death does funny things to those left behind. when narcissa dies, malfoy stops sleeping. harry has to do something about it. || 8th year || harry pov || ♡
“… To die, to sleep; / To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; / For in that sleep of death what dreams may come / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, / Must give us pause…” (Hamlet, act iii, scene i — Shakespeare) || ⋆˙⟡
drarry | word count: ~1.6k | cw: minor character death, grief, purple prose, ‘excessive’ hand-holding
_ _ _
Malfoy stops sleeping after Narcissa dies.
Harry hadn’t known she was dying, might’ve— if he had— done, dunno, something.
They say that she passed quietly, uneventfully. An unfortunate stroke of fate— that she paled, that she withered. Unsalvageable. That her heart simply stopped.
They say that Malfoy had found her. In the Manor, there had been no one else to do it.
The sleeping thing, or rather, the not sleeping thing, Harry shouldn’t know— could be conjecture, if he said it aloud and someone questioned— meaning: it was obvious enough.
But it wasn’t conjecture.
Or it had been, initially, but then Malfoy’s undereyes went purple, thistle, and he stopped speaking in class, stopped with lessons or assignments, and his robes went limp and rumpled and he didn’t seem to care, maybe didn’t notice at all— so then there was the cloak, making shadow, and the Dungeon and the eighth year dormitory, (four beds, empty but for one boy), and Harry had to keep so, so quiet because Malfoy didn’t sleep.
He scribbled at his desk (nonsense Harry could hardly make out— Malfoy’s penmanship was all script and scratch, dashed lines and ink blots, was always that way, had been, even before), then he paced a good long while, up and down the room and back again, not a word, no muttering, (might’ve been better, if he had, muttered that is, might’ve proved something still human, still living within him— as it were—) just drawn shoulders, pressed lip, and bare feet on the cold, cold stone, (a rug rolled up against one wall, shoved there, heavy, pulled somehow from beneath the bedposts).
Then the bed itself.
He’d lain there, eyes open, then closed, only to open again, hands faint and folded at his middle, (corpse, Harry’s mind had supplied, and he gave the thought a shove before it could settle), and his breath never met sleep.
The darkest dip of night slowly tugged itself into dawn, daylight pulling covers, opening curtains, spilling in the thinnest line of sunshine through the narrow slat in thick stone, and by that time Harry was dead weight, dead on his feet, hardly half conscious, and swaying.
Eventually Malfoy pulled himself from the bed, toward lavatory, and when he did, Harry slid from the room, traversed halls of cheery first years and bedraggled third years, OWLs prep haunting young scholars, and then into the Tower, into bed, where, classes collateral, he crumpled and slept (and slept and slept).
He couldn’t understand it. So he went again.
The same. Scribbling, pacing, lying down.
Sleepless.
The third time confirmed pattern, committed the odd rituals to routine, resolute.
Malfoy was a ghost in all the ways that didn’t matter. He was threadbare and absent and far-off. He lingered, unsettling and unwelcome, a powdered jasmine perfume, caught in the back of the throat.
Harry doesn’t know what to do with it, only that he has to do something.
Three weeks after Harry’s first clandestine visit, Malfoy collapses in a stairwell after supper. Harry isn’t the first to find him, but he is the first to respond— wrapping him in a soft Rennervate that doesn’t pull him conscious but steadies the harp-sharp thrum of his heart, evens his shallow breathing. Harry’d scoop him in his arms, but Malfoy is all leg, unwieldy, so the best he can do, short of a Leviosa, is pull him over his shoulder. He weighs more than you’d think and less than he ought.
Half of Harry is ready to haul Malfoy into Gryffindor Tower, tuck him beneath his own bedsheets— inexplicable, (insane)— but he doesn’t do that, resists the impulse, if only just. He finds the infirmary and Madame Pomfrey, and she fusses in that steady way she has, a woman who’s seen a thousand broken bones over, who’s pulled more witches and wizards, (more children), from the brink of death than anyone would ever enjoy accounting for.
