weasley. You are parked illegally on owned land. I’m giving you forty-eight hours to pack up your things, including your tools, wood, plastics, et cetera, and vacate the estate. Otherwise I shall have to call in the appropriate authorities, and I know none of us want that. It’s in your best interest to make haste and leave asap. Kind regards, D.L. Malfoy.” He looks up at Harry. “P.S. Long time no see, feel free to pop up for a cup of tea before you do leave. Coordinates on the back of this parchment.”
Harry laughs incredulously. It doesn’t last long.
“Wait—Malfoy?” He looks around them. At the two walls on either side of them. At the open space beyond the van doors, still flung open to the forest, to the endless sky.
“We’re in the Lake District,” he says dumbly.
Ron passes him the parchment and rubs at his face, groaning into his palms. “Yeah.”
-
Ron’s not sure what he was expecting Malfoy’s home to look like, but this isn’t it.
He reads the coordinates again.
Earlier, the neat slant of Malfoy’s handwriting had tossed Ron back in time. It’d been like dipping his head into a pensieve, thrown as his memory was into a half-built Hogwarts. He looked at the loops and swirls of Malfoy’s Fs and Gs and he was eighteen and war-battered again, sleepily working through Herbology notes as he tried to figure out his new place in the world.
Malfoy started sitting beside him in class, back then. Always without a word.
It had been jarring at first, being so close to this silent, studious Malfoy who would occasionally glance at Ron’s work and wordlessly lean over him to fix something on the parchment, or to jot down suggestions he probably could have just said out loud but for some bizarre reason chose not to.
His hair had smelled like mint and citrus and it was all Ron could think about, and when it first happened, Ron had been too shocked to tear his notes away.
And then he just—let it happen. Until eventually Malfoy would sit beside him during every Herbology theory lesson, and they wound up as natural partners in the greenhouses too, cultivating roots and pushing their fingers into the earth, working well together, usually without having to say anything at all. Ron still remembers the way Draco’s hair would sometimes slip out from behind the shell of his small, pale ear, the dirt on his jaw when he would thoughtlessly tuck it back.
Almost all of Malfoy’s friends were gone at that point.
He deserves it, Ron had said in a huff one night early on into eighth year. Malfoy had been in earshot, glancing out of the open doorway of the bathroom adjoining the dormitory they found themselves sharing with him. Ron hadn’t cared at the time.
Maybe he doesn’t deserve it, he murmured to Harry a few months later, fresh from the greenhouses with mud on his tie, the two of them poring over DMLE applications in the library, puzzling at the odd questions and struggling to answer anything coherently, meaningfully.
Not that it mattered, in the end.
“It’s… erm,” Harry says, picking up a loose curl whipping around his forehead with the wind, tucking it back in with the rest of his hair.
It’s a bloody mess, is what it is. About half of the size of Malfoy Manor, maybe less, the crumbling estate in front of them is built from dark grey stone; at least, Ron thinks it’s dark grey, it’s hard to tell because most of it is covered in vines, and what exposed brick is left is cracked and weathered and damp. The windows are filthy, broken in places, the frames rotten and mouldy. It’s a shock the thing is still standing.
“He lives here?” Harry asks on a breath.
Ron knows that sound, he’s heard it before, many times. Distress. Traces of guilt.
“Looks like it,” Ron says, folding the parchment and shoving it into the back pocket of his jeans.
Harry marches up to the door and bangs it with the side of his fist. More rotting wood. Painted a sage green and peeling around the rusty knocker and the decorative studs.
“Malfoy?” Harry calls out hoarsely. “It’s us. Let us in or—or, we’re walking in, alright?” He looks at Ron, panic edging into his gaze. “This isn’t good,” he says darkly. “This isn’t liveable. I know he went off grid for a bit but I didn’t expect—”
The door swings open.
“I beg your pardon, I did not go off grid. Whatever that means.”
Malfoy stands on the threshold of his dilapidated home, and Ron’s eyes can’t look anywhere else.
It’s been six years. Some things have changed. Others, not at all.
Malfoy’s hair, as uniquely pale as ever, is longer. The ends brush his shoulders and it’s half tucked behind his ears; his right earlobe is pierced through with a silver hoop that winks amongst those fine blond strands. He’s wearing a white shirt, loose and long, buttoned at the wrists, and are those velvet leggings—
Malfoy is scowling at them.
Harry has gone deathly quiet.
More memories from that last year of school come rushing back: the dirt on Malfoy’s pale jaw; the way his chapped, full lips would press together whenever he scribbled down notes or made a difficult chess move; the suggestion of dimples when he smiled, which had been rare, or when Ron managed to coax a laugh from him, which had been rarer.
Sometimes, though, Ron caught Malfoy smiling at Harry.
More often, he caught Harry smiling at Malfoy.
That had been before all of this, though; what Harry has with Ron.
Ron wonders if he should be worried.
Wonders - when he gazes up at Malfoy - if the swooping sensation in his own stomach is really rather obvious.
But Malfoy just looks between the two of them, eyes narrowed shrewdly, and he says, with a sigh, “Well. Come in, then. I’ll put the kettle on.”
