Drarry | 7k | EWE, Auror Harry, Unspeakable Draco, Heterochromia, Harry Was Rapidly Becoming Obsessed With Draco Malfoy, First Dates, Draco Got Hot
Summary:
Pale skin. Grey eyes. Sleek hair.
Some things are a constant in Harry’s life, and Malfoy is one of them. Until he isn’t—not the way he acts, and not the way he looks.
It might take Harry a little while to get used to it, but eventually he decides that change can be good, too.
Excerpt:
One of Draco’s eyes was blue, now.
Glacial, Ionian, as bright as a wide open summer sky. His eyes—one blue and startling, one grey and familiar—were just as sharp, and piercing, and the longer Harry looked, just as angry as they had always been. But the contrast, the change, had caught Harry unawares. Storm-grey and sunshine-blue. They were fascinating.
He had struggled to look away for the rest of that initial briefing. Malfoy had glared at first, when he caught Harry watching. Then he had frowned, those newly dark brows gathering in a formidable scowl, and fixed his two-tone gaze firmly on Robards as he lectured them. After a few minutes though, Malfoy’s expression smoothed into deliberate placidity, and he looked for all the world like he didn’t notice Harry’s scrutiny.
Read it on Ao3
This fic was written for @hpinspiredby - I was delighted to write and mod for it in it’s first year! This is the image that sparked the idea for the fic, and this post too.
Huge thanks to @tackytigerfic @maesterchill and @bonesliketambourines for being the beta-reading-cheer-leading team extraordinaire! ❤️
I never wanted this. Never planned for it, I mean. When I was a child, I never planned for anything; the mechanics of my life were so far beyond my control it never even occurred to me that I could.
I never chose what I wore, I never chose what I ate, I never chose what I learned.
Until Hagrid. Until Hogwarts. Until shining, heavy golden coins, and ‘anything from the trolley, dear’ , and ‘anything but Slytherin’’. But even that—even magic—couldn’t cut the threads tangled around my steps.
You didn’t get to choose much for yourself either. You had anything you wanted, everything you wanted, but never real choice. Not your friends, not your house, and not your loyalty.
I wonder, sometimes, what might have happened if either of us had been given free rein over ourselves earlier, what we might have done, who we might have been. But then I think of the options we had, and how we could have possibly chosen differently. And how, if we had, we might not have ended up here, so I don’t think on it often.
After the forest, after the end of it all, I went from drowning under the weight of a war to floating—unattached—in the days-weeks-months I had never planned for. Drifting felt no safer, no more solid than the drowning.
You were one of the first real choices I made, after it all. The first step I took that wasn’t set by prophecy or pressure. You were the first thing I wanted selfishly, and took.
You were the thread I followed—spider-silk fine, fragile—through the maze of learning how to daydream and hope for more than just survival.
You are raspberry jam, not strawberry. I am two sugars, and milk, and biscuits. We are blue sheets, and the apple tree in the garden, and last-minute trips to sunshine or snow depending on the coin-toss.
I never planned for this, until freedom meant you.
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Written for the monthly Drarry Discord Drabble Challenge - prompt was ‘journey’ and the word limit was 325.
It was Teddy’s new favourite book—a gift from Hermione—and he had demanded Harry read it to him. Harry knew the story, but didn’t expect this.
He had thought it would be sanitised, or self-aggrandising—that Malfoy would rewrite history. But it wasn’t. Reading it was like looking into someone’s chest, their heart clenching right in front of you.
Words glinted, and the delicately painted illustrations danced. The lightning child shone, and each friend he met did too. The Shadows didn’t have faces, not even the children; just murky darkness under hoods. Until the ending; then, their faces were revealed by the golden light blazing from the boy. Teddy had cheered—’look, Harry!’
The last page. Teach them to turn their face to the light.
Harry forgot, sometimes, that he saved his enemies, too.
Read it here on Ao3
Written for this month’s Drarry Discord Drabble Challenge, prompt ‘storybook’ and a limit of 131 words.
