September, 1998
The first thought going through Draco's head when he jolted awake in a strange, four poster bed was that he had absolutely no idea where he was. His wand and shoes were nowhere within sight. There was loud music playing nearby, heavy drums and guitars carrying up through the floorboards of the room Draco found himself in. The old, wooden bed he was lying in was very similar to his own ornately carved furniture back in the manor, and the dusty, emerald green hangings and tapestries covering the walls made him feel like he was back in the Slytherin Common Room at Hogwarts, but this place was just as foreign to him as the blaring rock music that was permeating the walls.
The second thing he registered after he had sprung out of the bed was that he had never felt worse in his life. His head was throbbing with a terrible, pounding pain, his bones were still weak and bruised from the night he had spent with Delev, and the gnawing, aching pain in his stomach reminded him that he needed to eat something soon or his body would stop functioning entirely.
He opened the door of the bedroom and glanced down the hallway, only starting to get his bearings when he saw the house elf heads mounted on the wall adjacent to him. This must be Potter's place, then. He had never been upstairs before, but now recognized the Black family crest above the bed in the room he had just left, and knew this had to have been the old house that Sirius and Regulus grew up in. He wondered how he could have gotten all the way to Harry's flat in London without even realizing it.
The memories started flooding back from the day before, the fight he and Potter had gotten into back at the cottage, his letters, the Laethelixir, and then finally Harry waking him up, holding him in his arms as the waves of agony shook through Draco's body with whatever medicine Harry had administered to counteract the elixir. The whole thing had felt like a long, terrible dream, but Draco was still here. He was alive, and he was no longer in the Leaky Cauldron, and he could detect the scent of fried eggs wafting up the staircase as he walked further down the hallway. The music grew louder as he stepped lightly down the stairs and into Potter's familiar kitchen.
There was an old, rounded box sitting on the counter that was emitting the music Draco had heard from the bedroom. Harry had his back to the doorway and was cooking what looked like a large, colorful mixture of food on the stovetop, using a plastic spatula instead of his wand for whatever reason he saw fit. He was frying up tomatoes, eggs, and diced potatoes in a skillet, swaying slightly with the beat of the music and sprinkling ingredients into the pan with a delicacy that Draco found rather endearing to observe. He couldn't help but smile as he stood in the kitchen watching Harry, forgetting about the amount of pain he had been through in the last 24 hours, and letting the matters of his family, his finances and his predicament with the Laethelixir fade into the background for a moment.
Harry was wearing a light grey T-shirt that hugged his newly refined muscles more than he probably realized, and it was doing all kinds of favors for his physique. Draco took the opportunity to let his eyes shamelessly rove over Harry's shoulders, his trim yet delightfully curved waist, and the shape of his arse in the faded blue jeans he wore. Potter made a movement to grab some salt and Draco quickly averted his gaze, as though Potter would be able to sense he was being stared at.
"That's really loud, you know." He said, causing Harry to spin around and drop the spatula he was holding. He clearly hadn't realized that Draco was in the room.
"That was kind of the point," Harry said, picking the utensil up and grinning as he tossed it into the sink. "I couldn't think of another way to wake you up without dragging you out of bed," He stepped over to the radio and adjusted the volume so that Draco could actually hear himself think.
"Here," Harry said, picking up a plate that was resting on the counter. "This one's for you." He flipped the contents of the pan onto the plate and offered it to Draco, who couldn't even remember the last time he had eaten a home cooked meal.
"Thanks," he said, not knowing what else to reply with at the moment. He didn't really have anything else he could say to Potter, except that he was glad to be in a place that wasn't his bedroom in Diagon Alley, and he was grateful to still be alive, all things considered. He sat down and started eating the food on his plate as Potter carried on cooking his own breakfast.
As soon as Draco had finished his eggs and was about to head upstairs, Harry brought his own plate over to the table and set two steaming mugs of coffee down in front of them. He didn't say anything, but held his own mug in a way that communicated he was waiting for a conversation to take place. That was the last thing Draco felt like giving him at the moment, but he picked up the mug of coffee all the same to express gratitude for the gesture.