-
Draco squeezes his eyes shut as soon as his back is turned.
He forces down the instinct to crack his knuckles, to play with his fingers and rings, to pace, to run.
Instead, he very deliberately picks his way across the cracked tiles and guides his visitors into the kitchen at the back of the manor. It’s as overgrown with weeds and foliage as the rest of the house.
He isn’t embarrassed. The pair of them are apparently living in a Muggle van, after all. They’re the ones who should be embarrassed.
“Peppermint?” he asks them as casually as he can, puttering around, keeping his hands busy: filling the kettle with water, turning on the stove with a flick of his wand, ruffling about with the tins of various loose leaf teas. “Jasmine? Sencha?”
“Erm.”
Draco would recognise that erm from across any room. He turns, finally, and meets Potter’s perturbed expression, and Morgana in the earth and heavens above and below, his face.
His face is as darling as Draco remembers, even with the absurd beard. Oh, what Draco wouldn’t give to shave it off for him, to cup his face in his hands and—
“D’you have any PG Tips?”
Draco blinks rapidly. “Pardon me? Teabags?”
Potter shrugs. His cheeks are ruddy and he keeps stroking at the dark hair on his chin. Weasley, meanwhile, is hanging back a few paces. He’s so tall the top of his head brushes against a hanging bunch of sage.
Draco gives that long, thick hair of his a cursory glance. The ends of it curl, just ever so slightly, but otherwise it’s poker straight. It hangs well below his shoulders.
Good grief, who even gave him the right.
“Just a black tea, Malfoy, nothing fancy,” Harry says in that tired way of his, and Draco panics, wondering if he’s lost them already—
You’re supposed to lose them. That’s the whole point. They’re supposed to go away.
Draco pushes out a sigh through his nose. “I have black breakfast but it’s loose leaf. There’s milk in there, I don’t take it in my tea so you’ll have to serve yourself,” he says, gesturing to the cold cupboard by the window and sink, rings catching the light poking in through the streaked glass.
Potter stares at them. At his hands, his fingers, his rings.
Draco drops his arm by his side as some of the stiffness in his shoulders melts away. “Fancy seeing you two here, eh?” he offers weakly, and he’s struck by the bizarre and ugly urge to cry. To bowl right into Potter, to Harry, and pound his hard chest with his fists and ask him why he felt he could do this with Weasley and never, apparently, with him.
But that would be unfair. Potter hadn’t been the one to leave, after all.
So he goes back to the tea, stewing it over the stove and assembling three chipped mugs on the countertop cluttered with equipment for his ingredients business: bowls and scissors and twine and canvas sacks, loose leaves and dried herbs and berries and dirt.
He usually only makes enough space for one mug.
As he works, he can feel Potter and Weasley’s gazes roam the room. They’re probably staring at the vines, at the mould growing dark and thick over the back door.
No matter. They’ll be gone soon.
Draco spins around and plonks a jar of honey down onto the table by the mugs.
“So, you’ll be leaving tomorrow, yes?”
No point in beating around the bush.
Weasley huffs a laugh. Potter just stares at him.
The last time he was pinned so intently by that gaze had been the night before he handed in his resignation at the DIMC, if you could even call it a resignation. Draco never had a contract there, so he had every right to walk out the door whenever he pleased. No one would have cared.
No one really did care.
Apart from—
No. Draco can’t think about that right now.
He won’t.
“We’re not leaving.” Potter folds his arms over his chest and it pulls his t-shirt tight against the muscles of his arms. “We’re not going anywhere.”
Draco lifts a hand to his mouth, fist loosely curled, and he coughs against it to try and disguise his shock.
He’s not sure he’s doing a very good job of it, to be honest.
Weasley leans forward, ducking his head away from the hanging herbs. He places his hand on the table; it’s broad, freckled, and there’s a nasty looking scrape on his middle knuckle.
“Yes, well, I’m afraid that’s not how it’s going to go,” Draco tries slowly, grabbing the towel from the oven door and using it to pick up the cast iron kettle from the burner. Potter immediately steps forward, an arm out, and Draco frowns at him, shoving up a wall as he pours each mug in turn without spilling a drop.
That’ll show him.
“Honey?” he asks, picking up a spoon.
-
Malfoy insists they take their tea in the parlour.
He levitates a tray he finds underneath the oven and no one comments on the rusted ring stains, the broken handles. The cobweb swinging from it after he yanks it free.
The parlour looks like it could have been nice, a century ago.
Nestled amongst the vines pushing in through the cracks in the windows, houseplants outgrow their pots. The tiles under foot are cracked, and the mantel is littered with dead leaves, misshapen altar candles and silver trinkets that probably lost their shine decades ago. The furniture is in a sorry state: its upholstery faded, its surfaces scratched and splintered, corners and legs damaged and chipped, all peeling paint and varnish.
Harry stares at it all in shock.
He wonders if Ron can smell the rot in the walls like he can. If Malfoy can smell it.
