Chapter One: Life in Ukraine

For some reason or another, something unexplainable, Draco's hand reached out. He tugged the corner of Harry Potter's coat hard enough that the man stumbled backward, crashing into Draco, and they almost fell down the steps of the bank.

Unlike in the past, Harry didn't immediately go on the offensive. He blinked questioningly at Draco, but without heat. "What is it?"

Draco couldn't answer fast enough. He didn't know what possessed him to reach out, to stop Harry from entering the bank and going on their separate ways, only meeting by coincidence once every several years.

But when he thought about his life; the upcoming marriage, the cut-and-dried future, all the routines, something unpleasant churned in his stomach. Somehow, somewhere along the way he had lost the control of his own life.

"Take me with you," Draco said with all the impulsivity of an eleven year old. The moment the words left his mouth, however, he knew they were the right ones.

Harry's eyes scrunched up in confusion. "Didn't you just say you're going to get married tomorrow?" he asked. He didn't try to pry Draco's fingers off of himself.

Draco didn't say anything, but Harry must have seen something in his eyes, because Draco found himself pulled into the bank. Like a stray animal, Harry brought him home and fed him and let him sleep on the sofa in the living room.

The next day, Harry went to spend time with his friends, but left Draco with a key so he could let himself back into the old Black townhouse. Draco went to the bank and moved as much money as he could to a more private, secure account at the same time his wedding was suppose to take place.

His parents would be angered beyond believe, but they would forgive him one day. They loved him, even if they didn't always understand his actions.

Harry didn't say anything when he returned home and found Draco still on his sofa.

They went to Ukraine first, since the auror shortage there was still not resolved after a year. Harry had been there before as part of the travel he did in the gap years between Hogwarts and auror training. For the first few weeks, Draco did nothing but familiarize himself with this strange new country and his strange new role while Harry was away doing auror training.

Unlike what he thought before, Harry had not, in fact, overdosed himself on cheering charms. He was just high enough on life to take in an old school rival, but even that patience was exhausted on the first month of living together. They fought a lot, on important things and random things and domestic things, but without the heat and aggressiveness of the past.

If not for their heavy past, they would be just like any other roommates.

Harry never once threatened to kick Draco out. Draco couldn't say the same and he had threatened to leave quite a number of times, but he never did and they stayed together despite everything.

After several weeks of wandering aimlessly, Draco became restless enough to take up hobbies. He tried reading, but sitting for hours and hours didn't appeal to him much. Next he tried gardening and discovered that his bad grade in Herbology was truly deserved. He just didn't enough patience for it.

Cooking was something he picked up more as a necessity. Harry was too busy to cook most of the time and he was getting sick of take-outs. His first few attempts were not worth talking about, but cooking wasn't really all that different from Potion and he got better.

By the time a month had passed since Draco started doing all the cooking, Harry stopped complaining about poisonous food. They stopped buying takeouts too.

It wasn't what he thought about doing when he thoughtlessly ran from home, but it wasn't bad. Here, away from his parents, he had all the time to figure out what he wanted from life.

Draco sent letters to his parents and his friends every Saturday, always from a new country. Harry was determined to take him to tour the entire Europe, even if only on the weekend. They left Ukraine on Friday night and returned by Sunday.

Greg, Pansy, and Blaise all escaped England the moment the Dark Lord fell. They were not as notorious as the Malfoys, so they managed to get away by greasing the right palms before the Hunts began. They didn't reply immediately. Draco had to prove that he was real and it wasn't a trap by the British Ministry by putting in some veiled references to things only he knew before they replied to any of his letters.

On the other hand, even after two months after Draco escaped his own wedding, every single envelope he sent to his parents was sent back unopened. He had expected it though, so he didn't give up.

Harry never said anything about the unopened envelopes until one day, while they were sitting about in a nice café in Estonia, he did. "Maybe you should send them souvenirs too."

