Disclaimer: I don't own Harry, or Draco, or Ron, or Hermione. I'll put them back as soon as I'm done playing with them-I promise!
As they left their room and passed through the Common Room on their way out, it was clear that the other eighth-years had, indeed, been able to convince Neville to have a bit of a party. Dean had brought out Muggle Jenga, and the squeals of the magic-born teenagers every time the tower fell and did not pick itself back up again had the Muggle-borns rolling with laughter.
Harry clapped Neville on the shoulder as he passed, then thought better of it and bent down to speak to him. "Hanging in there, Nev?"
"Yeah," Neville replied. "You know me."
"I just wanted you to know," said Harry, "that your parents are in my thoughts, too. Maybe in a couple of days you and I and can get together over a bottle of firewhiskey and talk for a while."
Neville looked up at him with strained but grateful eyes. "Thanks for remembering, Harry. I think I'd actually like that. My regards to your parents, too."
"See you later, then?"
"Yeah, I'll be here."
Just as Harry and Draco had reached the secret door, they heard "Harry, wait!", and Hermione ran up from her room, holding a large parcel.
"You run well in heels, Hermione," Harry said to her, kissing her cheek. "Come on, then, give us a spin."
"Ta, Harry, and only if I get a spin from you, as well. Don't you two look nice?" said Hermione, but dutifully handed the parcel to Harry and obliged him with a spin, for which there was much general applause from the Common Room. As soon as she was done, however, she took the parcel right back and said, "Now you two," and was not satisfied until both Harry and Draco had turned around to show off their new outfits—Harry a bit bashfully, but Draco with flair, of course.
"I was afraid I'd missed you," Hermione said busily, handing the parcel back again to Harry and then straightening her dress. Harry opened the box awkwardly with one hand while supporting it with the other, and his breath caught.
"Oh, Hermione," he said, his voice breaking and tears springing to his eyes. "Christmas roses." The box held a wreath of them, identical to the wreath that Hermione had conjured for him last Christmas Eve to lay at his parents' graves. Harry handed the box to Draco and then caught Hermione up in a giant hug. "You and me, yeah?" he said to her, not even caring that his voice was rough with emotion.
"You and me always. Now scoot before you make me cry, too, and Padma already did my makeup. If you two don't have evening plans," said Hermione, stepping back to include Draco. "You should come back here. Apparently we're all going to try to meet for a nightcap after the Feast tonight, if you're up for it."
"Yeah, we'll see," Harry said.
Before Hermione ran back to her room she abruptly turned and hugged Draco, too, and pressed a kiss to his cheek, and said something in his ear that Harry couldn't hear. Draco looked at her in surprise, then nodded.
When they Apparated into Godric's Hollow, Draco looked around curiously. "It's funny," he said. "But I've never been here."
"No? Were you afraid you'd catch fire if you stepped into a Gryffindor town?"
"Very funny, you. Actually, before the War—the first War, you know—my family and the Potters would have been friendly, going to each other's parties and all. The old Pureblood families, regardless of their political leanings, always did socialize."
"Just think," said Harry, leaning against Draco's arm as they walked toward the cemetery, "If there hadn't been a first War, perhaps you and I would have had playdates together when we were small, perhaps gone to the same nursery school—do wizards have nursery school? Perhaps we would have fallen in love a long time before we did."
"I would have liked to have had a playdate with you," Draco said. "I had a pet Puffskein, and a castle set with knights that really fought and a dragon that blew real smoke."
"Yeah? I had a toy broomstick that really flew, and my dad could turn into a stag. Oh, and my godfather could have taken us for rides on his motorcycle. That really flew, too!"
And so it was with wistfulness that Harry arrived at his parents' graves—not grief, exactly, because his body was so tired of grief that it had often just stopped registering it, but nevertheless a sadness that was full of wishing that things had been different, that life had treated him more kindly as a child.