Malfoy uses his magic - a casual, elegant sweep of his hand and wand - to clear a small table by an old mint-green settee. The tray floats down next to what looks like an upside down bowl, spherical and bulbous, about the width of a dinner plate. Glassy and foggy, its contents, from this far away, are nothing but a myriad of murky jewel-tones.
“What is that?” Ron asks, getting closer and prodding it with a finger.
Malfoy picks up a piece of lemon and lavender shortbread from the tray and bites into it. “Mermaid skull.”
Harry barks a laugh and Ron yelps and pulls back quickly, holding his hand protectively against his chest. “Why would you—”
“It’s under the glass, Weasley. You’re fine,” Malfoy says around a mouthful of shortbread, touching the tips of his fingers to his lips. “It’s a Victorian curiosity. Came with the house.” He shrugs. “I think it’s interesting.”
“I think you’re barmy,” Ron breathes, wiping his fingers against his jumper.
“Yes, well,” Malfoy says. His gaze flits to Harry for about half of a second before it skitters off to the side.
Harry’s heart twinges.
“Some things don’t change, I suppose.” Malfoy sinks down into a musty old armchair, crossing his long legs, mug now held in both hands. “So. Anyway. Yes, you will be leaving tomorrow, and I think it’ll be easier on everyone if you comply quietly.”
“Comply quietly—?” Ron sputters.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Harry says again, looking down at the settee and brushing away some of the forest detritus; dry mud, leaves, dead roots. He sits down on the edge of it and leans forward, resting an elbow on his knee. “We already checked the land, and it’s safe for us to build there, Malfoy. Given, er, the right… erm, dissolution charms are in place…”
He looks to Ron for help.
“Yeah,” Ron says. “It’s a free country, Malfoy.”
Malfoy laughs incredulously. “I think you’ll find it most certainly is not!” He tilts his head. “You’re working on my family’s land, did you know that? Did you check the wizarding land registry?”
Harry and Ron exchange blank looks.
“You didn’t,” Malfoy says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You idiots.”
Harry holds out a hand. “Hey! Enough of that. We didn’t bloody know it was Malfoy land—”
“Well, technically, it’s Black…”
“Ha!” Ron says. He’s still standing over them, keeping a fair bit of distance between himself and the mermaid skull. “So then it’s just as rightfully Harry’s as it is yours.”
Malfoy hums. “No.”
Harry tunes them out as the bickering continues. Sits back and ignores the crunch of dead leaves behind the small of his back, stares at the ceiling and takes a slow breath through his nose, and back out through his mouth. Again. And again.
It’s taken months for Harry and Ron to find a safe place to land. To find somewhere that feels right for them. After years of adventure, of moving from place to place and never settling long enough to call anywhere home, a new plot in England, burrowed deep in nature but still close enough to the sea to know that there’s endless sky beyond it, had felt like the perfect compromise.
They’re both ready to settle. And it’s exciting, building a home for themselves from scratch, something that is, and always will be, entirely theirs.
“What are you even building anyway?”
Malfoy’s irritated tone cuts through Harry’s thoughts, and he opens his eyes again, looking between them. Ron has moved closer, but his arms are folded, and Malfoy is tapping a heavily-ringed finger against his mug.
“A tiny home,” Harry says quietly.
“A… what?”
“A tiny home,” Harry says again. “A downsized, efficient living space made from sustainable materials from the land around it. A fully functional house but… on a smaller scale, with all of the essentials and nothing in excess. And built by hand. Our hands.” He glances at Ron, who, after a moment of hesitation, joins Harry on the couch.
“And you’re… doing this together?” Malfoy asks them carefully, looking between them. Harry can feel the warmth of Ron’s thigh as it presses alongside his own, and he resists the urge to reach for his hand, to curl their fingers together, to allow himself to feel grounded by Ron’s touch.
He’s not sure he can right now, not fully. Not with Malfoy looking at him like that, his expression a clouded combination of caution, embarrassment, confusion. Curiosity.
Maybe a bit of hurt, too.
“Yes,” Harry says quietly, pressing his leg back against Ron’s.
“You don’t seem to be that bothered by the fact I’d be your neighbour,” Malfoy sniffs.
Harry stares at him in disbelief. “Wait—you do live here? Permanently? It’s—” He glances around. At the crumbling walls. The dead plants.
The fucking mermaid skull.
“Do you have an issue with that, Potter?”
Yes.
“I just—”
As if on queue, a rustling noise from overhead distracts them. All of their gazes point to the cracked and discoloured ceiling.
A small hunk of plaster drops and falls directly into the bowl of shortbread, tipping it onto its side.
“Fucking hell, Draco,” Harry breathes. He presses his fingers to his temples, tilting his head back. “You can’t live here. It’s literally falling apart!”
“It’s fine.”
Ron leans over and picks out the crumbling piece of plaster from the bowl, tossing it aside. “Why don’t you—er. Come down and see what we’re doing some time, yeah? You might change your mind,” he says, and he gently elbows Harry’s arm. “But we like it here. This is where we’ve chosen to live and… if this is where you’ve chosen to live, then we’re just going to have to make peace with each other, yeah?”
Just like eighth year, just like those two years before he left for… all of this.
Harry closes his eyes. “Are we done here? We’ve got a lot to do.”
