AN: Sorry I wrote this chapter forever ago, but I was also posting elsewhere and had some very discouraging remarks about this particular fic, even though it was clearly marked as a Drarry fic. So, I kinda gave up on it and and also forgot to update here. So, here's the small spicy chapter that someone else's hatred killed. lol ;)

Anyway, I'll try and continue the path line I was on for this. But I'm deep in another verse in my head currently. Hope you enjoy! :)

Uncharacteristically, Draco found himself in a position where he was comforting someone. He gently squeezed Granger's hand after Potter's abrupt exit. Her eyes were filled with tears that had started to leak slowly down her face, "I am sorry. I didn't mean to make either of you feel a certain way, or put anything on you in any way. I just wanted to help." She sniffled, and Draco offered her a napkin.

She took the napkin, dropping his hand and blowing her nose quite noisily.

Draco's lip curled in disgust before he could control it. He reached for his drink, taking a measured sip. "So, help then. Tell me more about why you asked me here. And," Draco paused, "And… why you brought Potter, too." His gaze had been focused on Granger's face, but fell when he said Potter's name. To his horror a slight blush made his cheeks flush as well. Probably just the alcohol. He coughed to cover his confusion before bringing his gaze back up to search Granger's face.

"I can tell you what I've learned in my research, and you can use that information how you'd like. I can't tell you anything more about Harry. I shouldn't have brought him." Granger was business-like as she began her explanation. Her voice only faltering a few times, and her gaze softening as she explained things Draco had felt but had ignored or dismissed.

Draco let her continue until she trailed off, seemingly uncertain about his reaction. He placed his right hand palm up on the table, inviting her to hold it if she'd like. With his left, he grasped the stem of his drink, swirling it a little and staring through the glass.

"So, to be clear, you're saying it's… normal?"

Granger's smile lit her entire face from within, as she gently placed her hand in his. "Very much so. All of my research points to the fact that people exist on this spectrum, but due to religious beliefs in the muggle world and the desire for pure bloodlines in the wizarding world, most societies make it feel like it's not normal. But it's very normal."

"So, Potter?" Draco left the question unfinished and hanging in the air, connecting the dots in his mind.

At the mention of Potter, her face froze and she shrugged stiffly.

"I'm not an idiot. Just tell me if he's still with the Weasley girl."

"Yes. He is." The words seemed to escape without her knowledge.

"Interesting." Draco's smirk filled his face before he once again controlled it into a more neutral expression. "I believe this is where we should close the evening." He finished his dirty martini, enjoying the burn of the gin down his throat. "I will of course escort you to the nearest transit spot. Be it by Floo or muggle transport." He continued as the embers of alcohol settled in his stomach, and he popped another olive in his mouth, "take your time with your toddy."

"What were you even doing at the Ministry, Draco? Did you get a job?"

Draco snorted, "No. Of course not. I was interested in some alchemical research a friend is conducting, that's all." He crossed his arms behind his head and leaned back in his chair. Surprisingly this was the most relaxed he'd felt in years. He leaned back in his chair and enjoyed the feeling of an easy unstilted conversation. Granger had always been intelligent, but finding someone to discuss his own interests allowed him to feel heard in a way he had never truly felt in school.

Granger continued to show interest in surprising ways. She asked questions about his research, listened to what he said, and commented back in a way that showed she had considered what his response was.

Draco was honestly, in a word, bewildered. He had thought to close the evening, but Granger's excitement in his own interests had forced him to order another drink. Then another. On drink five or six Granger was telling him exorbitant tales of Gryffindor hijinks, before Voldemort had ruined their last few years at school. He in turn allowed her a rare insight into his own experience. He wasn't sure if it was the gin or her intense state, but he shared more than he had ever shared with Crabbe and Goyle. And certainly more than he had with his fiancé, Astoria Greengrass.

Their laughter filled the small space around the table creating a warm buzz around Draco that he had never truly felt. When they did close the evening, and Granger left, Draco went to the bar and ordered one more drink before the bar closed.

As Draco sat at the bar, he felt something brush against his left side. Revelio. He muttered under his breath, assuming something would show. However, to his surprise nothing did.

"Pay the tab, and come to the alley." A voice whispered in his ear.

Draco took a short breath, looked down, and smiled. "I take orders from no one now." He took a measured sip of his drink before continuing, "You'll have to be a little more persuasive, Potter."

Suddenly, Draco felt a hard grip on his thigh. He couldn't quite see anything, but there seemed to be a shimmering haze obscuring his view.