"What?" He asked, when Harry's expression became a bit too pointed. Harry merely shrugged, taking a drink of the coffee and pretending he wasn't prodding Draco for anything. Harry's attitude, which Draco had first interpreted to be casual and unassuming, was clearly an act to hide the fact that there were a number of questions he still needed answers to. Draco nearly rolled his eyes, trying to mentally prepare himself for the impending conversation that he didn't think could possibly go well.
"Do you have my wand?" Draco asked, thinking back to the reason he had wound up in Harry's kitchen in the first place back in June.
"Yes," Harry replied, not providing any additional details. Draco saw that underneath the lighthearted demeanor Harry was putting on, his eyes looked troubled. It was clear that he hadn't slept at all last night.
"Can I have it back?" He asked, seeing how much leniency he was able to get away with after what had happened yesterday.
"No," Harry said plainly. Using a fork to tear into his omelet. "Not until I know this sort of thing won't happen again."
So that was his angle. He was going to try to be the protective, calm, and responsible adult in this situation, the man who made Draco breakfast after saving his life, and who set the boundaries on what was and was not permitted in his house. Draco wished he would have just come right out and addressed the issue, rather than skirting around it like a trained dancer.
"Potter, you can't hide my wand from me. I'm not your prisoner."
Harry placed his fork down on his plate, fixing Draco with another discerning look.
"I think we both know that."
Harry said nothing else to elaborate upon this, but instead continued to stare at him with a look that said 'you wouldn't be sitting here if I hadn't saved your life yesterday, so I'm not going to play your games'. It reminded Draco of the same, all-knowing gaze he had received from Dumbledore whenever Draco had spoken with the headmaster in the last couple months of his life. It was as though he were having his mind read; Even without using legilimency, Dumbledore somehow knew exactly what he was thinking and which course of action he would execute next. The predicament Draco was in now was even more humiliating than his feeble attempts to assassinate Dumbledore two years ago. The elephant in the room loomed over them both: he had tried to kill himself last night, and Harry had been there to stop it. He didn't know if his pride would ever recover from such a blow.
Draco closed his eyes for a moment, taking a slow, deep breath and wondering how long it was going to be before he could see his wand, if Harry was ever intending to return it to him again.
"Where are the books?" He asked, addressing the potions they were surely both thinking about. He imagined with a surge of horror the stash of Laethelixir being found by Tom after he had left the room, and then his own descent straight into the gates of Azkaban.
"Is that what we're calling them?" Harry retorted, still keeping his expression much calmer than Draco would have expected given the circumstances.
"Potter, please. It's important those don't get out..."
"I know it's important. I'm handling it."
There was a moment of silence between the two.
"How... Are you handling it?" Draco asked, doing his best to confirm that there wouldn't be ministry officials swarming into the house as soon as Harry gave the orders.
Harry granted Draco a long, serious look, his bright green eyes lingering on Draco's grey ones for a little too long. Draco wished desperately to know what he was thinking, whether or not he had shared this experience with anyone, if he was intending on turning Draco in once the dust from the night before had settled.
"Follow me," Harry said, standing up and bringing his coffee into the study that he had shown Draco the last time they had been in this house together.
It was much cleaner than it had been when Draco had last visited. Harry's clothes were no longer lying on every available surface, and the contents of his trunk were neatly tucked away in the corner. Draco noticed his own school trunk sitting next to Harry's on the other side of the couch.
Harry knelt down by Draco's green leather trunk and unfastened the clasps, lifting the lid and propping it against the wall.
Inside the chest were all of the books that had been piled up in Draco's room. The interior of the chest was now roughly the size of a small washroom, and the books were stacked haphazardly against the walls as they had been in The Leaky Cauldron. There had to be hundreds of them, and they now all fit neatly inside the school trunk with the rest of Draco's possessions.
"Extension charm," he said in response to Draco's raised eyebrows. "It took me all night to get it right, even while following the step-by-step guide in your school books."
"You didn't get Granger to do it for you?"
Harry shook his head, letting the lid of the trunk fall closed.
"I haven't told anyone, if that's what you're asking," He said as he stood back up, dispelling the fear that Draco had been having since the moment he woke up.
"Why not?" He asked, hoping that he wasn't unwittingly making a case for Harry to turn him over to the ministry.