Draco unboxed the wreath of Christmas roses and offered them to Harry, who placed them on his parents' graves just as he had that other wreath last Christmas Eve. And also like last Christmas Eve, Harry had someone next to him to love him and comfort him. Unlike last Christmas, he was warm and well-fed, dressed in new clothes and free from danger. With Draco standing behind him, his arms steady around him, Harry leaned back against Draco's chest and wished for more, but was grateful for what he did have.
As Draco and Harry shared dinner afterwards at a small, fancy restaurant in Godric's Hollow (the proprietor, who recognized Harry and greeted him by name, may have given the side-eye to Harry's date, but nevertheless sent a complimentary bottle of wine to their table, so that they could "toast to your parents, Mr. Potter. They'd be proud of you"), Harry found himself feeling almost giddy with relief at having survived the day. He hadn't been attacked by a troll or a basilisk or a Dark Lord, he didn't have to sleep in a cupboard under the stairs tonight, and although he grieved for his parents, and for the War, and for Sirius and Remus and Tonks and Fred and Hedwig and all the others killed, he, himself was okay.
Of course a feeling like that couldn't last.
When Harry and Draco returned to their Common Room rather late that night, the eighth-year get-together was still going strong, and they quickly changed out of their nice suit robes and into sweatpants and T-shirts (one aspect of Muggle clothing that even Draco admitted was far preferable to wizard clothes was their lounge wear) and joined the others.
Harry accepted a drink from Padma. "I'm afraid we're down to firewhiskey and pumpkin juice," she said, putting a glass full of the unlikely combination into his and Draco's hands. "Nev might have drunk more than his fair share tonight," and she nodded her head towards Neville, who was sitting in a chair by the fire, his head resting on one hand. "He's had a hard time of it lately."
"Thanks, Padma," Harry said, and went to sit near Neville, joining Ron, Hermione, and Luna, who were already there, talking quietly amongst themselves.
"Hullo, Mate," Ron said.
"Did your evening go well?" asked Hermione.
"It did, thanks," Harry said. "It felt like people there remembered my parents, so it was a nice place to be tonight. And thanks again for the wreath—without you, I think I'd have ended up going empty-handed a second time."
Luna put a hand on Harry's arm. "I think your parents would be so happy if they could see you now."
"Oh, really? I don't!" Neville no longer held his head in his hand, but glared sharply at Harry.
"What?!" Harry said, utterly shocked.
"I think they'd be appalled to see you with a Death Eater." Everyone gasped, and space around them went quiet.
"Neville, Draco is NOT a Death Eater," Harry said, attempting to hold onto his sudden rush of anger by remembering that Neville was his friend, and was clearly suffering. But that did NOT make it okay to speak this way about his Draco.
"Oh, really?" Neville asked sarcastically. "Shall we take a look at his arm? Oi! Draco!" he shouted across the room. Draco looked up in shock from where he was laughing with Blaise. "Let's see your arm, then!"
"Harry?" Draco asked, worry and uncertainty in his voice.
Harry was still so angry that he didn't trust himself to speak, but fortunately Ron spoke up immediately. "Yeah, Nev's not doing real well tonight. Hey, Neville, how about you and me hang out in my room for the rest of the night? We'll listen to the radio and talk trash about the Slytherins," he said to Neville, but cut an apologetic look at Harry.
"No, I don't think so," Neville spit out, rising unsteadily to his feet. "Harry says that Draco's not a Death Eater, but I've seen his Dark Mark." Neville stalked towards Draco, stumbling through groups of the other eighth-years on the floor, all of whom just stared at him, unsure of what to do. "If he's not a Death Eater but he's got a Dark Mark, maybe he'd like me to take that Dark Mark off of him for him." And Neville pulled his wand.
Neville went to speak again, to say who knows what that he'd never be able to take back, but Harry made him stop. He made a barrier, translucent but quite apparent, appear in front of Draco, and he made himself be in front of that barrier.
"This is not the War," Harry told himself sternly, and forced himself to see what was really happening. "This is not the War, and Neville is not well." He released Neville, only distantly hearing the gasps and screams of the other eighth-years—he guessed grimly that he was one of the few people who could figure out a way to shock these former combatants.