Drarry | 8k | Auror!Harry, Accidental Baby Acquisition, Fae Magic, Soft and Gentle, No Mpreg
Summary:
Harry still isn’t used to gifts, but this one is different.
A story of coming home, finding safe ground, and the wild courage of putting down roots. Leaving one life behind isn’t always a sacrifice, and sometimes the greatest good comes from embracing the people you love.
Excerpt:
He’d spent two months meeting Malfoy for drinks, then dinners, that quickly turned into hot, sensual nights and surprisingly comfortable mornings. They shared time with Teddy before he headed off for his first year at Hogwarts, took trips up to Hogsmeade, visited with the Weasleys, and went to the seaside again; the East Coast this time, where Teddy ran screaming into the water and Draco’s hair in the breeze was like so much tangled silk.
For those two months, Harry spent his weekdays counting down the hours until he could take his International Portkey back to drizzly, grey, wonderful Britain. It took those two months for Harry to realise that getting home a couple of weekends a month wasn’t enough. Not for Harry. Not for building anything real. Not for the future he thought, he hoped, might be waiting for him there. The future he felt ready for, now.
Read on Ao3
This was written for the wonderful @hd-wireless fest - which was an absolute delight to take part in!
@tackytigerfic and @porcelainheart3 were once again the dream beta team ❤️tidying up my enthusiasm with sharp eyes and love. This whole story was born from a middle of the night idea about Harry naming his child, which I had lingering in my phone notes until Wireless started and I realised I could self-prompt!
Drarry | Explicit | 26k | 7th Year Rewrite, Spy!Draco, Horcrux Hunt, Patronus Magic, Dreams, Angst with a Happy Ending, Intense first time feels.
Summary:
The war is on in earnest, and the hunt for the Horcruxes has begun. Harry receives help from the least expected person, and must decide whether he can trust the enemy he knows best.
A story of grey-tinged loyalty, the silver of trust in the darkness, the agony of courage, the unexpected richness of secrets, and the vast unknown of survival.
Excerpt:
It had begun during that strange see-saw year. His sixth at Hogwarts. Harry’s mind was a maze of grief, his heart a drum of fear every time he woke expecting to see the world through Voldemort’s eyes. His chest was a snapping monster, his body aching and coiled tight.
Harry spent his time torn between the daily reports of terror and danger haunting the country, and the flip of Ginny’s skirt as she leaned into Dean Thomas. Hermione and Ron were orbiting each other, firing shots over the schisms of Lavender Brown and the Slug Club. And amongst it all, Malfoy. A pale and glittering constant, a sliver of broken glass under Harry’s skin, itching and ingrown, never painful enough to risk excision, always causing enough hurt to irritate, and leaving the faintest trace of blood in his wake.
Harry had known Malfoy was Marked. Known he was working on something. Known that some evil had nurtured the thoughtless cruelty of the boy into the calculated violence of a man. Every time Harry watched him across the hall, his mouth twisted with the phantom pain of his nose crunching beneath Malfoy’s well-heeled boot, the memory of slickness in his throat, and the hot-penny taste of blood.
Harry had known that despite the whirl of Quidditch try-outs, homework, and ever more enthusiastic attempts from his apparent admirers to catch him naked in the shower, his own duty was to find out what Malfoy was doing, and stop him. His secret meetings with Dumbledore were enough to prove that to him. People had ignored the warning signs when Tom Riddle was at Hogwarts, and look where that got them all. Harry wouldn’t be making the same error of judgement.
It was only after the water that flooded Myrtle’s bathroom had flowered crimson around Malfoy’s gasping body that Harry realised. Only after it diluted cherry-blossom pink and filled the room as Snape incanted furiously over open wounds in pale flesh; only after blood he had spilled crept towards his cringing toes that Harry came to understand. He, too, could make mistakes.
Read the rest on Ao3
A gift for @bixgirl1 ❤️
In which I mull over notions of loyalty - and the difference between ideology and the personal. What Draco might do, what Draco might go through for someone he believes in.