Harry continued to look at Draco, appearing to be studying his facial expressions. Draco was starting to grow uncomfortable with the amount of eye contact they were sharing; it was as though Harry were trying to pry him for as much information as possible without really saying anything.
"Draco, I don't understand a lot of what's been going on with you these last months, and you're right. It's because I didn't write to you, and I didn't try to find you, and I'm sorry I handled things the way that I did. But you have to understand that this," he said, gesturing towards the closed trunk, "All of this, on top of your father's sentence and the investigation at Malfoy Manor, I'm sure you know is enough to get you a life sentence in Azkaban just like him."
"I don't need another lecture, Potter. I knew what the stakes were when I got involved."
Harry paused again, raising an eyebrow as though Draco still wasn't grasping the severity of their predicament.
"You knew that they would let you rot in prison, and throw your mother out of the hospital without you there to support her?"
"Tell me, Potter, what was I supposed to do?" Draco asked, raising his voice in desperation. "It's nearly impossible for ex-death eaters to find a job, let alone someone of my reputation. I didn't have anywhere else to get the money, that's the whole reason I was at my aunt's in the first place."
"And you didn't think to talk to me? After what happened between us?"
"You work for the ministry! They target all the death eaters they can find, breathing down our necks and waiting for us to make a mistake so they can chuck us in prison."
"I wouldn't have turned you in. We were both children when you joined his side, you don't deserve to be locked away for that."
"You know there's no way I could have trusted you."
Harry breathed deeply, nodding to indicate that he understood what Draco was saying. Draco watched his Adam's apple bob in his throat as he swallowed, clearly trying to think of the right words to say to respond to something like that.
It was true, Draco thought to himself, trying to push down the feeling of regret that was bubbling up in his veins after speaking those words. He didn't know that Harry wouldn't try to enact revenge upon him for everything that Draco had done during their school days, that Harry wouldn't jump at the opportunity to put him behind bars as soon as he had secured a position in the Auror Department. There was a nagging voice in the back of Draco's mind that told him this was the only reason Harry had kissed him in the first place. He was trying to reel Draco in, to lure him into a false sense of security, and then, when Draco was least suspecting it, he would pounce, summoning the full power of the ministry to put Draco away. It was only now that Draco was realizing how many opportunities he had given Harry to do just that, but for whatever reason he was still here. Harry hadn't turned him in. Not yet, at least. It was a comforting feeling, even if it wasn't meant to last.
"You should stay here for a bit," Harry said. "If you go back to the Leaky Cauldron, hell, if you go anywhere at this point - probably even your aunt's - there will be people waiting for you, trying to hunt you down. I can't imagine that you disappearing out of thin air with this much Laethelixir can put you in a favorable position with your supplier."
Draco frowned, thinking again about the number of ways this could end, most of them with himself either dead or in Azkaban. He didn't seem to have a problem with the possibility of him being dead last night, but something about the urgency, the earnestness in Potter's voice made him think about how much he had almost thrown away. He had become so numb to all of the feelings going through his mind that he had forgotten what it felt like to dwell on the possibility that someone might actually care about him, and might have actually saved him because they wanted him to be alive. It was almost too good of a possibility for him to imagine. He had to find out if he was crazy for entertaining such an idea.
"Why is that any of your concern?" Malfoy asked, scowling slightly. "Why do you care whether I get killed or not? I'm a distributor, just like them. If you had any moral decency you'd be arresting me right now."
Harry ignored him and continued, carrying on with the plan that he had no doubt spent a couple of hours hatching while Draco had been sleeping the night before.
"I think we can help each other out, Draco. You need a place to live where you won't get killed by the hitmen they're probably sending after you right this moment, and I need my job back in the ministry."
"You lost your job?" Draco asked, taken aback by Harry's statement. "So you're not an auror anymore?"
"No, I am. It's... Complicated. That's not important."
"It sounds important."
"It's not. It's temporary, and I'm fixing it."
"If you say so."
"Anyways, if you stay here and lie low for a while, we can take the information you have and put the people who are after you behind bars. We can turn the product directly in to the ministry, so you don't have to sell it or move it around in a way that would draw attention to yourself. I think it's the only way out of this mess."