Malfoy sleeps, at last, (sort of; unwilling), and when Harry, nine hours in, follows him over the precipice, his face folds forward into the nest of his arms, elbows a press in the mattress to the left of Malfoy’s warm thigh. It’s sleep, if you can call it that, for either of them— fitful and desperate and empty.
Later, Malfoy hardly has to move before Harry’s awake, forehead pulled upward from the cool cotton of the utilitarian bedsheets.
Malfoy’s eyes open. They’re tired, rimmed red, crinkled, and they trace the rafters as he shifts his shoulders. Harry wonders if he recognizes the room by the ceiling alone, by the week he spent here, sliced- and then unsliced-open a mere two years ago. (Two years— a moment. A miniature eternity.)
Eventually, his gaze turns.
If he’s surprised to find Harry at his bedside, it doesn’t show. If anything at all, it doesn’t show. Those steel eyes, sunken, do one long blink, before his head dips back again, seeking the pillow and settling on it.
Harry feels Malfoy’s fingers flex. Pauses, processing. Feels his fingers. He glances down, discovers his own hand wrapped loosely around them, his palm crowding pale knuckles, holding somehow too tight and not tight enough. He tugs back, sharp, like burned, like steam or Fiendfyre have found him.
His hands huddle in his hoodie pocket. He forces focus back to Malfoy’s face.
The absence of him is still present, but his pallor’s faded. Which is to say— the faintest traces of pink touch his cheekbones, his chin, the tops of his ears, the tip of his nose. Pale peach, apricot.
Shying from something too sincere, (something that’d make him scatter), Harry offers: “You slept for forever.”
There’s a wobble that crosses the musculature of him, an almost-nothing that sends an almost-flicker to the corner of his mouth. Harry swears he sinks further into the pillows.
Malfoy slowly lifts his hands, and Harry sees as they move toward his torso, ready to fold again above his stomach, at his center, just shy of the beating beacon of his heart. He remembers the sight, sleepless and still, and refuses outright the false face of fatality. It doesn’t take thought, (too many things with him, Hermione says, take too little— thoughtless— though she’s said it less, of late, lax and forgiving), only instinct. Only the certainty that he won’t see him lie like a dead thing.
Hand finds hand.
A tangle of fingers, tugged to the side of him, resting on the bed.
Malfoy’s eyes go wakeful, a little, light coming on in the house behind them, hospitality, or at least inhabitance, trying to take shape, to sweep the floors and smooth the tablecloth.
His gaze goes sideways. Sees Harry. Sees.
“Potter,” he says, and his voice is a straight shot— Firewhiskey, arrow, to gut, to heart, to whatever feeling thing it can find. It creaks, soft and rasping, un-posh in its un-use.
“Yeah,” Harry replies, and it’s a question that fails to find the right tone, more a breath than a word, more automation than answer.
Malfoy lets his hand be held, taps a beat to the back of Harry’s, the scarred skin there, his thumb obscuring the word lies, revealing it, obscuring it again.
“You snore,” he says, short (by mere degrees) of judgment, landing instead somewhere closer to revelation, edging a slight step toward taunt.
“I do not,” Harry offers, wavering warmth rolling throatward. His free hand lands with an indignant push at Malfoy’s knee, his thigh, the tender juncture between, itself tensing beneath the touch. Then easing as he keeps it there, palm a loose splay.
Malfoy nods, an adamant thing for all the exhaustion of him, weakened and weary. “Loudly,” he expounds. He coughs against the effort, then whispers, still: “You snore loudly.”
Harry smiles, a small slip, in spite of himself, and tips his face forward again, cheek landing on the bedspread.
“Well. I’m going to have another nap.”
Malfoy’s wrist is there, just before his face, and he has to resist the muddled urge to tug it forward, to press it to his forehead, his nose, his mouth. The blue-green veins there beneath his skin tangle something in Harry’s stomach he’s unsure how to relieve. He clenches his eyes shut.