Big thanks to my darlings @tackytigerfic and @porcelainheart3 for beta-reading!
A birthday gift for the lovely @maesterchill - inspired by THIS gorgeousness she created! ❤️
Drarry | 1k | E | summer holiday, EWE, dirty talk, soft and dirty feelings
Read on ao3
Draco blinked awake to bright sunlight glinting through the sheer curtains at the windows. Ridiculous. The hotel clearly didn’t want its clientele sleeping in on their holiday. But his ire settled as he stretched and rolled towards the glass doors leading to the balcony. Harry was out there, a hazy silhouette against a stark blue sky through the gauzy window-dressing, wearing only the green swimming trunks Draco had brought for himself. The sheets smelled of them, of their shared shampoo, and sweat, and sex. So Draco watched Harry and luxuriated in it, lazy and content in the knowledge that when they came back from dinner tonight the bed would be fresh and neat—ready for them to ruin it all over again.
It wasn’t their first holiday together, but whenever Draco took Harry abroad it felt special. An adventure without fear or danger, full of time and space and the excitement of the unknown, and even now Draco still felt like gloating that he was the one who got to show Harry the world in all of its sunlit splendour—to share these trips with him and carve gentler memories into the bedrock of their lives.
When they first got together, Draco found out that Harry had never been out of the country before; it was one of many galling facts that Draco excavated from the dust and stone of Harry’s admissions and silences during those early months of working each other out. During that time, Harry’s childhood had been revealed to be a study in lack, in not-having, in exclusion and isolation. They didn’t talk about it much, usually only when Harry got drunk and maudlin—red wine and cheap Firewhisky, inevitably—and Draco would sit quietly as Harry talked around the subject in circles, uncharacteristically indirect. Thankfully, Draco was adept in the language of avoidance, he could read between the lines. Harry would speak quietly, until he was whispering in the guttering candlelight. And then he would fall silent, and Draco would manoeuvre him out of his chair and up the stairs to their bedroom, and hold him.
Their first holiday had been catastrophic. They had been together for three months—three months of sex that left bruises, that felt like fighting played out with a fresh set of soft spots; of slowly untangling their history from their present (from their tentative thoughts of the future), of learning where their jagged edges met with tenderness, of sitting across a table of tea and toast and bitter-silver curls of smoke and smiles that made something inside of Draco ache and flutter.
Draco had chosen a ridiculously extravagant hotel in the tiny wizarding district of Venice—still wanting to impress, falling back on old habits that didn’t fit quite as well as they used to. It was August, the heat had been stifling, and the crowds spilling from gigantic Muggle cruise ships turned the plazas and tiny alleys into a heaving mass of sweaty flesh and flashing cameras. Draco had had an anxiety attack on the first morning (Harry had sat with him silently for hours when he got him back to their room, a heavy Nox around them, his shoulder steady), Harry had eaten something bad and vomited for the duration of their second night (Draco had stroked his hair away from his clammy forehead, flushed the toilet, conjured cool water for him to sip). Neither of them had been comfortable in the plush hotel suite; Harry simultaneously overawed and uncomfortable, Draco strangely ashamed of the excess he had been raised to expect. They had come back to London three days early.
But they had gotten better at their breaks, just like they had gotten better at everything else. They were both nothing if not determined, in all aspects of their life, and once they had decided that this—that they—were something worth fighting for, Draco had settled into the surety of Harry keeping up with him (keeping him).
The line of Harry’s jaw eventually became a more pressing concern than the residual twinge in Draco’s thighs, so he slipped out of bed and stepped into soft cotton to cover his nakedness. He walked past the crisp boundary of their room’s Cooling Charms, and rolled his shoulders when he was hit with a wall of warmth and light as he stepped into the bright mid-morning sunshine.