It took Draco a minute to process the advice, mostly because they were talking about where to go for dinner and not about his pile of returned letters. When he followed Harry's pointed stare to the letter he was preparing to send, he frowned.

"Why?" Draco asked.

"Well, won't it better than nothing? Maybe that will piqued their curiosity enough," he said.

Draco pondered upon the suggestion the whole time they were in Estonia. When it was time to send the letter, Draco also included a bottle of specialty drink and a small brooch made of amber. Harry helped him boxed them up and even cast a spell right under the post office's clerk's nose.

They giggled like schoolboys all the way to the train station.

It took a year for his mother to start replying to Draco's letters. They stayed on safe topics. She didn't ask where he was or why he did it. In return, he didn't ask for news from back home and waited until his mother offered it.

During that one year, Draco managed to accomplish some things.

The war had less impact on the continent and they had experience with reintegrating people after the mess with Grindelwald, therefore less people eyed Draco with wariness. Draco discovered this when Harry managed, after months of persuading, to talk him into an outing to Kiev's wizarding district.

There, Draco met a Potion Master formerly associated with Grindelwald. She was old and not the friendliest and yet she commanded respect. Despite the unpleasant reminder to the old Headmaster and Potion Master of Hogwarts, Draco managed to be charming enough that the Potion Master asked him to come back to talk.

A month later, Draco was made her apprentice.

Two years after Draco followed Harry to Ukraine, they returned to England to celebrate Harry's birthday. It wasn't nearly long enough after the war, so Draco didn't joined the festivity in the Weasley's home. Instead, he went to visit his parents.

It was awkward and chilly. There were barely any small talks and his father steadily refused to look at him. His mother looked at him with equal part disappointment and resignation.

But they didn't turn him away, which he counted as a win.

Once enough time passed and it was evident that they could only tolerated him in smaller doses, Draco excused himself. He waved goodbye to his mother and walked down the path out of the richer neighborhood they lived in.

That was when he saw Sarah.

She was, of course, surprised to see him. But she didn't seem angry that he left her at the altar. Eyeing her round stomach and the American man holding her waist with protectiveness, Draco thought she had no reason to be dissatisfied with much.

They exchanged pleasantries. It was tense; Sarah kept shooting him guilty looks, the American man kept glaring at him in confusion, quite similar to a puppy that just met a new person, and Draco was too tired for anything but short answers.

But when he was about to leave them, Sarah stopped him. "You left something. At ou—my house."

Draco thought that was a bit of an understatement. He left a lot of things at the house he was supposed to live in with Sarah after the wedding as he ran away with nothing but the clothes on his back and all the money he managed to move within one day.

But she was adamant and reluctantly, though he wanted nothing more than to rest, Draco followed the couple back to their house.

Sitting across each other, the American man looked as uncomfortable as Draco was while they waited for Sarah. She was taking quite long. They stubbornly looked at everything but each other.

When Sarah returned with a familiar red scarf, Draco blinked at her. "Oh," he let out as he took it from her.

"I just want to thank you, Draco. If you had showed up on our wedding day, I wouldn't have mustered enough courage to stand up to my parents and marry Robert," she said earnestly. "I hope you'll be happy with your old schoolmate too."

The comment confused him for a second. The he figured that his parents probably told her about Harry, as he had explained his situation to them often enough in his letters. It felt strange, to be hearing Sarah talk about Harry; the clash of his old and new and reclaimed lives.

Then the moment passed. Draco thanked her for the scarf and the blessing and went back to Grimmauld Place a bit more cheerful than when he left.

The first time Greg, Pansy, and Blaise visited him, things went bad in less than an hour.

He forgot to tell them beforehand that he was still living with Harry. They apparently thought that he only stayed with him until he could stand on his own. The thought of moving out had never crossed his mind until they mentioned it and that was a bit strange, but he was too busy trying to make sure nobody killed anybody and didn't have time for stray thoughts.