“If you want to avoid my snoring,” he says, sly, linens bunching beneath the curl of his hand, drawing closer, “then you’ll have to fall asleep first.” He opens one eye, watchful.
Malfoy hums, shifts, slowly pulls his fingers from Harry’s grasp. There’s a ticker at Harry’s middle that goes into a mortified sort of free fall.
But Malfoy’s hand doesn’t go far. The calloused ends of his fingers fix on the frame of Harry’s glasses. He lifts them from his nose, works them from the careful catch of his ears. He folds them, after a cursory glance, examining, and sets them bedside.
The quiet grows temperamental a moment, the quiver of all the unfounded proximity leaving color at Malfoy’s collar, just visible over the unfastened top button of his shirt.
His hand dips forward again, cutting tension with tenacity, taking hold, slight, of the curl falling in Harry’s face. He traces it, the unsteady spiral, gone long, more intentional now than in the handful of years before.
“When I wake up,” he says, soft, sound scratching. He swallows. “You’ll still be here.” It come like a statement, but the tail of it begs response, covered query.
“Yeah.”
Malfoy tugs the curl before letting it go.
“Swear it, Potter.”
“Solemnly swear.” He takes Malfoy’s fingers, still tremoring, fatigued. Tugs them close. “I’ll be here.”
He isn’t sure there’s more to say, and Malfoy must concur. After a beat— a heart-wrought moment that could steal the breath of twenty— he sinks in the sheets. Shuffles. Rolls his shoulders. Shuts his eyes.
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lessons in magi-horticulture | no. 1: mind your manners.
[ when all magical woodland weather goes wayside, harry & draco are the unlikely duo sent to deal with it. they try not to get too wet. ☁︎‧₊˚☔︎︎ || for the @drarrymicrofic prompt: wet || summer bingo - weather event, mystery, unusual jobs, present tense ]
drarry | word count: ~760 | ⋆˙⟡
_ _ _
The Forbidden Forest behaves exactly like every other they’ve investigated.
At the treeline, (one side open field, the wild barley and sawgrass of Hogwarts’ outer grounds; the other, the shaded woodland, wilded and waiting), the temperature drops.
Stepping inside means rain. Not mist, not drizzle— downpour. Hard, heavy, and inexplicably heft from the weather on the opposite side.
Harry slips back into the sunlight, rivulets running down the ridge of his nose, dripping indiscriminately from his curls. He pulls his glasses from his face, dries them on his shirt, itself tucked inside, safe beneath his robes.
He glances up and Draco is stricken by unfiltered green.
“What do you make of it?” Harry asks.
Draco drags his gaze away, tree-ward.
“Hard to say, from this side. Seems rather like the rest of them though.”
He points to the nearest plants, then gestures at the vegetation further in.
“See how the foliage at the edge has grown thicker? Rather like a barrier, don’t you think? While if you look beyond them, rather than dense, they’re tall.”
He turns and finds Harry’s spectacles back where they belong.
He prompts: “What do you suppose that means?”
Harry pauses a moment, eyes flicking back into the depths of the forest, trees and undergrowth all dark and verdant and humming like a harp-string.
“They’re reaching,” he answers.
Draco inclines his chin, approval tugging at his mouth.
“I’d wager. The question, then, is what for?”
“You have a theory, I expect,” Harry says, hands tucking into the damp of his cloak pockets.
Draco huffs, flicking his wand without a sideways look, the, “Exaresco,“ slipping quietly beneath his breath before he goes on:
“A few, actually. Though I’m hesitant to explicate them before I can delve a bit further into the results of the field labs.”
Harry rolls his shoulders appreciatively beneath his newly-dry robes, the feel of Draco’s magic like soft static on his skin, but gratitude doesn’t make him less gauche.
The toe of his boot finds the very edge of the phenomena, traces the exact line where dirt becomes mud.
“Sounds like you don’t have much of a clue at all, then,” he says.
Something temperamental tics in his jaw, juvenile and goading in spite of himself. The things is, there have been rumors. His gaze lifts, gleaming. “Thought Neville taught you better than that.”