So he did have an angle. And it was for his own personal gain, not because he felt anything for Draco. He had probably just saved his life last night so he could look even more like a hero, and leverage Draco's situation into something that would benefit him in the long run. Draco was beginning to see how alarmingly Slytherin-like Harry actually was, and the thought was a bit entertaining, albeit annoying as hell in this particular circumstance. Did he care, or didn't he? If he did, why couldn't he just come right out and say it?
"So... Correct me if I'm wrong. You're asking me to turn over my contacts, betray my suppliers and risk my own fucking neck, just so you can play the savior card at the ministry and get your job back?"
Harry exhaled loudly, and Draco couldn't help but feel a hint of satisfaction; he had managed to get a rise out of Potter. It was just like the old days, the same, familiar adrenaline rush when Potter's blood began to boil and Draco was responsible for it. It was this slight, subtle way in which Draco could directly observe the effect he had on Harry that he craved; in school he would lie up in his four poster at night strategizing how to improve his craft the following morning to get even more recognition, to have the other boy react to him in a way that would ensure he was being thought about. It was no longer a game that the two of them played in the courtyards and corridors in between classes, but his base instinct was to push back, to keep pushing until Harry said something that he wanted to hear, until he was validated by Harry in the way that he so desperately needed.
"Look," Harry said, running his fingers through his messy black hair and making Draco wonder how his own hands would feel in their place. "We're running out of options, here. If you leave and they find you, they will kill you. If you stay here and help me, we can take care of this, and I'll do my best to help you clear your name and get your mansion back."
Oh, he cared. Draco could see it in the flush rising to his cheeks, the frustration evident on his face. There was no way he would get this upset if he didn't care. Draco smirked slightly, realizing that this proposition hinged on Harry's assumption that Draco would comply with everything he had laid out. There had been a subtle, underlying shift in the power dynamic, and Draco couldn't miss an opportunity to point out the fact that Harry needed him for something. That was the subtext in this conversation, after all. Potter needed his help, and was willing to save him from the miserable situation he had fallen into as an exchange for his cooperation. Draco decided he could go a bit longer without agreeing to the plan, just to see what other truths he could coax out of Harry in the process.
"Honestly," he started, "I'd rather be dead than play the supporting role in your trumped up, heroic fantasy. And quite frankly, I'm surprised you're even able to spare a room with the size of your ego."
"Alright, that was... unnecessary," Harry said, rolling his eyes and looking like he would rather be doing anything except this right now.
"How do I know you won't turn me in with the rest of them once you have your names? Why would you protect me?"
"Draco," Harry sighed, his tone more exasperated than Draco had heard it in quite some time. "Please just... Listen to me. I'm tired, and I spent all night worrying about getting you here safely and coming up with a plan for how to keep you alive. I just... I'm sick of the mind games and I need you to be on my side for once."
"Why?" Draco said, continuing to push back until he got what he wanted. "Why are you doing any of this? Why do you care so much about keeping me alive?" He was now just a foot away from Harry's face, and could see every freckle, every scar that had once scraped his perfect, irritatingly clear complexion.
He continued to look into Harry's eyes, urging him to acknowledge that there was something more than a convenient arrangement between the two of them. Harry hadn't just done all of this because he felt bad about Malfoy almost taking his own life; there was something else that had nothing to do with whether or not Draco was being hunted down by Delev and the suppliers. The attraction between them was probably more powerful than either of them realized, and all that Draco wanted was for Harry to admit that he felt the same way as Draco did. He wanted to know that Harry truly cared about him, not as a joke, not as a conquest that would improve Harry's own self esteem when he got what he wanted, and not as a former classmate who he felt obligated to save because of his aforementioned hero complex.
Harry cleared his throat, trying to dispel the latent, unbearable silence that had filled the room. He looked distressed, as though he wasn't ready to admit to himself what Draco was asking of him, but Draco didn't let his gaze falter.
"What do you me-" Harry began, but Draco interrupted him immediately.
"You know what I mean."
