Hello! I'm getting back into fandom after many years and was hoping you could recommend the best (or most popular) drarry fics to come out in the last 5 years?? The longer the better! I'm having such a blast re-reading old favs and would love more to read! Thank you so much!
I was also away from the fandom the past three years, we share the feeling! I'll go for +100k and skip super well known examples (e.g., Grounds for Divorce)
Alucinatio by alexmeg (127k)
"It's... it's not good," Harry tells them lowly. "They've given him a month's time, only." There is so much he needs to explain, but his head is foggy and exhausted and he can't think properly, can't think of how to relay all that he's learned. "Have you heard of Alucinatio?" is what he starts with. "The Daydream potion," Hermione says. "The person who intakes it experiences very vivid and realistic daydreams of all they could ever want, but is essentially in a severely catatonic state out in the external world, incapable of any basic functions." Harry nods. "Somebody's given it to Malfoy." He remembers the tattered remains of a black coak wrapped around Malfoy. "I think it might have been Professor Snape." They take a minute to process that. "And... the cure?" Ron asks. "Tears of anyone the experiencer craves love of," Hermione answers.
I Do Not Love You by Writ_and_romance (228k)
In 2013, a carefully-designed Obliviation leaves Harry reconfiguring his life and identity without any memories of true love; an act that’s essentially erased Draco Malfoy from his mind despite a wedding band and shared home.
In 2000, Draco had expected Pansy’s relationship with Luna to bring the Gryffindors a bit closer to his orbit of quiet, carefully pacifistic existence, but he never expected to navigate such a transparent embrace into a unit of family, friendship, and love.
A mystery, two love stories, and a reminder that learning to love never has an end date.
Nor All That Glisters by @sweet-s0rr0w (110k)
Lonely and frustrated on house arrest, with no prospects for the future, Draco begins brewing Felix Felicis in an attempt to improve his lot. Just in the short term, of course. He isn’t a total idiot.
But before long he finds himself with a thriving business, a nice flat, some actual (albeit irritatingly Gryffindor) friends, and a very satisfying sex life. What’s more, no-one is hexing him in the street. And Harry Potter is single, and gorgeous, and giving Draco decidedly interested looks.
Stop taking the Felix? You must be joking…
Soup-pocalypse and The Great Curry Cataclysm by @norelationtoatticus (104k)
Eleven years after the war, Draco Malfoy leads a quiet, boring, and perfectly respectable life, thanks very much. Or, at least he does, until a sudden and very unexpected veela awakening causes him to throw soup all over Harry Potter in the middle of the Ministry cafeteria.
Every Hour Has Led to This by @sassy-cissa (105k)
Banned from the wizarding world and sentenced to live as a Muggle for ten years, Draco Malfoy finds his world turned upside down. Navigating the Muggle world becomes easier thanks to help from some unexpected strangers who become family. But when his mother insists Draco fulfil an agreement set when he was a child, he finds himself married and a father. Then a divorced single father. After the war Harry Potter found himself without purpose, until an unexpected offer changed his life. Playboy, Quidditch star, war hero – Harry seems to have it all, until a Quidditch accident ends his career. Lost and without purpose, Harry’s life is lonely until a surprising event brings him to Draco’s door…literally. Running parallel lives for nearly 10 years, when they reconnect both Draco and Harry find the passion for life that had been missing. A story of love and loss and how the best things in life happen in their own time
Pages of You by @wolfpants (101k)
Summer, 1980. Harry is floating between university and becoming a Real Certified Adult. He's not ready. He really isn't.
In a desperate attempt to have the Best Last Summer ever, he takes a casual job at his godfather's bookshop in London, starts an illicit pen pal affair with a wordy posh boy that he's catching feelings for, all while dealing with the son of Sirius's business rival, one Draco Malfoy, insufferable know-it-all extraordinaire.
A story about trying to figure out who you are, where you're going in life, and who you want to take along with you.
Notes on a resurrection by newleaves (126k)
It was never Draco’s intention to raise Sirius Black from the dead.
The Liars Department by @dorthyanndrarry (103k)
This is a story about Harry meeting up with Draco Malfoy four years after the war. And a story about Harry, well, not hating his job per say, but it's not like he has much to compare it to and it seemed fine. His whole life seemed fine. Then Malfoy came along with and his flashy suits and fast car making everything seem dull in comparison, and Harry... Harry couldn't just leave well enough alone.
Turning Leaves by @kbrick (112k)
Draco and Harry have a one-night stand that ends in disaster after Harry tells Draco he's unable to move beyond their poisonous past. So when Draco finds an unusual Time-Turner in the Department of Mysteries, he seizes the opportunity to start fresh with Harry. Only instead of fixing things, he keeps making them worse.