Harry didn't recognize the spells that Neville sent towards him, but he made them stop as soon as they left his wand, so it didn't matter. He dimly heard Ron and Luna encouraging the other eighth-years to step back to the far side of the room, and saw out of the corner of his eye Hermione slip out of the secret door, but he remained focused on Neville. When Neville made to move towards him again, he stopped him. He could feel Draco pounding on the barrier that kept him and Blaise safe behind him, but he didn't spare the attention to turn to him.
"If you're with the Death Eaters now, then I have to fight you, as well!" Neville ground out against all the barriers that Harry was holding against him, the cords in his neck straining from the effort.
"Neville," said Harry. "The War is over. We won, and you helped me kill Voldemort. You and I are friends, and so are you and Draco. We wouldn't ever hurt you."
Neville continued to struggle (and Harry knew that the fact that he was able to move at all against Harry's barriers meant that he, too, was a more powerful wizard than anyone in the school had suspected), but then suddenly stopped. "Oh, fuck… Harry, Mate, I am so sorry." Neville collapsed to his knees, and Harry let him. Luna ran to Neville and gathered him into her arms, and Harry knew that it was safe to release the barrier that held Draco and Blaise, so he did. Just then, Hermione came back through the secret door, followed closely by Minerva in her tartan dressing gown and a pajama-clad man that Harry assumed was likely to be Neville's mind healer. Hermione rushed over to Ron and they began to talk quietly but intently to each other. Minerva scanned the room, her eyes finally resting on Harry and giving him a quizzical, suspicious look. The mind healer walked over to Neville, Luna moving aside to let him, and offered his hand to Neville.
"What do you say, Nev?" the mind healer asked. "How about you come spend the night with me tonight?"
"Will I get to come back to school tomorrow?" asked Neville in a shaky voice.
"Probably not tomorrow, Buddy, but absolutely soon, yeah?"
Neville began to sob, then, but dutifully took the mind healer's hand and let himself be pulled to his feet. Luna kissed Neville on the cheek, and then the mind healer wrapped one arm around Neville's shoulders and escorted him out the secret door.
"Is everyone else alright?" Minerva asked the room, although her eyes still rested on Harry. "Would anyone else like me to call their mind healer for them? You know they'd want you to call for them if you needed them."
"Me, Headmistress," sad Padma tearfully.
"Alright, Miss Parvati," Minerva said kindly. "Come along with me and we'll fetch her. She'll be happy that we called. If anyone else needs me tonight, feel free to firecall from your room and I'll be right there." Minerva and Padma left, and then there was silence.
Harry stood still. Although some of the eighth years were talking amongst themselves and some were heading back to their rooms, a fair number were eyeing him, clearly shocked by the vast magic that they'd just witnessed. Harry felt himself a child again, frozen by their speculation about his origins, his intentions. Would the gossip begin, now? The newspaper articles? The bullies, the songs, the taunts? He felt a hand on his shoulder and jumped, but it was only Blaise.
"Hey, Mate," Blaise said. "Take care of your man, alright?" Harry finally turned around to face Draco, then, for the first time since he'd erected the barrier for him, and was shocked at what he saw. His own mind immediately cleared of trash at the sight of Draco, braced against the wall, hugging himself, his head down, tears dripping off his face and onto the carpet.
Harry went immediately to Draco and wrapped his arms around him. "Let's go to our room now," he said, and walked him there, dismantling and resettling the wards at the door as they passed through it. "What the hell," he thought to himself, and then improved the wards so that they wrapped completely around their room in all directions. A dragon wouldn't be able to break through the ceiling now, nor Voldemort himself fly in through the window. If Draco felt the new, improved wards going up he didn't say, but Harry felt his shoulders perhaps relax by a margin.
Harry sat Draco down on their bed and knelt to remove Draco's socks, kissing the arch of each foot and then setting it back on the floor. He sat back on his heels and looked at Draco, who still wouldn't uncurl his arms from around himself or look at Harry. "What is it, Love?" he finally asked.
"I hate myself," Draco whispered, looking at his feet.