Malfoy licks his lips. “There’s never any telling you, is there?”
He’s looking right at Harry.
Harry meets his gaze head on, and it’s hard not to see that Malfoy - that Draco - from all of those years ago.
We could make a go of it, you know. We could try, he’d said softly, that night, that last night, and Malfoy had looked at him like he was offering him the world.
Had looked at him like Harry offering Malfoy the world was the most absurd thing he could ever conceivably do.
“There’s no telling me,” Harry says, soft and quiet.
“Right then.” Ron’s soft, West Country timbre cuts through the palpable tension, a warm, anchoring thing. “We’ll just be neighbours.”
His hand finds Harry’s knee, and Malfoy stares at it. At them.
He’s blushing.
Malfoy taps his rings against the side of the mug again, and says, slightly strangled, “Neighbours.”
-
“That was…”
“Weird.”
Ron runs a hand over his face. “Yeah.”
“We’re going to be neighbours with Draco Malfoy.”
Ron shrugs helplessly. “We did it for… what. Seven odd years? And that last one wasn’t too awful, was it?”
It was, in a very weird way, actually kind of wonderful. That last year.
Mint and citrus and chess games and scribbled notes on parchment.
They’re standing at the edge of the clearing. All of their tools and materials are exactly where they left them: the assembled foundation, the floor and wall framing, the roofing tiles. The rest of it is shrunk down for when they need to install it: glass for the windows, the plumbing and electricals, appliances, tiles and paints, furniture.
Harry sits himself down on a concrete block and pushes his fingers underneath the arm of his t-shirt, rubbing at his bicep. “His house is a fucking mess.”
“Oh, mate,” Ron groans, toeing at the edge of the floor frames they’re planning to install later. “It was a tip. He has trees growing inside!”
Harry chuckles, a surprising sound.
“What?”
“Mate,” Harry murmurs.
Ron grins and picks his way across the frame, climbing over it until he’s crouched down in front of Harry. “Yeah. What of it?”
Harry bends his knees on either side of Ron, his feet flat against the ground, and Ron circles his hands over Harry’s thighs so he can lean up for a soft kiss.
When Harry brushes Ron’s hair back and tucks it behind his ears, over and over, Ron’s brow wrinkles in thought. He recalls the image of Malfoy standing there in his doorway; the deep scowl on his face, the long hair, the jewellery. The rush of familiarity.
“I er, think I might have had a little thing for him. You know? Back in school.”
“Wait,” Harry says with a blink. “For Malfoy?”
Ron lifts his shoulders up once. Lets out a soft breath. “Yeah? Maybe? Just that last year. I dunno.” He turns his head slightly into Harry’s warm palm. His skin is soft, despite all of the work they’ve been doing. He’s not sure what his secret is, but it’s a far cry from Ron’s bashed up knuckles and rough fingertips.
Ron shifts his weight. His knees are starting to twinge. “Didn’t you?” he asks Harry carefully. Like he doesn’t know.
Harry is quiet for a moment. “Yeah,” he says softly. “Yes, I—of course I did.”
Ron nods. He finds Harry’s hand, squeezes his fingers, and brings it to his mouth so he can kiss the inside of his wrist. “Did you act on it?”
He quickly adds, “I’m not angry,” when Harry looks away, surprising himself by how much he means that. He kisses Harry’s wrist again, the soft part of his hand where his thumb meets his palm. Reverent.
Harry shakes his head, and when he meets Ron’s eyes again, he pitches his voice low in admittance. “You know we did.” He swallows. “It was after Hogwarts, though. When we started training.”
Ron wonders if this is the part where he’s supposed to feel jealous. If he’s supposed to let go of Harry’s hand and despair they’ve come full circle. That perhaps this isn’t so much of a random coincidence after all, and the universe is trying to tell them something.
But Ron’s never really believed in any of that. The universe doesn’t tell people things. People tell people things, people do things and—things happen.
This happened.
And—he’s okay.
Everything’s okay.
He can breathe.
“Are you worried about him?”
“Of course I am,” Harry huffs after a beat, after they stare at each other and let a moment of silence, of unspoken agreement - permission - pass between them. Ron swallows hard, his cheeks warm, his heart thudding erratically in his throat.
“Look at the state of him.” Harry sighs. “I mean. The state of his home. Not him he’s—”
Harry gets a far-off look in his eyes. Ron’s seen it a few times before, enough to recognise it for what it is.
Want. Need. Mine.
“It can’t be good for him,” Ron mutters. “Breathing in all that mould. I just want to—”
“Pull him out of it,” Harry whispers.
A hand, pale and outstretched, desperate. The lick of fire and flames, the heat searing Ron’s skin, sweat pouring out of his face, running like a tap and soaking his hair, his clothes.
Harry and Malfoy, a blur on that broom.
Ron nods. Stretches up and presses another kiss to the distracted twist of Harry’s mouth. “Let’s keep working for a bit, yeah?”
-
A week later, they complete the foundations for the house, and the heavens split open.
Harry and Ron rush out in the morning to cover everything with thick blue tarp, hammering it down into the ground at each corner and weighing down the edges with slabs of concrete to stop it from blowing away in the heavy wind.