Warmth sparks angrily in Draco’s middle, settles at the soft spot behind his ears— finds other reasons to crawl up his throat.
To the first point:
“A bold accusation from a Ministry man reduced to imploring my assistance,” he says, grin lofty and sharp enough to give away the Malfoy of him.
He tempers it, wets his lips. Harry’s eyes drop, a mere moment, to the movement. It’s enough.
“And, for the record—,” the grin sidles back, the shape of it gone something smaller, insinuating, “—Neville is an excellent teacher.”
It’s Harry’s turn to flush, and when Draco steps toward him, closing distance, he falls back one step, two. His heartbeat goes frantic, unhelpful.
“What are you—?”
Draco’s hands find him, fist in the front of his robes, and
shove.
Harry stumbles backwards, and suddenly there’s ivy at his ankles, brambles and knotgrass behind him, below, knocking him from his feet.
The rain slides like a heavy sheet over everything, slaps against the earth and anything between without reticence.
He disentangles himself with effort, entirely inelegant, catching thorns in his palms and along the edge of his cloak for his troubles.
When he manages back through the veil, on hand and knee, soaked through and shivering, the slant of sunshine is almost mocking.
“Malfoy,” he snaps, “what the fuck?”
Draco doesn’t laugh, but he comes very close.
“Terribly sorry,” he says, turning on his heel and striding back toward the castle. He calls over his shoulder, “You see, my teaching methods are rather more unorthodox.”
He rounds, just once more, taking in the sight, wand twirling absently in his fingers. Harry’s scowl sparks a familiar feeling in his chest, and the delight at his fury should perhaps cause more concern. Alas.
He casts the spells in quick succession:
“Expelliarmus,”
& as soon as the wand is free from Harry’s palm:
“Accio.”
The holly snaps to his fingers with a satisfying immediacy.
He doesn’t intend to keep it, of course. In truth, he’ll likely hand it over before they even reach the Headmistress’s office to report.
But in the meantime:
“If you’re so concerned with pedagogy, Potter,” he hums, “I suppose you ought to figure out how to dry yourself.”
lessons in magi-horticulture | no. 1: mind your manners.
[ when all magical woodland weather goes wayside, harry & draco are the unlikely duo sent to deal with it. they try not to get too wet. ☁︎‧₊˚☔︎︎ || for the @drarrymicrofic prompt: wet || summer bingo - weather event, mystery, unusual jobs, present tense ]
drarry | word count: ~760 | ⋆˙⟡
_ _ _
The Forbidden Forest behaves exactly like every other they’ve investigated.
At the treeline, (one side open field, the wild barley and sawgrass of Hogwarts’ outer grounds; the other, the shaded woodland, wilded and waiting), the temperature drops.
Stepping inside means rain. Not mist, not drizzle— downpour. Hard, heavy, and inexplicably heft from the weather on the opposite side.
Harry slips back into the sunlight, rivulets running down the ridge of his nose, dripping indiscriminately from his curls. He pulls his glasses from his face, dries them on his shirt, itself tucked inside, safe beneath his robes.
He glances up and Draco is stricken by unfiltered green.
“What do you make of it?” Harry asks.
Draco drags his gaze away, tree-ward.
“Hard to say, from this side. Seems rather like the rest of them though.”
He points to the nearest plants, then gestures at the vegetation further in.
“See how the foliage at the edge has grown thicker? Rather like a barrier, don’t you think? While if you look beyond them, rather than dense, they’re tall.”
He turns and finds Harry’s spectacles back where they belong.
He prompts: “What do you suppose that means?”
Harry pauses a moment, eyes flicking back into the depths of the forest, trees and undergrowth all dark and verdant and humming like a harp-string.
“They’re reaching,” he answers.
Draco inclines his chin, approval tugging at his mouth.
“I’d wager. The question, then, is what for?”
“You have a theory, I expect,” Harry says, hands tucking into the damp of his cloak pockets.
