An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 13/13
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Characters: Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Gawain Robards, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Blaise Zabini, Hermione Granger
Additional Tags: Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Post-Hogwarts, Auror Harry Potter, Mobster Draco Malfoy, Bodyguard Harry Potter, Witness Draco Malfoy, Protective Custody, Enemies to Lovers, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Forced Proximity, mafia, Political Intrigue, Crimes & Criminals, Organized Crime, Explicit Sexual Content, Magically Powerful Harry Potter, Wandless Magic, magic kink, Healing, Possessive Harry Potter, Serious Injuries, Happy Ending, Guns, Art, Fanart, Illustrations, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Police Brutality, Duelling, Voyeurism, Drinking, Past Drug Use, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Corruption, Auror Corruption, Blood and Injury, Murder, Gun Violence, Face Punching, POV Harry Potter, Hotel Sex, Bars and Pubs, Masturbation in Shower, Hung Harry Potter, Blow Jobs, Semi-Public Sex, Face-Fucking, Hand Jobs, Frottage, Rimming, Anal Fingering, Dirty Talk, Mirror Sex, H/D Erised 2020, Hiding vulnerabilities with audacious displays of confidence and sluttiness
After the war, wizarding society is oppressed by a new kind of plague—an organised crime group calling itself the Family.
When Harry Potter goes to interrogate a potential witness, he doesn’t expect to end up on the run again, trying to keep Draco Malfoy alive, while a manhunt follows in their footsteps, adamant on eliminating the one witness that could ruin everything.
In which Harry and Draco learn that the way to each other might just have to go through the dingiest hotels in Britain.
In a split second, Harry decides to engage him instead of changing the topic. Whatever’s about to happen, the buildup has gone far enough and if facing the music means resolving whatever’s been going on between them, Harry is ready for the grand denouement. He crosses his arms and stares Draco down. “You think this is a game,” he says.
There’s a challenge in his voice that Draco immediately picks up on, like a cat arching its back in warning, seconds before attacking with a vicious hiss. “I wonder,” he says in a low voice. “What is your goal here? What does the great Harry Potter, protector of the little ones, the saviour of all that is holy, get out of this?” he asks and takes another step so they’re face-to-face, speaking in a soft, breathy voice. “Well, Potter? What is it in the end? Sex or power?”
Somewhere deep underneath the volatile fog of arousal, confusion, and lurching want, Harry wants to shake Draco into reason. That binary system of seeing the world is so far beneath the whirlwind of gestures and emotions between them, beneath that messy tangle of glances, touches, and sleepless nights, his pragmatism feels like a lie, a smokescreen that has been suffocating them both, perhaps for even longer than these five weeks. It’s so much more complicated and fucked up than ‘sex or power’, it’s like trying to scream with your throat clogged up with dirt, like trying to sop up a river with a sponge.
Harry’s heart forgets how to follow any rhythm. “Do you always chalk everything up to one of the two?”
“And people say you’re single-minded,” Draco says with a tsk.
“Maybe you should stop listening to people,” Harry replies.
“I just might,” Draco says, so quietly Harry can feel his warm breaths tickle his skin, “but I believe that gets me a question,” Draco croaks.
Draco exhales. Slowly, deliberately. His heady smell permeates the air, stronger than any detergent could ever be. And then he asks: “Did you listen?”
And just like that, Harry’s walls crumble into dust.
Draco stands too close and smells too amazing for Harry to muster a single word. He can’t look at Draco, can’t allow himself to follow every curl and wave in his hair, to trace the cupid’s bow of his mouth, or to say yes when all his reason is screaming at him to deny it. But to Harry’s complete horror, Draco can read him like a book.
“Tell me,” Draco whispers. He comes closer, so close their noses are almost touching and Harry could move just a fraction of an inch and their lips would touch, too. He pushes Harry a little, a weak, shaky nudge to his shoulder and Harry’s completely powerless to resist it.
He takes a step back, and another one, and Draco follows, until Harry’s legs are flush against the washing machine that’s now running at full speed. “Come on,” Draco murmurs and nudges his nose against Harry’s. He inhales, hard, and places his palm flat in the middle of Harry’s chest, right over his Avada scar. His heart is pounding so fast, Draco must surely feel it through the thin cotton of his top but all Harry can focus on are pale eyelashes, how light they are against Draco’s skin, and how the sight of them slowly disappears under the weight of Harry’s own eyelids. His breath speeds up as Draco rubs his nose, and cheek, and lips against his face, searching, wanting, his exhales hot against Harry’s burning skin.
Draco digs his fingers into his shirt and twists the fabric, and Harry’s left breathless when their lips catch against one another, not really kissing, just prolonging the moment, and it has no right be so arousing but Harry feels like he might explode if he doesn’t taste Draco, and touch him, and be the only person he looks at, even if it’s just for a while. It’s weeks of pent-up desire compressed into one moment; it’s them, standing in an empty launderette at three in the morning under sharp, fluorescent lights, their electric buzz and the machine’s steady churn the only sounds in the background.
And it’s Draco. Half-hard against the jut of Harry’s hip, breathing harshly into his mouth, pushing him questioningly, urgently, asking permission to cross the last bridge with trembling fingers and wet, soft lips.
They stand like that for a few long seconds, just breathing the same air, and Harry can feel Draco’s hips move; it’s a fraction of an inch, a small, deliberate shiver of a muscle and then, Harry’s lost.