By the time they make it back to the van, they’re soaked to the bone and itchy all over. The late summer rain is excessive and thick, tepid and heavy with the scent of petrichor. It speckles Harry’s glasses, flattens his hair to his head, weighs his clothes down and fills his shoes.
Ron digs their wands out of the glove compartment, tossing Harry’s to where he sits at the back of the van.
“Could murder a proper shower right now,” Ron yells over the sound of the rain pounding against the ground, and Harry stretches out, casting his gaze upward, toward the hill, over the crest of the woods. Thunder cracks across the horizon, a rolling, ominous smack.
“You again.”
Malfoy stands on his threshold looking down at Harry and Ron like the couple of drowned rats they undoubtedly are.
“Lovely way to greet your neighbours,” Harry offers cheerfully.
“Yes, well,” Malfoy dithers, then sighs loudly and steps aside. “Get in, would you. Try not to drip everywhere. You’ve never heard of drying charms?”
Harry meets his gaze as he steps through the doorway; his hair’s tied back today, braided against the side of his head and pulled into a ponytail. He’s in all black: a high-neck t-shirt, those weird velvety trousers that cling to him like a second skin.
He looks good.
He looks fucking great.
The house, on the other hand. Well.
“We could water your weeds,” Harry hears Ron mutter behind him, and Harry clears his throat to try and smother it, but it’s too late, because Malfoy is scowling at them, arms folded, wand tapping against his elbow where he holds it loosely in one elegant hand.
“You’ll be wanting a bath,” Malfoy says, the wrinkles on his brow softening a fraction.
“Drying charms don’t really have the same effect,” Harry says, grateful and soft. His skin prickles slightly in the wake of Malfoy’s coy gaze, the way it silently caresses his torso, his arms, where the heavy fabric of his shirt clings to him uncomfortably and molds itself to every inch of his frame.
“Very well,” Malfoy breathes, his eyes flitting to Ron, who doesn’t look any better.
“You can use my bathroom. It’s the only one that…” he trails off and clears his throat. “It’s the best bathroom in the manor.”
He leads them up the west side of the imperial staircase; the banister is covered in cracks in the marble handrail, spindly weeds wrap around the balusters, and the tiles, like those in the entryway, are cracked and uneven. It’s a miracle Malfoy hasn’t tripped on them and broken his neck.
Harry swallows at the thought of Malfoy having an accident here. Of no one knowing about it.
Malfoy takes them into a large bathroom with monochrome honeycomb tiles on the floor and exposed brass pipes on the walls. There’s a clawfoot tub with matching taps and a separate walk-in shower against the far wall without a door or curtain. The vanity is on the other side of the room, with a toilet and a cupboard flush against the wall. It’s not… awful. It looks like something out of the 1920s, with its square sink and visible pipes, but in a charming way rather than being overtly dated.
“Bath,” Malfoy says, pointing at it. “Shower.” Again, pointing at it, stating the obvious. He gestures to the cupboard, and with a flick of his wand, the door flies open. “Clean towels. Some toiletries. Herbal and homemade, mostly…”
When he looks at them again, his cheeks are pink. The flush crawls to the tips of his ears, and Harry wants to touch them, to touch the mottled skin of his jawline, the flush of his throat. He wants to ask him if he’s okay. He wants to shake his shoulders and tell him he is clearly not.
“I’ll leave you to it. I assume you won’t need to take it in turns, so—yes. I’ll be downstairs.” And with one last stuttered goodbye, he turns on his heel, and he flees.
-
The moment Draco steps back into the kitchen, he clears the island worktop. He packs away loose plants and bunched flowers, he stacks bowls and pots, he tidies up his tools, and he cleans the surface of the counter with a quick but efficient charm.
He hasn’t seen it this empty and clean in—well, years, maybe.
Just when he’s trying to squeeze the last of his bowls onto the overcrowded shelves by the far wall, he hears the gentle tap and creak of footsteps on the floorboards, and he turns halfway.
Draco holds his breath as Potter comes up behind him and crowds him into the shelves; he smells like herbs and fresh, forest air. They’re not touching - not yet - but he can feel the warmth of Potter’s body radiate through his freshly dried clothes. Potter’s hair drips water onto his shoulders where it’s carelessly pushed back from his face and Draco’s gaze drops to the heather-grey fabric, watching the wet patches bloom and flatten against Potter’s shoulders, against his collarbones.
He’s almost too beautiful for words.
“Here,” Potter says, and his voice is rough as he gently pries the bowl from Draco’s hand and rearranges it on another shelf so it sits between a couple of stacks of mugs instead. “There. Fits now.”
Yes, it fits, Draco thinks dizzily.
“How was your bath? Or did you have a shower?” Draco asks him, eyes flitting to Potter’s mouth, because it’s right there.
He’s been watching them all week: Potter and Weasley. They’ve worked every day on that little house - their tiny house - building the foundation with painstaking precision. Up from dusk until dawn; swinging axes, throwing wood, accepting cups of tea whenever Draco had the heart to make them a pot, which he’d carried down to the clearing by hand.