"Don't," said Harry.
"I AM a Death Eater. A monster. The things I did… Did you even listen to my trial?"
"I did." Harry had moved to a hidden part of the gallery after he'd spoken at Draco's trial—he hadn't realized that Draco had known that, but considering that since he was eleven years old he had always, always known where Draco was in relation to him at any given time he supposed now that it wasn't surprising.
"They even showed you the photographs of that Muggle child that I tortured. How can you look at me and not want to throw up?"
Harry actually had vomited after those photographs had been submitted and displayed to the gallery, had run from the chamber and then had had a panic attack on the floor in a bathroom stall, but he would certainly go to his grave without ever telling Draco that. "Everyone who testified about that agreed under Veritaserum that the Death Eater in charge of that mission would have killed that child, and his infant sister, if you hadn't done that. Every single one said that you only tortured when required to, and when doing so was the least catastrophic of all options for the victim. None of them had any qualms about saying that you didn't have the heart for what you were doing. Yes, that kid is never going to be the same, but he's fucking ALIVE because of you, Draco, and so is his baby sister. You're a fucking hero, and Neville only said that shit to you because he is fucking damaged, just like the rest of us, and that's fucking Voldemort's fault, not ours."
Draco's arms gradually released their hold as Harry spoke, and Harry wondered how much of this he could have avoided by simply fucking telling Draco right from the beginning that of course he'd heard Draco's trial, and of course he understood everything that Draco had been made to do—had Draco been feeling this entire time that Harry was disgusted by his actions? Harry mentally kicked himself again; why could he not be the kind of boyfriend that he wanted to be? How could he possibly bear the responsibility for this precious heart that had been given to him to keep? But he put that aside to focus on Draco, for the second that he finished speaking, Draco finally looked at him, his eyes searching Harry's face for something that he must have found, because he then lunged toward Harry and pulled him to him, crushing his lips in a desperate, passionate kiss.
Harry pushed Draco back on their bed and knelt over him, putting his entire heart into their kiss. He urged Draco to inch up so that his legs were on the bed, too, and then he lay over him, covering his entire body with his own while they kissed. He wanted Draco to feel safe, to feel loved; he wanted those feelings to bleed their way into Draco's mind and his heart so that he would never feel unsafe or unloved, even by himself, again.
Harry broke off the kiss only to look deep into Draco's eyes, and the look that he saw there seemed thankfully less like the hurt, self-loathing little boy that Draco once was, and more like the strong, war-hardened, confident man that he was now. Draco's hands toyed restlessly with the hem of Harry's shirt, so he removed it for him, and then worked Draco out of his own shirt. Harry sucked his way down Draco's throat, and licked his way down his chest and stomach, pausing to work Draco's nipples until Draco moaned and writhed underneath him. Harry bit Draco's stomach just above the waistband of his sweatpants, and Draco cried out and jerked.
"Thank Merlin for elastic-waisted pants," Harry thought giddily as he pulled Draco's sweatpants down far enough to expose his hard cock; he licked a line up one side and down the other, and then immediately sucked his mouth down on it as far as he could. Draco fisted his hands in Harry's messy hair, and if his voice still sounded weepy as he cried out Harry's name, it also sounded raw and broken in a good way, a way that meant to Harry that the man whom he loved would be alright; with all the love and the vast magic at his disposal, he would make him so, by fucking Merlin.
Harry felt Draco kick his sweatpants off as he sucked him, jolting his body every time Harry flicked the tip of his cock with his tongue. When Draco's hands began to actively pull at him, not just tug, Harry obeyed them, and kissed his way back up Draco's body to his delicious mouth.
"Hey," he said, kissing him again briefly.
"You're wearing too many clothes," was Draco's petulant reply, belied by his half-closed eyelids and the breathlessness in his voice.
"Am I really?" And just for fun, Harry made his own bottoms disappear from his body and land on the bureau across the room (well, instead they smacked the wall and fell on the floor, but Draco didn't have to know that it wasn't on purpose).