Draco huffs, flicking his wand without a sideways look, the, “Exaresco,“ slipping quietly beneath his breath before he goes on:
“A few, actually. Though I’m hesitant to explicate them before I can delve a bit further into the results of the field labs.”
Harry rolls his shoulders appreciatively beneath his newly-dry robes, the feel of Draco’s magic like soft static on his skin, but gratitude doesn’t make him less gauche.
The toe of his boot finds the very edge of the phenomena, traces the exact line where dirt becomes mud.
“Sounds like you don’t have much of a clue at all, then,” he says.
Something temperamental tics in his jaw, juvenile and goading in spite of himself. The things is, there have been rumors. His gaze lifts, gleaming. “Thought Neville taught you better than that.”
Warmth sparks angrily in Draco’s middle, settles at the soft spot behind his ears— finds other reasons to crawl up his throat.
To the first point:
“A bold accusation from a Ministry man reduced to imploring my assistance,” he says, grin lofty and sharp enough to give away the Malfoy of him.
He tempers it, wets his lips. Harry’s eyes drop, a mere moment, to the movement. It’s enough.
“And, for the record—,” the grin sidles back, the shape of it gone something smaller, insinuating, “—Neville is an excellent teacher.”
It’s Harry’s turn to flush, and when Draco steps toward him, closing distance, he falls back one step, two. His heartbeat goes frantic, unhelpful.
“What are you—?”
Draco’s hands find him, fist in the front of his robes, and
shove.
Harry stumbles backwards, and suddenly there’s ivy at his ankles, brambles and knotgrass behind him, below, knocking him from his feet.
The rain slides like a heavy sheet over everything, slaps against the earth and anything between without reticence.
He disentangles himself with effort, entirely inelegant, catching thorns in his palms and along the edge of his cloak for his troubles.
When he manages back through the veil, on hand and knee, soaked through and shivering, the slant of sunshine is almost mocking.
“Malfoy,” he snaps, “what the fuck?”
Draco doesn’t laugh, but he comes very close.
“Terribly sorry,” he says, turning on his heel and striding back toward the castle. He calls over his shoulder, “You see, my teaching methods are rather more unorthodox.”
He rounds, just once more, taking in the sight, wand twirling absently in his fingers. Harry’s scowl sparks a familiar feeling in his chest, and the delight at his fury should perhaps cause more concern. Alas.
He casts the spells in quick succession:
“Expelliarmus,”
& as soon as the wand is free from Harry’s palm:
“Accio.”
The holly snaps to his fingers with a satisfying immediacy.
He doesn’t intend to keep it, of course. In truth, he’ll likely hand it over before they even reach the Headmistress’s office to report.
But in the meantime:
“If you’re so concerned with pedagogy, Potter,” he hums, “I suppose you ought to figure out how to dry yourself.”
the clear sky; the upper regions of air beyond the clouds
late Middle English: from Old French, or via Latin from Greek aithēr ‘upper air’, from the base of aithein ‘burn, shine’.
[an airy, august not-so-micro fic, inspired by @drarrymicrofic nonetheless. for the prompt “ethereal.”~]
word count: 988
After the end, they all believe Harry comes back tired. Exhausted, war-struck, sleepless and dazed.
Everyone but Draco. Who watches and catches the glistening edges of him, who notices that his eyes aren’t empty, not hollow, just away.
He finds him at the quidditch pitch, that ramshackle final school year, day after day after day after day. He’s difficult to find there on account of how difficult he is to spot; that is, he is a spot, a near-indiscernible speck, a dust mote, broomstick wayward, skyward, cloud-bound, high.
For weeks, Draco peeks from beneath the bleachers, catching glimpses against the grey Scottish sky. Then for months, he clambers up them and reads, novels (Dickens, Austen, Woolf— yes, he quite likes Woolf), keeping Harry carefully in his periphery.
It happens every day, weather conditions be damned. Draco never catches him on the ascent, never sees him mount his broom, and wonders how long he’s flying (how long he can fly, and how high, and why, and— tangentially— how he is passing any of his classes). Harry sees him there, or knows, he must know, but he never says— never stops, never asks, never breathes a word to Draco.
