The following morning, Draco is awoken, quite suddenly, by a roaring noise. He sits bolt upright in bed, and looks around the room blearily. The roaring appears to be coming from the hallway. He scrabbles around on the bedside table for his wand before remembering that Potter had confiscated it. "For his own safety." Well, right now Draco's safety is in jeopardy and he would really rather have his wand.
He dithers on the bed for a moment, trying to figure out what he should do, before he tells himself to buck up and face whatever horror this is. He pulls himself out from under the covers and creeps over to the door. He tries not to let his hand shake as he reaches for the door handle. The roaring is, if anything, louder now. It seems to be coming from directly outside. He takes a deep breath and wrenches the door open.
It takes him a moment to find the source of the noise. The creature making it is much shorter than Draco would have expected. It's shiny and round and with the bedroom door now open, it's almost deafening. As Draco watches, it lurches towards him. And that's when he notices the bits that poke out from underneath its shiny shell. 'Bits' is the only way he can think to describe them. They're almost hairlike, and they're spinning faster than his eyes can follow. He jumps backwards, but the thing keeps coming for him.
"Shoo," he yells at it, waving his hand in the direction he wants it to go, but it clearly can't hear him over the noise it's making. It advances further, coming within inches of his toes. Draco jumps to the side and the creature moves past him.
Draco lets out a breath and then carefully tiptoes past it, out into the corridor. The creature seems intent on getting into his bedroom, so much so that it ignores him. He takes advantage of this distraction and sprints down the corridor until he reaches Potter's closed bedroom door. He pounds on it, clumsy in his terror. He's glad, strangely, that he's wearing Potter's horrible red pajamas because at the very least they cover up his forearms. He's not ready to have that discussion, even though Potter surely knows about his Mark.
"Potter," he yells. "This thing's trying to eat me." He keeps pounding until Potter's door jerks open. He falls forward, surprised at the sudden lack of door beneath his fist and almost falls onto Potter.
"Malfoy," Potter says. He's clearly only just woken up. His face is still soft from sleep and his hair is tousled (not that it's ever any other way). He's wearing nothing but a pair of green pajama bottoms with tiny golden snitches embroidered on them. The snitches are flitting around the fabric and Draco's momentarily distracted by them, at least until the creature's noises start to get louder again and he remembers why he's here.
"That thing," and here he turns and points at the thing that is now advancing back out of his bedroom. "Is trying to eat me. I need you to give me my wand back." He expects Potter to stare, horrified at the sight behind him, but instead Potter's face breaks into a grin. Draco stares at him, dumbfounded, as Potter starts to laugh.
"It's not funny," Draco hisses, swatting Potter on the arm.
"Malfoy," Potter says between chuckles. "That's a vacuum."
"Vacuum's are not laughing matters," Draco snaps. "In fact, that makes it even more dangerous." He pushes past Potter, into Potter's room so that the vacuum can suck him up into nowhere before it can get to Draco.
"No," Potter says, turning to face him, grin still firmly in place. "It's a muggle device. It cleans the floors. It's called a Roomba. Well, this one specifically is called Moony." Draco blinks at him.
"How does that work?" Draco asks. Now that the imminent threat of being eaten or sucked into another dimension has gone away, Draco's starting to feel a bit stupid for barging in on Potter like this. The man isn't even wearing a shirt for Merlin's sake. Potter sighs.
"I'll explain," he says. "But first, coffee."
"Deal."
…
"So they are machines?" Draco asks. In the time that it took to walk down stairs, Potter's given him the rundown on "Roombas" and he's not quite sure he entirely understands. Perhaps he can ask more after Potter's had his coffee. "That clean the floor?"
"Yes. Exactly."
"And you have one for each floor?" Draco watches as Potter walks over to the kettle and fills it.
"Yes."
"And you've adjusted them to work with magic?"
"Arthur Weasley helped me." Draco nods. From what he's heard about Arthur Weasley, it sounds like the exact kind of thing he would do.
"And you've named them Moony, Padfoot, Prongs, Dobby, Mini-Kreacher, and Dudley?" Draco asks.
"Exactly."
"You named one after our old house elf."
"Yes."
"Potter, you're mental." The man in question shrugs.
"You try cleaning a five storey house without help," he says. Potter walks to the pantry and pulls out a bag off coffee beans.
"By any chance, do you have tea?" Draco asks. "Only I don't like coffee much." Potter's eyes leave the bag of coffee and settle on Draco.
"Erm. No," he says.
"No?"
"No." Draco raises both of his eyebrows in surprise.
"Aren't you British?" he asks. "How do you not have any tea?" How could he have gotten himself stuck quarantining in a house with no tea?
"I don't like tea," Potter says, jutting his chin out slightly. "It reminds me of my family." Draco frowns at him.
"Surely that means you would want it more?"
"My muggle family," Potter clarifies. "The ones that I lived with." Potter stares at him for a long moment.
Eventually, Draco says, "You're looking at me like that means something."
"Right." Potter turns away. "I forgot we weren't friends."