Any excuse to have a nosy. Any excuse to watch them work.
I still can’t picture it, he’d told them just two days ago, standing on the edge of the skeletal frame, glancing down at glass panels that were being turned into windows. It doesn’t look big enough for two grown men.
Trust the process, Weasley had said with a roguish grin, the kind of grin that could ruin Draco’s day if he let it, and when Weasley added, It’s definitely big enough for three grown men, actually, it had.
“I had a shower. Ron’s still in the bath,” Potter murmurs.
Draco can feel Potter’s eyes on his own mouth, and he licks his lips. “He’s using your bath salts, the ones that were out. I hope that’s okay.”
“Chamomile and peaches,” Draco murmurs. The bottle sits on the windowshelf, labelled cosy in his own handwriting. He can’t think of a better combination of scents for Weasley, with his freckled skin and rosy cheeks.
Draco closes his eyes, thinking about him lying there in the milky water, his long, red hair floating around his shoulders.
“Was it?” Potter asks, and he takes a tiny step back, leaving some room between them again.
Draco hums and runs a hand over his overwarm forehead. Outside, rain patters against the windows, dappling against the dirty glass. The clouds are too heavy to let in any kind of bright light, so the room is dull except for the couple of candles flickering away on the mantelpiece above the hearth.
Potter looks clean, soft. Young despite the beard. His scar cuts across the dark skin of his forehead, jagged edges slicing into his eyebrow.
Years ago, Draco had pressed his thumb to that scar. Had traced it with the edge of his finger and felt how it was slightly more raised than the rest of Potter’s skin. At the time, Potter had been murmuring something filthy into his mouth, had been pushing Draco back further and further into the empty bedroom while the rest of the recently graduated eighth years partied the night away downstairs in Potter, Weasley, and Longbottom’s little rented townhouse in Herne Hill.
They’d fucked for the first time that night. Draco can still feel the shock of it when Potter - Harry, Harry, fuck, oh Merlin Harry - pushed inside of him, strong, eager hands pressing down against the backs of Draco’s knees to hold him open, splitting him like ripe fruit, leaving Draco bared and overspilling as their bodies moved together helplessly.
It had been a long time coming.
It was so long ago.
“Draco.” His name is like a ghost on Potter’s tongue. On Harry’s tongue. He steps forward again, light and shadows bouncing against the angles of his face; his high cheekbones, his long nose.
Draco clears his throat. “Stay for dinner,” he says, before he can stop himself. “I was going to make soup. I have rotisserie chicken from the market. Does that sound okay?”
Harry nods, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I can help.”
And so, he does.
Harry works quietly, cleanly, and proficiently, like he knows what he’s doing. They’d never had a chance to cook just for each other, not in those two years they snuck around behind their friends’ backs and stole moments they refused to define until Harry forced them to, the night before Draco decided enough was enough - with this, with his job, with everything.
I’m doing you a favour, Draco had said stonily, and Harry had sunk down to his knees in front of him where Draco was pulling on his socks, sitting on the edge of Harry’s bed while the rest of the townhouse slept.
Draco’s resignation letter had already been written, on his desk at home, the tiny postage stamp of a flat he lived in alone on the other side of the river.
We could make a go of it, you know. We could try, Harry had whispered, holding onto Draco’s thighs, his face earnest and glassesless and so, so young.
The world doesn’t want this version of Harry Potter and you know it, Draco had said.
“Oh. Hello.”
Draco hears Eris and Iris’s meows before he sees them, and he grins down at the carrots he’s chopping into small, uniform cubes, ready to toss into the pan of sweating onions. “They’re after the chicken,” he says, watching Harry carefully twist around on the spot as the two cats wind their way around his ankles. “It’s their favourite.”
“What are their names?” Harry asks him, looking up at Draco and using his wrist to push up his glasses.
“The all black cat is Eris, the tuxedo is Iris. They’re sisters.”
“Hello ladies,” Harry coos, grinning stupidly, and it does something equally stupid to Draco’s insides. Makes them twist and jump and flutter, right beneath his breastbone. “What do you think? Will your daddy mind too much if I give you some yummy chicken?”
Draco snorts. “Harry,” he tuts. “Please don’t ever call me daddy.” He assesses Harry’s replying smile and rolls his eyes. “Just give them a little. It hurts their stomachs if they have too much human food.”
Harry chuckles. “Alright then. Just a little.”
Weasley walks in then, his long hair wet and hanging over his shoulders, bleeding into the fabric of his jumper, sleeves rolled up to reveal his pale, freckled, and annoyingly capable forearms.
“Something smells amazing,” he says, glancing between them; Draco chopping veg, Harry crouched down on the floor, feeding scraps of chicken to the cats.
“Chicken soup,” Harry says.
“If Harry’s able to stop feeding all of the rotisserie chicken to the girls,” Draco mumbles, carrying the chopping board to the stove and tipping the carrots in with the onions.
“Harry again, is it?” Weasley asks warmly.
Draco blushes. “Cut up some bread, would you?” he asks him, pointing to the bread bin. “There’s a loaf of sourdough in there. Butter dish is on the shelf.”