There was a breeze off the ocean, brine and ozone. But it was insufficient to offset the heat of the sun, or of Harry’s sweat-shining back as he leaned against the balcony and watched the sea and the sky mingle in blues and greens and the white-kissed curls of waves and clouds. Draco moved closer, watched as Harry cocked his head, listening to Dracos footsteps, as he came to stand behind him quietly. Draco could smell the salt on him—sweat and sea-water—and the dark curls behind Harry’s ears, at his nape, were shining with moisture. Draco wanted to taste them.
Instead, he hooked his chin over Harry’s shoulder. “Morning, nice swim?”
Harry hummed in the affirmative and leaned back—trusting, always so trusting—into Draco’s chest, a satisfied sigh gusting out of him when Draco wrapped him in his arms.
“Nicer if you came down with me later though.”
Draco kissed at his neck, savouring the sting of salt against his mouth, and looked over Harry’s shoulder to where his own pale hands stroked at Harry’s abdomen, darkly tanned already after just a couple of days in the sun. Bastard. All Draco had to show for his lounging on the beach was scattered freckles and the tingle of heat in his bones when he was in bed at night—though maybe, on reflection, that was just Harry being next to him.
“I could be convinced, if we’ve got time,” he murmured against Harry’s skin.
Harry raised his cigarette and inhaled deeply, his back pressing against Draco’s chest as his lungs filled, the faintest crackle of burning embers audible over the breeze. “Didn’t think we had anything planned for today.”
Draco slipped his hands lower, knocking aside Harry’s hand where he’d lazily wedged it in his trunks, and slipped his own fingers under the waistband to replace it. Harry’s exhalation was shuddering and smoky, and the scent of cloves on the air was so like home. Draco breathed it in as he ran his nose along the curve of Harry’s neck and licked delicately at the sweet softness of his earlobe.
“We hadn’t planned anything. But when I woke up and you were gone I may have formulated a small...ambition for the day.” He stroked, feather-light at the cut of Harry’s hip, and hid his smug grin in Harry’s hair at the resulting twitch.
Harry vanished his cigarette with a twist of his fingers and a delicious spark of magic—bright, and deep, and sparkling along Draco’s awareness—and turned in Draco’s arms, with his own smile dimpling at his cheeks. He nudged his hips against Draco’s, and huffed a laugh at the involuntary whine it drew. “Only one ambition for the day? You really are relaxing.”
He was losing ground; the way Harry dragged their bodies together, his hands firm at Draco’s waist, and the arrogant tilt of his head as he watched the rising flush Draco could feel heating his throat all combined with the heady knowledge that here on their balcony they were easily visible by anyone on the beach.
“Just one,” he managed to answer, in a voice that would have sounded steady to anyone but Harry (who knew Draco’s tells better than anyone, now). “I’m a simple man to please, my goals aren’t lofty.”
Harry snorted with laughter, and tucked his face down into Draco’s neck to bite, and suck, and urge him to elaborate with a questioning hum that buzzed against his skin. Safe from knowing green eyes, Draco grinned and tilted his head back to bask in the sunlight and Harry’s mouth. He slid his hands up Harry’s arms—radial, bicep, deltoid all firm and strong and tensile under his fingertips—and settled them at his nape, tangling in those sea-kissed curls to hold him close. Draco had the winning hand, and wanted a firm grip before Harry yielded to it.
“Mmm,” Draco hummed, casual and unaffected. “I woke up and before I even opened my eyes, I thought about the ache you’d left me with.” Harry stiffened against him. “An empty bed and an empty hole.”
“Draco,” Harry groaned against him, his tone of voice as good as a red rag to a bull.
“I can still feel it now,” Draco continued, breathing deeply to maintain his composure when Harry pushed his hands past the low-hanging waist of the joggers (Harry’s, of course—Draco always wore bespoke tailoring, but sometimes only the worn-soft cotton of Harry’s favourite clothes would satisfy him) and groped at his arse, broad palms and strong fingers and just the right side of painful. Draco ducked his head, and whispered into Harry’s ear, deliberately breathy and deep. “I can feel your come, trickling out of me as we speak. I’m wet.” He paused for effect, then dropped his well-crafted bomb. “You probably wouldn’t even need lube to stretch me out right now.”