"Did you?" Draco can't keep the incredulous tone out of his voice. Potter looks like he wants to hex him for a moment before his face smoothes out again.
"They weren't particularly nice to me," he says.
"And this means you don't like tea? Because they weren't nice." Draco wishes he could blame his irritation on the lack of caffeine, but he's decently sure it's just the effect that Potter has on him. And he's stuck quarantining with this robot-vacuum-owning, tea-hating troglodyte? Oh, Merlin. One of them's going to end up at St. Mungo's.
"They kept me in a cupboard under the stairs," Potter says so quietly that Draco almost doesn't catch it.
"Sorry what?" Draco asks, his insides cold at thought. The animosity he was feeling towards Potter melts almost instantly when presented with this fact.
"You heard me," Potter says. "I lived in the cupboard under the stairs."
"Potter, that's child abuse." Potter frowns and looks down at his feet.
"As I said, they weren't very nice to me," he mumbles. Draco can see that he clearly doesn't want to talk about this, not with Draco, and particularly not at this time in the morning, so he decides to let it drop.
"Merlin," he says. "Coffee it is then."
At this point the kettle boils and Potter busies himself with weighing out the coffee beans and grinding them. He seems glad to be looking at something that's not Draco; eager to lose himself in this morning ritual.
He puts the coffee in a strange contraption that looks almost like an hourglass. As Draco watches, he starts to pour hot water over the top, pausing every now and then to allow the water to steep through the grounds. Draco's not sure he's seen coffee made in this way before. But then the only coffee Draco's really seen being made is with one of the loud muggle machines with all the steam. The ones that make lattes. Draco likes lattes.
"Can you make lattes?" he asks because if he's going to have coffee, he might as well see if it can be coffee that he does like. Potter looks over at him in surprise.
"You like lattes?"
"Yes? Why wouldn't I?"
"They're very muggle."
"Potter, I own a car. I'm not the Draco Malfoy you knew in school, clearly." Potter's mouth twists to the side as he regards Draco, takes in the red pajamas he'd given Draco — the ones that Draco had finally decided just to wear and not make a huge fuss about.
"If you say so," he says finally. "But, no, I don't have an espresso machine."
"Balls." Draco says it before he can stop himself. At this, Potter snorts with laughter."What?"
"Nothing. I just never imagined that Draco Malfoy, scion of the Malfoy line, would ever curse using the word 'balls'."
"Would you prefer if I said shit?" Potter laughs again. "Fuck?"
"I get it," he says. "You've got a mouth like a sailor."
"What do sailors have to do with it?" Draco asks. He knows exactly what, but he wants to wind Potter up. Potter just shakes his head and says,
"Nothing." He watches as the last of the water drains through the coffee before throwing out the spent grounds. "I take it you want milk in your coffee?"
"And sugar."
"Of course you do."
"I assume you take yours black?"
"What makes you say that?"
"The way you're judging me for the way I take milk and sugar in mine," Draco says, curling his lip. The corner of Potter's mouth lifts in a smirk. "That and because you're dark and brooding and bitter." Potter's smirk drops.
"I am not."
"Aren't you?"
"What would you know of it, Malfoy? You haven't seen me in years."
"You can't have changed that much," Draco says, even though he himself has.
"I was never dark and brooding," Potter says, shaking his head. "I think you had the monopoly on that." Potter takes a sip of his coffee. He closes his eyes as he does and smiles contentedly.
"I did not brood," Draco protests.
"Oh?" Potter's tone is challenging. "So what were you doing in Myrtle's toilets all the time then?"
"Crying," Draco says. "I was crying, you prat." That shuts Potter up.
"Right," he says after a moment. "Sorry." Potter looks down at his hands. Draco pours himself a cup of coffee and then looks around the cavernous kitchen for wherever the milk is hiding.
"Over there," Potter says, pointing towards a door along the left hand wall. "Cold pantry. I assume you're looking for the milk."
"Thank you." Potter nods once at him. Then he sits down at the kitchen table and wraps his hands around his mug. "Sugar?"
"In the normal pantry," Potter says. He points to another door and Draco pads over to it. 'In the normal pantry' isn't the most helpful of directions as there are probably five hundred things in the damn thing, but Draco finally manages to locate the sugar towards the back. Once Draco's turned his coffee into something he finds acceptable, he sits down opposite Potter.
"Did you cry a lot then?" Potter asks, as though he's asking what Draco's favorite breakfast was at Hogwarts.
"All the time," Draco says, pretending like it doesn't kill him to admit this. He takes a sip of his coffee to hide the irritated twist to his mouth.
"The usual teenage angst, or…?"
"Our teenage angst was probably rather similar," Draco says. Potter looks nonplussed.
"Oh?"
"Both of us worried about a would-be dictator trying to kill us." Potter stares at him. "Though, you probably more than me. He was only going to kill me if I fucked up, which was… let's say, quite the motivator…" Draco trails off. He doesn't want to talk about the orders he'd been given before the start of sixth year. Potter knows what Draco did. Everyone knows what Draco did. Potter looks intently at him and Draco finds he can't hold his stare.
"I understand," Potter says finally.