And so they all work together after Harry manages to extract himself from the cats, and once the soup is done they carry it into the dining room to eat.
The room is large and the powder-blue brocade wallpaper has certainly seen grander days. It’s peeling away at the joins, mottled with dark damp around the filthy windows. The parquet floor is scuffed and dull, the Baroque mirror above the marble fireplace streaked and dusty, and the portraits on the walls are covered with old sheets to stop them from speaking. They’d driven Draco mad when he first moved here.
The food, at least, is very good, and Harry and Weasley both seem to agree, if their hums of contentment are anything to go by, even as their eyes rove around, wide and curious; the concern in them too big, too naked to hide.
All the while, the rain outside gets heavier, battering hard against the windows, a constant hum of background noise as they chat idly about the building progress, about what’s next.
Fitting the walls and sheathing, apparently. Whatever that means.
“You were always very good with your hands, Weasley,” Draco says without thinking as he tops up their glasses of elderflower wine, and Harry snorts softly as Weasley’s cheeks turn a dark shade of pink. “In… lessons! Herbology! And—others,” Draco grumbles, then joins in with Harry’s soft, amused chuckles. “Oh, shut up, Harry.”
“We were good Herbology partners,” Weasley agrees, rubbing the nape of his neck. His hair is tied back, and some of it escapes the crude knot on the back of his head, drying in waves around his face and throat.
“I should have taken that class,” Harry says, looking between them over his wine glass. “I’d have loved to have seen you work together.”
“Good thing you didn’t, you were terrible in that subject,” Draco says haughtily, earning him a gentle kick beneath the table. “But very good at Defence of course. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, Harry. It’s no bad thing.”
“Very generous of you, Draco,” Harry teases, reaching for his third slice of bread and covering it with a thick slather of salted butter, Draco’s favourite from the local Muggle farm shop.
Harry and Weasley smile at each other, and then smile at Draco, and when they do, Draco tries to picture the peeling blue wallpaper behind their heads gone. Tries to see the walls of the castle in its place, the bustle of students as they ate dinner together, that year not divided by their houses but split by years, the eighth years topping the end of the table by the Great Hall doors. There had been no house cup that year. No walls. Only togetherness.
It had been painful, at first. Sitting with them. Trying to be seen by them as anything other than his fatal mistakes, than his poisonous family, than the painful Mark on his arm; now nothing but a smudge of blurred red ink.
When Draco looks back at that year, he’s still not sure what he did to deserve their smiles, when they gave them to him. When they wouldn’t stop giving them to him.
“So,” he says. Thunder rumbles outside, crackling in the clouds that keep the manor dull and half-dark. The candles, at least, continue to flicker warmly between them, highlighting the green in Harry’s eyes, the brighter shades of red in Weasley’s hair. “Are you going to fill me in a bit more? About where you two have been these past three or so years since leaving the DMLE?”
They look at each other, that clairvoyant thing they do, and instead of holding back a sigh, Draco leans in closer over his empty soup bowl.
“We moved a lot. From place to place,” Harry says, tearing up his bread and using it to mop up the last of his soup.
“Where?” Draco prods. “What did you see?”
“Moved around Europe for a while,” Weasley says as he sits up with a thoughtful, bracing inhale. “Austria, Slovakia, Hungary. We stayed in Budapest for ages.”
“Loved it there,” Harry says with a hum.
“Spent some time in Romania. Visited Charlie for a month or so. That was fun.” Weasley grins, looking at Harry. “This one fancied his chances as a wrangler, but it never stuck.”
“Nothing ever did,” Harry says with a quiet, almost sad sort of laugh.
“We went south, to Greece. Then Italy. Then we decided we wanted a complete change of pace and we went to Nepal. Thailand. Vietnam. Japan.”
Draco frowns. “You never went to America? You didn’t visit Granger?”
Weasley nods. If he’s bothered by Draco’s question, he doesn’t show it. “We went out to Hawaii on one of our last stops. She and Cho were wanting a little holiday from California, and it seemed like a good place to meet.”
“A nice little getaway with your exes,” Draco says before he can stop his mouth. He blushes, and necks some more wine, but Harry laughs loudly.
“Cho’s hardly my ex. We had a very brief, very memorable kiss when we were teenagers. Memorable for all of the wrong reasons,” he says, folding his napkin. “Besides, we’re both gay! You already know this!”
Draco shrugs helplessly. “Was it odd for you?” he asks Weasley, eyeing him carefully.
“No—” Weasley looks at Harry. “No, it wasn’t. Because at that point, Harry and I were already—”
Draco watches Harry’s hand spider across the table and fold itself over Weasley’s. Draco nods, hoping the dark clouds outside are enough to disguise the heat crawling up his throat and over his cheeks.
“We’re still all very close, the three of us,” Harry says, looking at Draco, then looking at Weasley. “We just fit—differently now, I suppose.”
“And you’re here,” Draco murmurs, and by ‘here’ he means, England. He means, the Lakes. He doesn’t mean here, this dilapidated manor.
Here, Draco’s home.
Here, with Draco.