Harry, action over words as ever, immediately palmed Draco’s cheeks apart and then one blunt fingertip was circling his hole—as wet and slick as promised—then pushing in with intent, only stopping when his knuckle nudged at Draco’s tender rim.
“Fuck.” Harry’s voice was ragged already, and Draco clenched around his finger in victory and helpless response to his touch.
“My plan exactly, Harry.”
❤️ to @tackytigerfic and @bonesliketambourines for keeping me in check!
A fic for @fae-vorite and the stunning art and concept she shared with us all! I hope you like this, darling! ❤️
Drarry | 2k | 8th Year, EWE, cursed!draco, when a curse is not a curse
Summary: Apologies, and homecoming, and forgiveness tucked into the petals of a rose.
Read it on Ao3
...
Malfoy had come back to Hogwarts different.
The war had tempered him. His trial had quenched the fire in his eyes. Rebuilding Hogwarts had smoothed the rough edges of his ego, his trauma, his regret.
They had all had a week off, before term began in September, after toiling under the summer sun to restore their school. Big magic and small. Levitating fresh stones to rebuild towers, spinning panes of glass out of sand from the shore of the Black Lake, learning how to cast spells without the fear of the Carrows.
Malfoy hadn’t spoken at first, not to anyone. Harry wondered if he’d been cursed mute, for a while, until he heard him approach Hermione with a grave face and a quiet voice.
“May I have a moment of your time, Granger?”
That was the first of many approaches he made over July and August. Harry watched him step towards them all; Ron, Neville, Ginny and Luna, and students Harry didn’t even know. Always serious, always respectful, always quiet. He spoke to almost everyone, even the teachers. But not to Harry. Not until the final day of their summer labours.
“Potter. May I—can we talk?”
Harry looked around at his friends—they wouldn’t judge him if he said no to Malfoy. Ron had told him that Malfoy had apologised to him when they spoke, had admitted familial responsibility for the generations old feud between their families, even offered restitution. Ron had accepted the end of the feud, but rebuffed any payment. He’d said Malfoy seemed to have grown a backbone, and a conscience. Ron thought he was still ‘a posh twat’, but that maybe, maybe Malfoy wasn’t as bad under it all than they had thought. Maybe even Malfoy had learned a thing or two about right and wrong, in the end.
Harry wasn’t sure he wanted to know what Malfoy would say to him, wasn’t sure what kind of apology he would receive, wasn’t even sure he had the strength to lose the stability of hating Malfoy.
(But he hadn’t hated him. Not since Sectumsempra. Not since the Astronomy tower. Not since ‘I can’t be sure’. He’d pitied him, despised his misplaced loyalty to his parents, wondered how he survived—but not hated. Harry wasn’t sure he was made for hate.)
“Alright, Malfoy. Have at it.”
Malfoy led him to the shade of the big oak tree, away from the rest of the group, near the shore of the lake. He looked anxious, clenching his jaw and fussing at the cuff of his robes.
“Potter, I would like to formally apologise for… Well. For everything, I suppose. For my own actions, for my father’s too. From our first meeting I have been an example of everything I now understand to be rotten at the heart of my family, and—”
Harry interrupted him. “I don’t want an apology from your father or your family, Malfoy. You can only really speak for yourself.”
Malfoy swallowed, hard. “I am sorry. If I had ‘just’ been a bully that would be bad enough, but I wasn’t that. I was cruel to you and your friends, and then dangerous and violent too. I could blame it on my upbringing, the prejudice I was raised to believe, but—” he lifted his chin, steeling himself for something. “But it started because I was jealous and angry, and that’s inexcusable. So. I apologise.”
Harry wasn’t sure what to say to that, he didn’t think he was ready to digest it, really. What do you say when someone apologises to you, but you don’t want to forgive them?
“Thanks. For saying sorry.” That would do, wouldn’t it?