At that point, they are interrupted by the sound of one of the robots roaring to life on the floor above them. A moment later, there's the sound of a woman shrieking. Draco turns his head sharply and looks at Potter.
"Oh," Potter says. "Right. That's Walburga. She was Sirius's mother. She's a painting." He scrunches his face up in a grimace. "I forgot you hadn't met her yet." Draco strains to make out the words that the woman is yelling.
"…foul mudblood contraption, dirtying up my floors. You filthy blood traitor, how dare you besmirch the Noble House of Black in this way?"
"She sounds lovely," Draco says sarcastically.
"Mm," Potter says. "She's a real piece of work." He takes another sip of his coffee.
"Why not take her down?"
"Permanent Sticking Charm," Potter says with a rueful smile. "Trust me, I've tried." Draco stares at Potter for a long moment. Potter is looking into his coffee like it holds the answers to all the questions of the universe.
"How much would you love me," Draco says. "If I told you I could get her down?"
"I'd marry you," Potter says without missing a beat and Draco chokes on his coffee. He stares at Potter, wide eyed. "Can you really do that?"
"Once we can safely use magic again, yes," Draco says once he's composed himself.
"Brilliant," Potter says. The smile that he gives Draco is possibly the best thing Draco's ever seen. Oh dear, Draco thinks, and goes off to work on his designs for one of the bedrooms on the third floor, trying his utmost not to think about what it might be like to be married to Potter.
…
Potter lets him have his suitcase later in the afternoon. Potter had warmed up leftover spag bol, as he insisted on calling it, for lunch and Draco had spent the entire meal asking Potter what he wanted to do with the kitchen, which had left them both tetchy. Potter had fled the room as soon as was physically possible, leaving his bowl for Draco to clean in the sink.
Draco is still slightly grumpy about the dishes as he lugs his suitcase up the stairs. It's heavier than it looks and Draco would normally cast a levitating charm on it, but, well, no magic. Draco's not sure how muggles manage.
Even though he works with them, he uses magic to do all the work in their houses. Not that he tells them, of course. He sends them off for a two week vacation in the Cotswolds while he and Pansy roll up their sleeves and do all of the construction themselves. The muggles are always so grateful to have their projects finished on time and under budget — a relative miracle in the muggle world — that they never think to ask how Draco and Pansy had done it.
He makes it up to his bedroom and heaves his suitcase on the bench at the end of the bed, spurred on by the promise of clothes that aren't red. While Potter's tracksuit bottoms are certainly soft and though Potter's quidditch shirt feels a lot like his own (and the red actually looks rather good on him, not that he will ever admit that aloud), he is excited to wear something of his own again.
As he looks down at the suitcase, he hopes that Shreeky has packed him some pajamas among the clothes there. If he has to keep wearing the Gryffindor lion pajamas, he's not sure what he'll do.
He needn't have worried. As soon as he flips the latch on his suitcase, it becomes abundantly clear that Shreeky has packed his entire wardrobe, along with most of the things strewn around his bedroom and ensuite. Draco hadn't thought this was possible, but as his clothes all but fly out of the suitcase, spilling all over the floor, it's obvious that's exactly what's been done. Well shit. And with no magic, he's going to have to put all of this away by hand.
…
"Moving in?" comes Potter's voice from the door. Draco freezes in the middle of putting a shirt on a hanger. Thankfully, the closet had been full of them, so he hadn't had to ask for any.
"I— the house elf— I hope you don't mind," Draco stammers. Draco turns to look at him. He's leaning against the doorframe again, the same as he had the evening before.
"It's an empty room. Why would I care what you put in it?" Potter says offhandedly, though Draco notices that Potter won't meet his eye as he does.
"Because it's your house." Draco carries the shirt over to the closet and hangs it next to the ones he's already placed there.
"For now," Potter says. "I'm fixing it up to sell it."
"You what?" Well that explains a lot of his reluctance to tell Draco what he wants the house to look like.
"It's too big for me. Living here alone is— strange." Draco knows that feeling. That's how the Manor feels, even though he shares it with his mother. This house isn't nearly as big as the Manor, of course, but with so many bedrooms, Draco thinks it feels more empty than it should.
"I see," Draco says. He picks another shirt off of the floor and carries it over to the closet. He can almost feel Potter's eyes on him and he resists the urge to look over at him.
"How does shepherd's pie sound?"
"For dinner?"
"No, for breakfast."
"Dinner for breakfast is a tad strange, but if that's what you want…" Draco smirks at the look Potter is giving him.
"You can have leftovers for breakfast if that's your cup of tea, but I'm making it for dinner."
"Sounds good," Draco says.
"Great." Potter pushes off of the doorframe and slopes down the corridor. Draco watches him leave, unsure if he should follow or not. He dithers for a long moment, looking again at the pile of clothes that Draco doesn't think has gotten any smaller even though he's hung up almost thirty things by now, before following Potter down the stairs.
The playlist for this story can be found here: open. spotify. com playlist/0vRbBCRYnn2jhRjCwX4Ncf?si=bf1727a2a5b74cb7br (remove the spaces)