The year rolls over and away, and they graduate. (Draco assumes Harry graduates— he isn’t at the ceremony, but they call his name, because of course.)
Draco goes to Wiltshire, the Manor, home, as it were. He spends long, muggy days in the gardens, wandering the footpaths and the outer meadows, circling the fountains and the pond, weaving through the orchard (a relief— birdsong, and the low hum of bees, something other than the echoing silence).
He reads and reads and delays the inevitable (work— some menial Ministry job, likely, once he acquiesces to applying— overworked & unsalaried & embarrassingly, he will love it anyway, but for now, a summer: slow, waiting).
It’s the first of August when he appears, broomstick in hand, standing stiff on the Manor steps. He doesn’t look tired now, just itchy, achy, combustible. He fiddles with the zipper of his windbreaker as Draco opens the door.
“Happy birthday,” Draco says, because it was, or, well, because he hopes it was, anyway.
“Do you want to go flying?” Harry answers.
“Oh,” Draco says, stilted, his arms crossed carefully over his middle. “I haven’t been. Not since—” He gestures vaguely at Harry.
Harry stops fidgeting. “Okay,” he says, “Alright,” and turns to go.
“I can watch! If you— if you want to fly. Here. It’s good for it. Or anyway, it used to be. So.”
Harry looks at him, those eyes an inquisition, an invasion, and Draco feels the warmth under his collar licking up towards his ears.
Harry nods, and turns, and for the first time, Draco sees him lift off. A careless leg thrown swift across the broomstick, an intuitive tilt that lifts him, zipping away before his tatty canvas sneaker ever even touches the ground. Something in Draco’s chest catches at the sight (never mind he’s seen it a hundred times over, and even this before, technically, Harry in red, himself in green, slinging upwards with the goal of winning, of being better— but that wasn’t this).
Harry flies like a creature born with wings. Like something made for it.
So, he flies. And Draco reads (The Metamorphosis, Kafka, devastating & remarkable). Day in, and out, and August slips away.
Harry flies like he’s trying to get somewhere. High above the Manor, above ancient treetops, sometimes above the clouds. There are days he breaks across the sky, like lightning. There are days he carves lazy circles through the atmosphere. And there are days he just… sits there. Floating. Suspended.
Draco takes to bringing along fruit. Apples, peaches, plums, which they eat, when Harry lands, sticky-fingered and dusky and quiet (What are you doing now school’s done? Have you been back to Diagon? Are you staying at Grimmauld? Are you staying here? How are your friends? How is your mother? Don’t you get tired of flying? Don’t you get tired of not?).
On the last day of August, Harry tries again.
“Do you want to come with me?”
Draco swallows. And breathes.
“I—” He breathes and breathes and breathes.
Harry nods, extends a hand. “Come with me.”
“Okay,” Draco says.
Harry throws his leg over the broom and holds it steady as Draco clambers on behind him.
“Hold on,” Harry murmurs, and Draco places tentative hands at his sides, the warm skin underneath sticking to the threadbare T-shirt. Harry takes his hands, pulls Draco forward, in, wrapping his arms firmly around his middle.
“Hold on,” he repeats, something light in his tone.
And then: flight, fast. Their feet leave the ground, and Draco can’t help but hold him then, his face tucked into his shoulder, eyes nearly shut against the onslaught of air, sharp and crisp against his face, cool against the summer heat of his skin.
They lift and lift and lift, and Draco isn’t very sure he’s breathing at all, the world falling away beneath them. And then it happens: something in the air shifts, clears, lifts, shimmers. The sky, too bright to be blue, too air to be sky, opens around them. It’s impossible not to breathe, to drink it in. They stop. Draco gasps at the sudden stillness, swallows in mouthfuls of, of—
“It’s—” he says, blinking, hands at Harry’s stomach. He leans back, looks around: there’s nothing here, but it’s a good nothing, a full nothing. Sky and sky and sky. It shines. It burns. He laughs, tension uncoiling in his chest, then breathes out, settling against the solid plane of Harry’s back. “It’s really something,” he whispers.