Harry put up a good fight, but it was still three against one and he looked like somebody asked him to kick a puppy or something after a minute of Pansy and Blaise's special brand of scathing. Draco had no intention to start living by himself, especially since it would mean he needed to start cleaning in addition to cooking, so he ushered them out before Harry exploded into itty-bitty pieces.

He took them on a tour of Kiev, the muggle part of it anyway, while berating them. If they didn't promise to leave Harry alone, then there would be no more visits. They didn't understand why and he was bad at explaining things, but they promised to behave next time.

When he got home, Harry looked at him strangely. "Why did you stop them?"

"How mannerless. No welcome home for me? If I know you're not going to reciprocate I should stop saying it to you too," Draco grumbled as he started preparing dinner.

"Draco, I'm serious. Why did you stop them?" Harry asked again. He was oddly intense, strung up, and Draco got the childish urge to mockingly mimic him.

That wouldn't go well, though, so Draco didn't. Instead, he stopped his chopping and shrugged. "Nobody deserves to be made uncomfortable in their own home, don't you think?"

Draco started learning healing spells when Harry started coming home with bruises.

He was starting the combat portion of his classes and they were brutal on him.

When Harry was made an auror, the bruises turned into wounds. Healing spells were not enough for those, so Draco started brewing balms and ointments and a host of other things he would need to keep Harry alive and well.

With Master Roza's help, he started tinkering with them too, experimenting to make them better. Harry needed more than the best potions currently offered in the market to stay alive. Recklessness and auroring did not go well together.

But it was always better to prevent than to fix. So, after one too many times having to wait for Harry to wake up from his life-threatening injuries, Draco snapped. He lectured Harry long and hard on why safety measures were implemented in the first place, why aurors never went anywhere alone, why healers suggest recovery period in between injuries.

On and on and on he went until he was red in the face and Harry was red in the face and a healer went in to remind Draco to lower his voice. She looked apologetic but didn't kick him out.

In the end, Harry had sighed and his mouth was pressed into a thin line with guilt. He took Draco's hand and squeezed. "I'm sorry for making you worry."

Heart leaping in his chest, Draco squeezed back.

After five years, Harry got tired of living in Ukraine. It wasn't a bad city, but the continent just didn't have enough appeal to warrant a permanent stay.

By then, Draco had been a Potion Master for almost one year and Harry an auror for two years. They had countless fights but stayed together for half a decade with no plan for separation. Despite the many talks about living arrangements for their impending return, neither of them ever mentioned not living together as an option. It was taken for granted that they would live together.

Grimmauld was suggested after one too many arguments, where they always stayed when they visited England. They listed the reason for and against it for days until deciding that Grimmauld was too big and hardly livable. It was useable for short stays, but anything more and they would need to work on it.

Then Harry surprised him one day with a suggestion: "How about one of those shops with a flat above it?"

Draco temporarily abandoned the papers he was reading to stare at Harry. "That's very discouraged for a potion shop. The fumes alone would make everything quite unpleasant and potentially hazardous."

"You can brew your potions elsewhere. Use the shop just to sell, so no fumes would float up into our home," Harry explained slowly, patiently. His eyes were strange, shifty and determined.

He wanted something.

Harry was like a child in many ways. He was too easy to read, as he displayed his feelings quite freely, and he had tells that alerted people to when he was being sneaky and he divulged secrets easily when pushed. After living with him for so many years, Draco could tell when Harry was up to something.

So he opened his mouth. He was about to argue about the fussiness of it all and disagree until Harry came forward with whatever it was he was planning, but it wasn't necessary. It was obvious what Harry had truly wanted.

He closed his mouth again, stared at Harry, and sighed.

"Fine. This way I can filch stocks from the shop easily when you suddenly needed emergency midnight healing." Not that Harry needed it much these days. He seemed to finally learn the meaning of the word caution.

Harry grinned, unrepentant.