But Harry’s looking at him gently, so gently, and Draco has to clear his throat and look away before he starts dissecting his kindness, before he tries to look for anything ugly in it.
What version of Harry Potter does the world have now?
“We should head back down,” Weasley says, cutting across Draco’s thoughts. Outside, the rain batters harder against the windows, and the delays between the rolls of deep thunder and the flashing blue illumination of lightning are getting shorter.
“Better not,” Draco says shortly, all no-nonsense like, despite the erratic thud of his heart beneath his ribs. “It’s not safe out there, even with charms. You can both—take my bed. I’ll er—I’ll find somewhere to sleep. Lots of room!”
One of the vines creeping in from the cracks in the window frame rattles against the breeze, dripping rainwater onto the already ruined floor.
Harry takes one look at it and shakes his head. “We can’t take your bed and expect you to… find somewhere else in here,” he says. He glances at Weasley, and they do that silent look again, before he points his gaze at Draco once more. “You’ve always been good at Transfiguration, haven’t you?”
“I—well. I suppose. Yes. I’m proficient,” Draco says, blinking rapidly, trying desperately not to preen.
Harry nods once. “We can extend your bed, then. Make it big enough for three.”
“Harry,” Weasley says with a breathy, disbelieving laugh, but Harry shrugs, and both of their mouths twitch in a mirrored way, something private and knowing passing between them again. Draco scowls.
“I’m not sure what’s so funny, but if you’re doing this to wind me up—”
Weasley holds out a hand. “Thanks, Malfoy,” he says, cutting him off. “It’d be great to sleep here. The van’s not ideal in a storm like this.” He tilts his chin down, but his gaze doesn’t leave Draco’s. “We slept together before, remember? It’s not so bad.” His grin is crooked. “If you can get over my snoring.”
It happened once, in school. They’d been staying up late playing chess, a game that had stretched on for hours and had become ruthless, the two of them tossing teasing insults back and forth that had gradually become more hushed as their classmates, one by one, traipsed off to bed. They moved the board out of the common room and into their shared dormitory, setting it up on Weasley’s bed where they played under silencing charms and twinned lumos globes circling their heads, lighting up the bluest part of Weasley’s eyes. When they woke up the next morning with the board wedged between them, both still in uniform, Draco had poked Weasley’s ankle with his foot and told him he snored like a Welsh Green.
On the list of things Draco has agreed to this fortnight, this might be the maddest, but he finds himself nodding jerkily anyway and getting up to clear the table with a flick of his wand, sending the plates stacking to the kitchen where they’ll wash up themselves.
They drink some more and play cards on the kitchen table, where it’s warmest, right in front of the hearth and the burning candles. Harry tells the story about the first time they went to the thermal baths in Budapest; about how Ron lost his shorts and had to walk back to their hotel in his t-shirt and trunks, and Draco laughs so hard he nearly snorts wine out of his nose.
“That’s not even the worst of it,” Ron says, topping up their glasses. “My shorts were in my bag with my suncream, so I didn’t have any of that too, for the walk. I looked like a lobster the next day.”
“Sexy,” Harry says, grinning.
“I’ve got very sensitive skin,” Ron whinges.
Draco’s laughter dies down slowly and he watches the two of them grin at each other, that familiar feeling of why not me returning, but different.
Why not me too.
Why not us.
And the small voice in the back of his mind supplies, because you never let either of them have a chance.
So they took that chance together. Without you.
“I’m tired,” Draco announces, rubbing his cheek.
Upstairs, his room isn’t perfect. It’s in the east wing of the house, and once had a clear view of the gardens out back through the sash windows, now clouded by dirt and crowded by the branches of a nearby tree. His floor, stripped of carpeting, is cold and cracked in places; his wall by the windows are camouflaged by vines creeping up and over an old chaise longue by the far wall; his bed, a dark wood four poster, is, at least, clean and kept well.
Draco points his wand to it; already king-sized, it’s certainly large enough to fit three, but he extends it by a few more handspans, giving them enough room to move without touching.
The entire time, his heart hammers away in the base of his throat.
While Draco washes up, he can only assume Harry and Weasley are using cleansing charms on themselves, cleaning their teeth with their wands and transfiguring their day clothes into something suitable for sleeping, and when he returns to his bedroom clad in his sensible pyjamas, he blinks as he watches Weasley crawl into his bed behind Harry in nothing but his black underpants.
Right then.
“You still wear silk pyjamas?” Harry asks him; his voice is scratchy and warm, and his glasses are sitting on the bedside table beside Draco’s book on British wildflowers and their medicinal properties.
Draco very carefully gets into bed on the other side, unplaiting his hair after settling the covers down on his lap.
“What of it, Potter?” he asks, raising an eyebrow, shaking out his hair with his fingers.
Harry blinks at him. Smiles softly. “Nothing at all.”
The three of them slip down against the mound of pillows. Weasley wraps an arm around Harry’s middle, over the covers. His damaged knuckle is a rather alarming shade of pink and red; the graze there looks angry, and Draco frowns at it, but bites his lip.
“Well,” he announces softly, into the dim. “Goodnight.”