Draco gasped, and Harry worried for a second that he'd gone too far with his display of power—would Draco be afraid of him?—but then Draco suddenly flipped them over so that Harry was underneath him, and attacked his mouth again, and Harry was happily reminded again that Draco?
He liked Harry's power. A lot.
"What the hell," Harry decided, and rolled them over again. He sat up over Draco's flanks, and held out one arm to the side, hand open, all while looking deep into Draco's eyes. Draco stared curiously from Harry's face to his outstretched hand, and Harry was perfectly positioned to see the look on Draco's face when the container of lube from the shower flew into the room and smacked right into Harry's open hand. Wandlessly. Non-verbally. Without looking.
Draco looked back into Harry's eyes. "You… I… Harry? Fuck. Me. Right. Fucking. NOW!"
"As you wish," said Harry, and leaned down to kiss Draco again.
Harry urged Draco onto his stomach, and then onto his hands and knees before him. He sat back on his own knees just to admire the sight of Draco before him, arms trembling, knees spread, and Draco turned his head to smile back at him cheekily. "Need me to draw you a map?"
Harry bit him on one ass cheek, and laughed as he squealed. He then bit the other ass cheek, but instead of a squeal he got the groan that he was looking for. He licked the bite marks that he'd made, standing out red and raised on the pale flesh, and Draco caught his breath, and then groaned again and bucked back into Harry, giving him an excellent revelation.
Before Draco could figure out what Harry was going to do and be embarrassed or protest, Harry spread Draco's ass cheeks and then licked a long line up between them. Draco shouted in pleasure and bucked into Harry, but then just as quickly tried to pull away. Harry laughed and caught him by the hips.
"Oh, no, you don't! You trust me, right? Well, this is going to be awesome, I promise." Harry felt Draco relax marginally, and taking that for permission, he took his time licking and sucking and nibbling between Draco's ass cheeks until Draco's voice was hoarse from his shouts of pleasure and his thighs were trembling. Sweat dripped off his body, his untouched cock leaked a pool of pre-cum onto the sheets, and Harry reveled at the sight of him, totally broken-down with desire before him.
Harry took Draco's cock in hand and lightly stroked it while he prepared him, then pressed his own lubed cock to Draco's slick entrance and asked, "Okay?"
"Okay, Love," replied Draco hoarsely, and Harry slid himself home. His neglected cock wanted to pound into Draco's tight, slick heat, but he held himself back, wanting Draco's pleasure much more than his own. He stroked Draco's cock in time with his slow and deep thrusts, and let Draco's thrusts back into him determine their speed. After a few minutes, Draco's breaths began to pant out in grunts, and Harry sped up his thrusting, making himself, for a couple of horrid minutes, try to picture exactly what Petunia Dursley must have looked like in the bath in order to keep from climaxing too quickly from the added stimulation.
Harry sat back on his knees, pulling Draco back with him and encouraging him to be in charge. He wrapped one arm around Draco's chest to support him, and Draco began to wildly slam himself down on Harry's cock, head downturned, exposing his long, slim neck, as he watched Harry jacking him off with his other hand.
Harry gritted his teeth in his efforts not to climax in this position that was out of his control. Draco, too, appeared beside himself, sweat flying from his body as he frantically, repeatedly slapped down onto Harry's cock, his grunts long since grown into shouts. Finally, he lay his head back on Harry's shoulder as he thrust, Harry turned his head to the side and bit Draco's neck hard, just where it met his shoulder, and with a scream Draco climaxed in huge spurts across the bed. Harry lasted no more than a second longer before he, too, was screaming his climax into Draco's neck.
Slowly, as if drugged, Draco crawled forward off of Harry's lap and lay sprawled face-first across the bed. Harry sat kneeling, letting his head hang—he'd climaxed so hard that he actually felt light-headed. When he was reasonably certain that he wasn't going to pass out, he, too crawled forward to lay down.
"That was awesome," he said.
Draco blindly reached out for Harry, then pulled him to him and tucked him into his side. "…so awesome…" he mumbled, and then Harry fell asleep.