Bolts by @lqtraintracks (114k)
Harry joins the Hogwarts staff as the new History of Magic Professor, while Draco has already been teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts for the past year. When Samantha, a first year, is being bullied one day and throws a made-up Truth curse at her harasser, only to accidentally hit Harry instead, Harry becomes cursed to tell the truth, and not only that, he has to regularly tell it to Draco Malfoy. Samantha is clearly gifted, maybe the most powerful witch or wizard to ever come through Hogwarts, and yet she has no idea how to take the curse off. As they work to remove it—and also teach Samantha how to control a power that's becoming more dangerous by the day—will Harry's truths become too much to handle? And will whatever’s going on with Draco just make everything exponentially worse?
Freedom to be by @quicksilvermaid (169k)
Harry Potter is the Boy Who Lived. 12 years after the war, he's become the Boy Who Lived For Everyone Else. He has the perfect wife. The perfect house. The perfect job. The perfect friends. Only nothing feels perfect. Until one day he stumbles across a club called Release and begins a journey of self-discovery that takes him to a very different place.
By the Grace by @letteredlettered (139k)
Harry is an Auror instructor. Malfoy wants to be an Auror.
Two to Shore by Lamplighter (204k)
Harry and Draco meet in Madam Malkin’s and instantly take a liking to each other. Just kidding. They don’t, but Harry does get sorted into Slytherin, and they do become extremely good friends.
Way Down We Go by @xiaq (109k)
The war was over. Or at least that’s what the papers said. They’d been saying it, for months, as if people needed reminding. Maybe they did.
In which Harry and Draco both run away from their pasts and conveniently choose to hide in the same tiny American town. It's super.
Nyctophilia by prolonged_autumn (107k)
Everyone's back for 8th year, and Harry and his friends seem determined to spend their last year in school running around at night, hyped up on coffee and alcohol and Honeydukes candy, doing all the childish things they didn't have the chance to do before. Draco watches as he's always watched: from afar, quiet and bitter and hopelessly in love. That is, until Pansy decides she's had quite enough of it.
Make Yourself by @anyaelizabethfic (103k)
Harry just wants to be safe within the freshly painted walls of Grimmauld Place, with his friends around him. But when he hears Draco Malfoy has been spotted at the local soup kitchen, he can’t help but encourage a different type of stray to come under his roof.
Kept Man by @drarry (147k)
A downtrodden Harry Potter in a serious dry spell is looking to be a kept man, and a lonely Draco Malfoy responds to his anonymous ad. A perfect storm of lust, scandal, and maybe even love. A Daddy Kink Magnum Opus.
The Ordeal of Being Known by @lou-isfake (146k)
When Auror Potter is anonymously cursed with silence by being forced to hide his own voice inside his mind, there’s unfortunately only one person in the country with the qualifications to fix it: Certified and Licensed Healer Legilimens, Draco Malfoy, specialist in Mind Curses and Afflictions. It’s obviously a terrible idea, a disaster waiting to happen, but Draco’s never been able to back down from a challenge… especially from Potter.
Harry Potter and the Welcome to the World of Grey by @sobsicles (456k)
When Harry fails to keep his anger at bay and Voldemort possesses his mind, the events that follow lead him down a long road to realizing the world isn’t as black and white as it seems. Chaos, hilarity, and tragedy ensue with a Dark Lord being honest all the time, a rival becoming something else, and a world demanding to be saved. Featuring frightened Death Eaters, deep conversations with a monster, Pureblood traditions being ridiculous, and the fight to do the right thing with no true options. Harry’s life just gets more and more bizarre with each passing moment. ~~~ Or, the one where Harry’s life gets split in half, and he has to figure out how to bring it back together.
The Secret Keeper by @the-fools-errand (225k)
On Halloween 1981, Albus Dumbledore made a decision that would change the course of history, concealing Harry Potter’s survival at the hands of Lord Voldemort underneath a Fidelius Charm. But when Harry comes of age in the Muggle world, Dumbledore realises too late that the fate of the world may depend on a boy who has never held a wand. An unlikely team assembles to teach him everything he needs to know before the charm runs out, but only one of them knows the truth behind the Dark Lord’s return to power. If it were anyone else, Draco would have no problem turning them over to the Death Eaters, but there’s something about this certain bespectacled idiot that has him questioning everything he’s ever known. Will Draco seal the fate of the wizarding world by uncovering the Chosen One or will Harry save Draco from a fate of his own?