“Yeah,” Harry agrees. It’s really something.
When they land, the world isn’t different, except in the small ways that it is. September lays before them, not summer, but something, and there is time, still and plenty, for fruit and reading and flying.
[ you probably think this dream is about you. ⋆˙⟡ | or: one boy made to face his self-secret desires. | draco pov | for the @drarrymicrofic song prompt: “You’re So Vain” by Carly Simon ]
drarry | word count: ~250
_ _ _
“Personally,” Potter says, folding his fingers through the disheveled ends of Draco’s hair, “I rather like this look.”
Draco’s palms sink into the sheets tangled around their hips, a scoff or a laugh or a little of both spilling forth. Still, he tips his face toward the touch.
“You would,” he answers, pushing his fringe back from his forehead. “It’s a mess.”
Potter shifts forward, wrapping his arms easily around Draco’s middle, tugging him into the mattress.
“You are an incredibly vain creature,” he murmurs. The words needn’t be loud— they’re tucked close enough to carry.
Draco hums. “I don’t believe I ever made an argument to the contrary.”
He presses a chaste kiss to Potter’s lips.
Potter; whose hands find his hair again. Potter; whose mouth returns more adamantly to Draco’s mouth.
. . .
Draco’s eyes stutter open suddenly, unsteadily, his shoulders shifting with a jerk. He narrowly avoids knocking his drink from the side table, but it’s a damn near thing.
The tin stares back at him— Calypso Coffee.
The tagline is a mockery: Dream it— see it. Drink up & delve into your deepest desires. ♡
“Titillating, isn’t it?” Blaise hums from the chaise.
Draco’s fingers dig sharply into the piping at the upholstered edge of his armchair. His gaze takes a half-beat too long to lift to Blaise’s face.
“Charming,” he says, throat warm, stomach storm-sea uneasy— vowing immediately to bin the tin of coffee, to pour the swirling silver remnants left in his mug right down the drain.
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the boys have breakfast. ♡ | or: early morning in the kitchen. draco’s awake; harry’s getting there. | for the @drarrymicrofic prompt: butt
drarry | word count: ~270 | ⋆˙⟡
_ _ _
It’s a surprise, when Harry’s hands land at his hips— the hour, more than the movement, (the careful hold of him, fingers finding somewhere to stay). On the hidden horizon, dawn is only just unfurling.
“Coffee?” Draco asks, and Harry nods, forehead and curls, pressed to the jut of Draco’s shoulder.
He shifts slowly to keep from jostling. Adds another scoop of Colombian grounds to the press.
“Toast?”
Harry hums at the nape of his neck, nosing along the space where it meets his spine.
The warmth in Draco’s chest, through his middle, feels like a laugh he’s somehow managed to contain. Contentment, or its ilk, stoppered and stored— heart-ward, Pensieve-ready.
He pulls the trigger on the toaster, silvery nickel coils going red.
“Did you buy butt— mmph—”
In the interim: One broad palm had crept around, quick and quiet, to cup the side of his face, tip him toward, to where Harry’s mouth was waiting.
The kiss is a sleepy thing that— when Draco pushes back, tongue lightly acquainting itself with the seam of Harry’s lips, hips shifting by what is sworn (fingers-crossed) coincidence— goes un-sleepy, awake.
They break; breakfast.
“The butter?” he breathes.
Harry rumbles, mouth moving mild at his throat, where his words make themselves a home: “Margarine. Fridge. Top shelf.”
Draco’s fingers find the dip of his hair, tangle with an admonishing immediacy that any even half-attentive audience would identify for the intimacy it is.
“So you hate me,” he murmurs.
Harry leaves a kiss at the soft spot beneath his ear, lingering.