There was another pause, in which Draco wondered if he would ever have his question answered, if Harry would ever address what had happened between them in his kitchen, if he even felt the same way Draco did. As seconds passed, Draco felt the lingering doubt creep in - maybe he had been wrong about Harry. Maybe he really had done this just out of moral obligation, and not because Draco meant anything to him. Draco felt his stomach sinking further inside his body with each passing moment. Surely if Harry was taking this long to say anything, the sentiment couldn't have been mutual.
Draco broke the eye contact finally, looking down at the ground and turning, ready to leave the study again. So this was really the end, then. He would have to find his wand, would have to get out of here as soon as possible and let whatever fate that awaited him outside these doors catch up with him. At least he would probably get to say goodbye to his mother before they found him.
"Draco, wait." Harry's voice was loud, more forceful than it had been earlier, and commanding enough to cause Draco to pause in the doorway.
"Don't go. Stop fucking leaving whenever I'm about to say something to you."
Draco stopped, a bit surprised by Harry's tone, and turned around to face him. Harry had set down his coffee cup, and was standing resolutely by the trunk, his jaw set as though he were struggling to decide which words to let out.
"I'm really bad at this," he said, running a hand through his hair again in what Draco had now identified as a familiar nervous habit. "I'm bad at relationships, and saying what I'm feeling, and... Really the only other people I've been with have initiated the romantic aspects of... Things."
Draco remained standing in the doorway, his heart giving a lurch in his chest when Harry categorized this as a "romantic" relationship, but let him speak without interruption.
"I couldn't sleep for weeks after the war," Harry said slowly, now directing his words to his feet. "I kept having nightmares about the people who had died, about Voldemort coming back, about my friends being tortured and me not being able to save them." He took a deep breath, continuing to speak to Draco in a slow, controlled cadence. Draco could tell it was taking a great amount of his remaining energy to coax the words to the surface.
"When you came here in June, when we kissed... It was like a switch had flipped on in my head. I was dreaming again, but not about the war - I was having dreams about you. I was looking forward to sleeping every night because I was kissing you, and doing other things with you... Anyways, it made me feel safe when nothing else in my life was going right." Harry had brought his eyes up to meet Draco's once more, and Draco held his gaze unflinchingly.
"It's been getting bad again," Harry continued. "I've been having trouble with training. They put me on temporary leave because I just can't... I can't make the memories go away. They just keep coming up in different ways, and you were the only thing that made them stop."
"Harry," Draco said softly, addressing him by his first name for the first time in recent memory. He took a couple steps towards the other man, but Harry held a hand up to stop him before he had reached the school trunk.
"Wait. I just... I need to say something else," he said, clearly wanting to get it all out of his system before he lost his nerve. "I'm sorry about not finding you after you left. About not writing, or trying to see you at the inn. I wanted to, trust me, I was just..."
"Scared?" Draco asked, a smile prying at his lips.
Harry grinned, finally taking a breath and chuckling in spite of himself.
"Fuck you," he said with a laugh, raising his hand to ruffle the back of his head again, but before he could reach upwards, Draco caught his forearm and held it in his grasp. He looked into Potter's eyes, the bright green hue more intense than Draco had remembered. He glanced down at Harry's pink lips, remembering the taste of them from the last time they had kissed.
"Do you really want me to stay?" He asked, bringing Potter's arm down to his side and running his fingers over the goosebumps that had formed upon his touch.
"Yeah, I really do." Harry's face was beginning to turn pink. Draco had thought there wasn't anything that would make him want to kiss Harry more, but now he couldn't resist if he wanted to.
"Not just because of the Laethelixir?"
"No. Not just because of that."
"And do you want me to get closer?"
Harry nodded.
"Yeah. I do."
Draco took another step forward so that he could feel the warmth of Harry's breath on his face.
"The beard really does suit you, you know," Draco said, his breath coming out as almost a whisper now that he was only inches away from Harry.
"Thank God, I'd be lost without your approval," Harry retorted sarcastically.
"I've nearly had it with your sass, though," Draco smiled, placing a finger under Harry's chin and bringing it up to his own, hovering over his lips.
"I think you know how to shut me up," Harry grinned back at him, making Draco finally press his mouth gently against Harry's full lips.