"Ah, I see the Chosen One is using his invisibility cloak. Can't be seen slumming it."

A whispered voice caressed his ear with the sound of his name, "Draco…" The hand slid further up his thigh, and Draco took another sip of his drink before setting it down resolutely and flagging for the check. In these motions, the voice of Potter has moved from a slight presence near his ear to a ghostly slide of lips traversing the arch of his throat before disappearing entirely.

"Potter?"

"Alley on the left, I'll wait one minute." And with that final omission, the voice and pressure entirely disappeared.

Draco shifted when Potter left. He paid the cheque and debated the positives and negatives of the alley in the short time while his feet carried him out and to the left. Or wait, was it left looking at the place or left when you came out the door?

Draco hovered in the doorway as he debated these thoughts and the entire possibility of what he thought could or might occur in the alley. He finally decided to give up on the entire experience, when he felt a tug on the corner of his coat.

Sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose, Draco turned and moved further into the alley. The misty rain had strengthened into if not a steady downpour, then a constant pattering. The wind being the larger problem, it caught the tails of Draco's coat blowing them steadily forward and deeper into the alley. "Potter? Look, I'm not going to get soaked for a joke." He found himself whispering into the dark, the sickly burnt umber of the streetlight above highlighting sections of rain as the wind blew it in strange diagonals.

"Harry?" The name fell from his lips unwillingly, almost quieter than the rain against the walls around him. Stupid, what was I thinking… Too many…

Before his brain could complete the vitriolic diatribe, Draco felt himself pushed back against the dirty alley wall. His feet skidded over bags of take out trash, which had blown over from the nearby refuse pile.

"I don't know what I'm doing." He heard Potter briefly whisper before his lips crashed against Draco's. Hands pinned his shoulders firmly against the wall, before fingers climbed up behind his ears and through the back of his hair. Draco was surprised with how delicately the fingers skimmed over his scalp, when the lips pressed against his were insistent enough to warrant a crushing pressure. He felt the pressure continue to build as Potter angled his face and his teeth began to nip at Draco's bottom lip. Draco let himself fall into the kiss without thinking as he slipped his arms around where he assumed Potter's shoulders were and found himself slipping beneath a silken coolness, as the invisibility cloak enveloped him.

Draco knew that the liquid gold rosé type of feeling burning through his limbs was a fleeting one. He leaned into it, allowing the rain to soak through his open jacket as Potter's hands moved from the back of his head and down his neck before sliding under his jacket and over his shoulders.

Draco tightened his own grip and pulled Potter against his chest, before running his tongue along his bottom lip. Potter gasped and Draco used the momentary break to reverse their positions, pressing the length of his body against Potter's and pushing him firmly back to the wall. The reversal disrupted the cloak around them, and with a momentary pang of panic, Draco stepped away.

Harry gasped as Malfoy took command of the kiss and pressed him back against the wall. He wasn't sure what had possessed him to do this. He simply had followed his gut instinct when he'd taken his invisibility cloak out and returned to the bar. He'd seen Hermione leave and with her exit he had snuck up to the bar.

He hadn't meant to do anything, but Malfoy's sardonic grin, and his softened eyes as he played with the stem of his glass had Harry rounding the bar stool between them.

Then suddenly he was here, and the press of Malfoy's soft lips against his own was making his head buzz and his lips tingle. So, when Malfoy stepped back, Harry tripped forward, stumbling over a flyaway piece of cardboard he had somehow missed in the initial rush toward the wall.

His glasses bounced on the end of his nose before clattering to the ground into the now open space. At the same time a huge rumble of thunder cracked across the sky, before a thin scattered net of lightning pierced the sky before forking downward and hitting a nearby lamppost. The shitty light above them winked and went out as the wind beat the rain against him as if he had caused it a personal affront.

"Shit. Shit. Shit." Malfoy's harried mutterings had to be accompanied by what Harry imagined were his long fingers raking his hair back from his widow's peak.

"It's dark enough now, nobody would be able to see anything anyway." Harry spoke up from where he knelt, his fingers carefully skimming along the ground where he believed his glasses had fallen. Instead of the wireframe of his glasses' arm, his fingers grazed against a damp trouser cuff.

Harry allowed his hand to rest against Malfoy's ankle, testing his wariness. When he didn't step away, Harry trailed his hand further up, as his other hand found Malfoy's left ankle, Harry looked up into the dreary burst of sky above him, and the blurry outline of the pale face above him.

"It's dark enough now…" he repeated as his hands came to rest against Malfoy's hips.