Dwelling on Dreams by @the-sinking-ship (135k)
Draco thought he could avoid Potter for the duration of his brief return to England. He’d stick to his schedule and be back home in Paris, where he belonged, in a few short months. No trouble at all. He had plenty to occupy him, what with the opening of the London branch of his successful apothecary, his innovative research, drinks with Pansy, a backlog of unread potions periodicals. Except Head Auror Potter is everywhere — in Draco's chair, at his door, in his dreams. All six feet of motorbike-riding, combat-boot-wearing, sex-hair-sporting Saviour of the World packed into one unfairly fetching uniform. Potter won’t leave Draco the bloody hell alone, won’t let him breathe, let him forget, let him sleep. Because no matter how fast Draco Malfoy runs, Harry Potter is always hot on his heels.
A Sword Laid Aside by @korlaena (128k)
When Draco’s cover is blown during a deep undercover operation and the Ministry is compromised, Ron takes Draco to the only safe place he can think of—Potter. Hiding out with a taciturn Harry Potter, who has been missing from the Wizarding World for almost two decades after a shocking fall from grace, is nothing like Draco thought it would be. Draco has to navigate dealing with this Potter while being hunted by Dark wizards and wanted by extremists in the Ministry. When things take a turn for the worse, Draco has to decide whether he's going to keep running or find a way to protect the world and the people he cares about most.
Changing Tides by @carpemermaidtales (109k)
Draco has spent half of his life spouting the things his father has taught him without much thought about how he feels about what he says. When he unexpectedly comes face to face with the Dark Lord, he grapples with the harsh realities of the world and struggles with his changing views on life. Instead of doing what’s expected of him fifth year, he joins Dumbledore’s Army and learns how to defend himself, how to make his own choices, and how he can be something greater than his father’s example as he grows into his own man rather than his father’s shadow. The choices he makes change both his and Harry’s fates, intertwining their paths until they converge.
Taking Chances by @gracerene (135k)
After the war, Draco disappeared and started over in America, vowing never to return to Great Britain and the fraught past he left behind. Unfortunately, when his mates convince him to sign up for an exchange programme for the last year of their Auror Training, Draco learns that he doesn’t have much of a choice in the matter.
Graceless Heart by @orange-peony (132k)
Harry is lost and broken after the war. He has gone to countless funerals, broken up with Ginny, moved back into Grimmauld Place—which feels darker and dirtier than ever before despite how much he tries to fix it. He feels lonely and desperate, but he won’t ask for help, and he still can’t cry.
When he agreed to help the Aurors at Malfoy Manor over the summer, he thought that he would be breaking dark curses. Harry never thought that he would actually spend his days sorting out dusty books with Draco Malfoy, or teaching him how to cook.
Little by little, as they begin to navigate their life post-war, Harry and Draco become intimate…in more ways than Harry could have ever expected.
Brave Though The Stars They Make Me by @dwell-the-brave (108k)
After the events at the end of his Sixth Year, Draco Malfoy has been kept all but prisoner in his childhood home, Malfoy Manor. Alone, terrified, and desperate for some way out, he begins to have strange dreams - dreams of Harry Potter. Are they a trick of his mind? Or are they a way to change his fate, and a chance at redemption?
Always Already by @aibidil (170k)
Harry and Draco are perfectly fine, separately minding their business in 2004, when the Unspeakables conscript them into service... in the First War against Voldemort.
Come for mutual pining and forced proximity in a 1980 hotel room, stay for young Sirius and philosophising about immortality and wormholes. And an eighties cowboy soap opera.
He Comes Like a Thunderstorm by @korlaena (140k)
Draco is doing his best to balance the life he wants to live and the life he’s forced to live. He’s nearing the tail-end of a long, post-war probation when Harry Potter crashes back into his life with all the grace of a charging Erumpent, breaking through his carefully constructed rules and routine. Caught up in a whirlwind of sex and lust, Potter unwittingly shows Draco that his life as an Incubus doesn’t have to be as lonely and unfulfilling as he thought, but how long can it last?
Close Behind by @oflights (134k)
To rescue Draco from the Underworld, Harry has to look forward. Unfortunately, Draco has to look back
where all the veins meet by @saxamophone (146k)
It's the summer of 1998. The battle is over, and Voldemort is dead, but Harry still has more questions than answers. Who is he without a piece of Voldemort's soul in his head? What is he supposed to do now? His friends try to help, but the only thing that can hold his attention—one of the only things that ever has—is Draco Malfoy, out on parole and weirdly hanging around the British Museum. As they keep running into each other, Harry sees that Malfoy is different, and he wonders if he can be someone else, too. Featuring rumpled band shirts, poker games everyone hates, fumbling sex, and a Harry going a little mental over how wands even work.