It wasn't like last time at all. The kiss wasn't torn out of them by instinct in an almost violent fit of passion; it was soft and tender, it was Draco apologizing for the way he had left Harry, for not coming to him sooner and asking for help, for trying to deal with things the way he had last night. Harry inhaled deeply and brought his hands up into Draco's hair, breaking the kiss only to glance at Draco's face through his dark lashes. Draco let his hands trace down the side of Harry's body, feeling the firm muscles through his shirt and the familiar curve of his hips, pulling him a little closer by the belt loops in his jeans. Waves of endorphins exploded in his head like fireworks as he slowly kissed Harry's lips again, and again, the elation better than even the euphoria he had experienced last night.
Draco's knees backed against the fabric of the sofa in the room, and Harry pushed his shoulders lightly to coax him onto the cushions, climbing on top of him and planting a thigh on either side of his waist as his lips continued to administer Draco's. He was phenomenally talented, Draco remarked to himself when Harry's tongue pressed against his lips for entry, especially considering he had probably only gotten laid a couple of times in his life. He didn't have an instructor like Bennett to show him the ropes as Draco had; in typical Potter fashion, he just added his own spin to whatever he was doing and happened to be fantastic at it. It was a quality of his that Draco had always found infuriating, but also rather impressive at the same time.
"Easy," Draco whispered again, his hands holding Harry's thighs to support him on Draco's torso. "We have all day - Go slow."
Harry followed his direction, beginning to rock his hips towards Draco's at an agonizingly slow pace, his lips drifting down to the pale skin of Draco's neck. Draco remembered the mark Harry had left there last time, the one that Bennett had noticed immediately. It didn't matter now, he thought with triumph. There was nowhere else he needed to be, no one he needed to answer to. He tilted his head back as Harry unfastened the top few buttons of his shirt, giving him full access to whatever part of his body Harry wanted to explore. Harry's tongue was tantalizingly warm, his touch on Draco's body sending electric jolts up and down his spine.
Harry paused, however, when he had opened the rest of Draco's shirt to reveal the skin beneath. Draco remembered with a twinge of embarrassment that he had never administered any type of healing charms after the night he had spent with Delev, that the bruises and marks the older man had left on his body would probably look even worse than they had yesterday.
Sure enough, when Harry had pulled his shirt off of his shoulders he drew away, his eyes roaming over Draco's chest. He traced the outlines of the scratches, bite marks and bruises on Draco's torso with a delicate finger, noticing the scars on the surface, but also the deep, white ones that ran across his body.
"Draco, are these from when... Did I - " Harry asked, the concern in his voice enough to make Draco wish he had never opened his shirt.
"Some of them, yeah," Draco replied, glad that at least his bruised wrists and the self-inflicted scars on his Dark Mark tattoo were covered up by his shirt still. "If you give me my wand back, I can fix the other ones."
"Who did this to you?" Harry asked in a worried tone, dismounting from Draco's torso and making the taller boy let out a sigh of frustration.
"Potter, it's nothing. I don't want to talk about it."
"It's not nothing, some of those scars are really deep." Harry was now standing up and getting something from the corner of the room. Draco began to fasten the buttons on his shirt again; clearly the moment he had been hoping for had passed.
"Just forget it, okay? What are you doing?" Harry was rummaging around in Draco's trunk once more. He closed it after a moment of searching, bringing back Draco's wand and the bottle of the dittany Draco had mixed together after he had paid the visit to Knockturn Alley which had led him down the path of being a distributor in the first place. It was odd, thinking about the fact that if Draco hadn't left Harry's house the way he did back in June, he wouldn't have been in this mess in the first place.
Harry joined him back on the sofa, giving him both the wand and the dittany so he could start healing the wounds on his chest.
"You can talk to me," he said, the lust in his eyes a couple of moments ago now replaced with sorrow for whatever he thought was going on in Draco's life. "I promise I won't do anything you don't want me to."
Draco stared at him for a moment, wondering if Potter was the kind of person he could open up to, or if he was just going to move on and take the parts of Draco's soul that had been laid bare with him, as everyone else had done up until now.
"If I tell you, will you run off and try to find him?"
Potter's eyes were sincere.