But Malfoy didn’t walk away, or anything helpful like that. He reached into his robes instead, and pulled out a tiny silver box, engraved with delicate curlicues that glinted in the late summer sun.
“This is for you. It’s not a gift, you understand. It’s yours by right.” He held it out to Harry, and for want of a better option, Harry took it. “My mother...took things from the Black household when she was younger. For her own use. But these were Sirius Black’s diaries, and I understand she never managed to read them. Anhaga boxes are infamous for their loyalty to their owner.”
It was like a punch to the gut. This tiny box, no bigger than his palm, held Sirius’ secrets, his life recorded in his own words.
“If she couldn’t—how can I?”
“Blood, I imagine. That kind of privacy is pricey. But you’re his godson. That’s family, more than any relation he had to my mother. It will work.”
And with that, Malfoy turned and walked away, leaving Harry in the dappled shade with a handful of Sirius’ precious thoughts.
Malfoy had been right. A drop of blood was all it took to enlarge the Anhaga box, and to open it. Out spilled parchment, notebooks, letters, folded posters and flyers, and dogeared photographs. Most of it was in Sirius’ own scratchy handwriting, but some of the letters were in James’ scrawl. Harry’s dad had written them to Sirius. Moments of youthful joy and intimacy, secrets and mundanities, quotes and song lyrics, newly discovered spells, and stories of flings and firsts, shared between best friends. Brothers by choice.
Harry had wept, and read, and laughed, and read, and for the first time in his life he knew what his father thought about Quidditch teams, and Bowie, and how no hair potions worked on him either (much to Sirius’ delight), and that he had adored Harry’s mother—adored her, had written long paragraphs doubting his worthiness of her time, of his hope she might smile at him, that she might want him back, one day, no doubt seeking the reassurance and commiseration from Sirius.
It hurt, but he read them all. It hurt, but it was a gift. It hurt, but Harry touched each piece of paper like a talisman, like a blessing.
The first of September was bitter-sweet, but alongside the taste of loss, Harry was excited for his last year at Hogwarts. Returning to his first real home, with his first—and best—friends by his side. No doom lay ahead of him, no danger. Just homework, and exams, and treacle tart.
And Harry had never dreamed of much, not much more than space and light and safety and people who loved him, but he had found them all when he walked through the great oak doors of Hogwarts, and not even a war—not even dying—had taken them away.
They might be adults now, grasping onto the fading threads of childhood before they launched themselves into the unknown, but Harry thought they’d earned this. A year’s respite from the world. A warm interlude to relax, to lick their wounds, to dance in the stark joy of life, to take back that stolen year.
The Welcome Feast was stupendous, and Harry’s face hurt from grinning so widely when Professor McGonagall stood to give her first speech as Hogwarts Headmistress. Seamus blew up a goblet of spiked Pumpkin juice, Ginny snogged Dean, and Harry was flanked by Ron and Hermione—warm, and full, and content.
He was even happy the next morning, waking up to cold flagstones and a shared bathroom, Ron’s monosyllabic pre-breakfast grunts, and Neville’s rather excitable Flaming Geranium (he was pretty sure the House Elves could fix the curtains around his bed.) He was happy striding through the halls down to breakfast, head and shoulders above the tiny little first years who were more interested in finding their way to class than looking at his forehead. He was happy until he heard the whispers about Malfoy, and glanced reflexively across the room to the Slytherin table.
Malfoy was different. Still pale, still silver-eyed. But his skin was marred by dark twisting shapes, writhing against his skin. Cursed were the whispers. But Harry had never seen a curse like this. So he watched.
“Harry, don’t you think—oh, never mind.” Hermione broke off, sighed, and turned to talk to Parvati.
His first lesson was Potions—he wasn’t sure he wanted to be an Auror, but he wanted the option so he was back in Slughorn’s class—it was an eighth year only class with all of the houses mixed, so of course Malfoy was there too. He sat with Terry Boot, and seemed to work well enough with him. Harry followed him to the supply cupboard when he went to fetch ingredients, and took the opportunity to look closer at the strange marks on his skin. They were briars, curling around his wrists, his hands, trailing up his throat, to the line of his jaw. Green-black and thorny, they seemed to move with him, breathe with him, even as the points of their barbs pressed against pale skin.