"Not unless you want me to."
Draco took a deep breath, unbuttoning his shirt once more so that he could administer the dittany on some of his deeper wounds.
"He's the head of the suppliers," Draco said, wincing as he dabbed the potion on his skin. "A man called Regis Delev. He's powerful, he has a ring of followers within the Wizarding Community, and he's branched out to some muggle neighborhoods as well. I needed some money, and he... He let me work for it."
Harry's jaw clenched when he understood what Draco had said. Draco was glad he had made Harry agree not to go running after Delev; he couldn't think of anything worse than Harry rushing into a dangerous situation with a hot head and getting himself hurt.
"Doesn't that make it all the more important for us to stop him?"
Draco nearly rolled his eyes at how irritatingly heroic Harry was acting, although he wasn't sure what else he expected from him. Of course he would see this as a challenge, and not a dangerous situation that both of them should avoid so as not to meet a gruesome, untimely death.
"Last time I checked you were suspended from the ministry," he said, returning Harry's determined expression with a light-hearted smirk. "What do you expect to be able to do from your couch?"
Harry took the bottle of Dittany from Draco and, conjuring up a clean rag from his kitchen, helped him administer the substance on his bare chest.
"Lucky for both of us," he said as he looked up at Draco again, returning his smirk with a gleaming, mischievous look in his eyes, "I've never been too fond of following rules."
Draco laughed, in spite of everything that was happening at the moment. The marks on his chest were searing his skin as they healed, and his pants were still uncomfortably tight as a result of the kiss they had shared, but he allowed himself to rest his head back on the cushions and laugh at the brazen, reckless man he had found himself growing to like more than he had even thought possible over the last 24 hours. It was almost absurd, how much time he had spent fantasizing about getting into Potter's trousers for as long as he could remember, only to now be just as content laughing at his jokes as he would be if they were fucking on the sofa. Harry began to laugh too, probably thinking, as Draco was, how ridiculous all of this seemed. It felt good to laugh after the terrible night they had shared. Harry continued to chuckle, lowering his head slightly, and Draco took the opportunity to kiss him once more. He pressed his smiling lips to Harry's and cupped his bearded face with both of his hands.
"You're insane," he whispered into Harry's mouth, thinking of how handsome Harry was when he smiled. It lit up his features and extended all the way to his sparkling, green eyes, and all Draco could think of was how happy it made him to be the reason for that incandescent grin.
"You're an arse," he muttered back into Draco's lips, placing the rag and the Dittany on the floor beside them.
Harry broke away from their kiss momentarily to suppress a small yawn, and Draco laughed at how endearing it was to watch Harry do something so ordinary.
"Sorry, am I boring you?" Draco smirked, reaching for Harry's hand and stroking gentle circles on it with his thumb. Harry's own hands were calloused, the exterior rough from probably countless burns, spells and Quidditch practices. Draco remembered fondly how he had removed the glass from these hands back in June, how exhilarating it had been to touch Harry in the way he had, for the very first time.
"I was too busy saving your life to sleep last night, actually," Harry retorted, smiling back at Draco.
"That doesn't sound like you at all," Draco scoffed playfully.
Harry slumped his head against Draco's shoulder, and Draco held it there, weaving his fingers into the thick, dark hair that smelled faintly of pine, a rich, musky scent that he wasn't immediately able to identify. He let his hand rest there listening to the steady, soft sound of their breaths as they slowly fell into sync, Harry's chest beginning to rise and fall with his own.
"Let's go upstairs," Draco said after a couple, quiet minutes had passed. "It'll be easier for you to sleep."
Harry lifted his green eyes to Draco's again, the look of exhaustion on his face making Draco want to scoop him up in his arms and carry him right up to his bed.
"I'd like that," he said. Draco wanted to take a mental snapshot of how perfect this moment was, wanted to memorize the spacing of the furniture, the way the light was filtering into the study from the back window, and the smell of Harry's skin that was making his heart do somersaults in his chest.
There was nothing he would like more than to wrap Harry in his arms and crawl under the soft blankets of Harry's bed together. He took Harry's hand and led him up the staircase, and by the time he had closed the door to the master bedroom, Harry was already asleep.