“New tattoos?” He asked. He still wasn’t sure what to make of Malfoy’s apology, of his quietude, of the tumult of confused emotion that stirred in Harry’s chest whenever he was confronted with him. The feelings that boiled inside him, worse than ever, after he gave Harry Sirius’s papers.
Malfoy sighed. Clearly Harry wasn’t the first to ask. “No, Potter, not a tattoo.”
“A curse, then?”
“Of a sort, yes.” He reached past Harry’s face to take a jar of lacewing fly. “You can have these when I’ve taken a couple.”
And then he was gone, leaving Harry confused and lacewing-less in an empty cupboard.
At lunch, Harry squeezed in beside Hermione and her towering pile of books, the question spilling out before he gave it conscious thought.
“Have you seen the things on Malfoy? They look like—”
“Harry, really? It’s been one day.” She was laughing as she cut him off, though, and so was Ron next to her, even though he pretended to be very interested in his plate. “Look, before we start this, are you suspicious of him, or are you just curious?”
He paused, his sandwich halfway to his mouth, and thought for a moment. “I think I’m just curious.”
She sighed, but smiled as she answered him. “Well, okay then. I think it’s a Motus Charm.”
“Not a—“
“No, not a curse. Though, functionally, I suppose…”
She trailed off, and Harry could sense an incoming debate about the differences between spell classifications and the intention of the caster (all eighth years had been enrolled on a new course in magical ethics, and the debate across the first class that morning had already been fiery) so he interrupted her before she could get on a roll. “Hermione, what does it do?”
“Well, it creates markings on a person’s skin that give an insight into their emotional state. It gives movement to what moves them.”
“So...those thorns are how Malfoy feels?” Harry wasn’t sure how he felt about that. About Malfoy feeling, well, restricted by vines, pressed against by thorns. As far as metaphors went, it didn’t look good. Worse still, Harry wasn’t sure how he felt about the world getting to see it all. It was bad enough when the papers made up nonsense about how Harry was ‘coping emotionally’ post-war—he couldn’t imagine the agony of them actually knowing for sure.
“It appears that way. I just wonder who cast it on him, he didn’t have them during the summer, and apparently he had them at the welcome feast—so it wasn’t done by a student.” Hermione was frowning, the same crease between her brows when she didn’t agree with something. She hadn’t said much about what Malfoy talked to her about when he apologised, just that he was ‘thorough and straightforward’. Since then she’d not been friendly toward him, but she’d certainly been civil. Apparently he’d made enough of an impact on her that she disapproved of him being cursed—or charmed—like this.
“Can it be cured?”
“According to Flitwick, it fades naturally, once the witch or wizard under the charm begins to actually talk about their feelings. Or, at least, begins to feel understood. So, it depends, I suppose.”
Harry looked over at Malfoy, he was flipping through a book, sipping tea, and studiously ignoring the stares he was receiving from half the student body. The briars were slow moving, more settled than when Harry had spoken to him during their Potions class. Maybe that meant he was calmer. Maybe that meant that Harry stressed him out.
But as he stood and left the Slytherin table, those coils of dark vines and thorns writhed again across his pale skin. Harry was up and out of his seat, following him into the corridor beyond, without a second thought. Behind him, Harry could hear Ron muttering something to Hermione about ‘feelings’ and ‘curiosity’, but he didn’t have time to stop and question it. Not when Malfoy was already ahead of him, and Harry wanted to catch him before the press of the rest of the school filled the halls.
“Malfoy! Wait!”
And Malfoy did wait, which was weird enough that Harry almost did an about turn and scurried back to the Gryffindor table. He stopped and turned as Harry jogged up to him, and he looked calm and collected—his face impassive and carefully blank—but the barbed stems that licked up to his jaw, and curled over his knuckles, were black and razor-sharp.
“I wanted—” What had Harry wanted? To ask, to interrogate, to find out who, and when, and why? But looking at Malfoy now, and the discomfort written on his skin for all to see, Harry suddenly felt disinclined to ask him to expose himself further. So, no questions. For now. “I wanted to say thanks. For Sirius’ things. It was—I really—You didn't have to.”
Malfoy rolled his eyes, but the thorns at his throat seemed to lose their keen edge. “No, I suppose I didn’t. But you’re welcome. I’m glad it opened for you.”
“And about your apology,” Harry continued, eyeing the litmus-test of foliage on Malfoy’s skin. “I wasn’t sure how I felt, in the summer, when you said sorry.”
“It’s okay Potter, I know I don’t have any right to—”
He broke off, silent and staring as Harry stepped forward and held out his hand, and for long moments Harry wondered if he might not take it. If this time, it would be Malfoy leaving Harry with his offer of connection hanging, rejected, between them. But then Malfoy reached out his own arm and took Harry’s hand in his, and it was pale and wand-calloused, and his fingers were slimmer than Harry’s, but his grip was firm and steady, and warm.
“Apology accepted, Malfoy. I reckon even we might deserve a fresh start this year, don’t you?”
Malfoy didn’t speak; but before Harry’s eyes, those dark vines slowed, ripened into a spring green, and flowers bloomed on Malfoy’s skin. Pale roses unfurled, soft and blushing at their centre. One curved around the back of Malfoy’s hand, where Harry still held firm, and another blossomed at the spot where his collar was loose at his throat.
Maybe Harry didn’t need Malfoy’s words. Words had always been hard for them. For now, maybe he could learn to understand him through thorns and petals.
❤️ to @tackytigerfic for the always-excellent beta read, and @slytherco for the cheer-reading!
Drarry | 402 words | Post-war, EWE, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Draco POV
Draco understood worship. He understood unquestioning belief. He had grown within the walls of veneration and glorification of the past, of the few, of the pure. He understood the lifting up of one man above others, the blood-wet sweetness of promised elevation, of life eternal.
Draco understood sacrifice. He understood the swallowing down of horror. He had yielded his own child-soft flesh to a cause greater than himself, mighty and right. He understood the debasement of self, the prostration before power that cracked reality (cracked his heart, his mind, but not—not—his soul.)
Draco understood betrayal. He understood the glint of a blade in the dark. He had held it, wielded it; he had sheathed the edge of it in his own body, an intimate wounding, invisible, mortal. He understood the sick terror of disbelief, stone to sand to dust, ash in his mouth (turning his back, walking away.)
Traitor. Apostate. Viper.
He had found a Muggle church after the end of it all. Visited daily. Watched. Listened. Learned. Their Christ, nails driven into pale marble palms, thorns tangled in hair, a grimace of agony. He learned about sin, about penance, about confession and repentance. He learned about dogma and he understood.
They sang, sometimes, the Muggles in their church. They whispered, murmured, wept. Peace be with you. And also with you. There was peace now, but he didn’t know what to do with it. His peace was unearned, and he was undeserving.
Draco understood betrayal. Silver-sharp incisions, his mother’s tears. Every tie, umbilical-essential, cut without a word. Every hope and expectation discarded, every sacred cow slaughtered. He understood rejection, repudiating every poison-soaked lie he had been fed since he had first been nursed.
Draco understood sacrifice. He understood what it meant to tell your truth. Every rock upturned, blind and crawling secret parts of himself bared to the light. But this light was golden, sun-hot, the bringer of spring—a cleansing fire. He understood surrender, showing his soft belly, his scars, his hope; laying down his pride like a dull blade, useless in the face of the never-defeated.
Draco understood worship. He understood the shattering pain of epiphany. He lived now in the sprawling starlit expanse of experience, orbiting a storm of power and righteous rage. He understood making offerings, falling to his knees and receiving salt-sweet sacrament from the one who looked down at him with terrible, encompassing, forgiveness.