“Yes,” he says, voice gone gravel and amusement, before leaving another. “Very much.”
the boys have breakfast. ♡ | or: early morning in the kitchen. draco’s awake; harry’s getting there. | for the @drarrymicrofic prompt: butt
drarry | word count: ~270 | ⋆˙⟡
_ _ _
It’s a surprise, when Harry’s hands land at his hips— the hour, more than the movement, (the careful hold of him, fingers finding somewhere to stay). On the hidden horizon, dawn is only just unfurling.
“Coffee?” Draco asks, and Harry nods, forehead and curls, pressed to the jut of Draco’s shoulder.
He shifts slowly to keep from jostling. Adds another scoop of Colombian grounds to the press.
“Toast?”
Harry hums at the nape of his neck, nosing along the space where it meets his spine.
The warmth in Draco’s chest, through his middle, feels like a laugh he’s somehow managed to contain. Contentment, or its ilk, stoppered and stored— heart-ward, Pensieve-ready.
He pulls the trigger on the toaster, silvery nickel coils going red.
“Did you buy butt— mmph—”
In the interim: One broad palm had crept around, quick and quiet, to cup the side of his face, tip him toward, to where Harry’s mouth was waiting.
The kiss is a sleepy thing that— when Draco pushes back, tongue lightly acquainting itself with the seam of Harry’s lips, hips shifting by what is sworn (fingers-crossed) coincidence— goes un-sleepy, awake.
They break; breakfast.
“The butter?” he breathes.
Harry rumbles, mouth moving mild at his throat, where his words make themselves a home: “Margarine. Fridge. Top shelf.”
Draco’s fingers find the dip of his hair, tangle with an admonishing immediacy that any even half-attentive audience would identify for the intimacy it is.
“So you hate me,” he murmurs.
Harry leaves a kiss at the soft spot beneath his ear, lingering.
“Yes,” he says, voice gone gravel and amusement, before leaving another. “Very much.”
death does funny things to those left behind. when narcissa dies, malfoy stops sleeping. harry has to do something about it. || 8th year || harry pov || ♡
“… To die, to sleep; / To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; / For in that sleep of death what dreams may come / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, / Must give us pause…” (Hamlet, act iii, scene i — Shakespeare) || ⋆˙⟡
drarry | word count: ~1.6k | cw: minor character death, grief, purple prose, ‘excessive’ hand-holding
_ _ _
Malfoy stops sleeping after Narcissa dies.
Harry hadn’t known she was dying, might’ve— if he had— done, dunno, something.
They say that she passed quietly, uneventfully. An unfortunate stroke of fate— that she paled, that she withered. Unsalvageable. That her heart simply stopped.
They say that Malfoy had found her. In the Manor, there had been no one else to do it.
The sleeping thing, or rather, the not sleeping thing, Harry shouldn’t know— could be conjecture, if he said it aloud and someone questioned— meaning: it was obvious enough.
But it wasn’t conjecture.
Or it had been, initially, but then Malfoy’s undereyes went purple, thistle, and he stopped speaking in class, stopped with lessons or assignments, and his robes went limp and rumpled and he didn’t seem to care, maybe didn’t notice at all— so then there was the cloak, making shadow, and the Dungeon and the eighth year dormitory, (four beds, empty but for one boy), and Harry had to keep so, so quiet because Malfoy didn’t sleep.
He scribbled at his desk (nonsense Harry could hardly make out— Malfoy’s penmanship was all script and scratch, dashed lines and ink blots, was always that way, had been, even before), then he paced a good long while, up and down the room and back again, not a word, no muttering, (might’ve been better, if he had, muttered that is, might’ve proved something still human, still living within him— as it were—) just drawn shoulders, pressed lip, and bare feet on the cold, cold stone, (a rug rolled up against one wall, shoved there, heavy, pulled somehow from beneath the bedposts).
Then the bed itself.
He’d lain there, eyes open, then closed, only to open again, hands faint and folded at his middle, (corpse, Harry’s mind had supplied, and he gave the thought a shove before it could settle), and his breath never met sleep.
The darkest dip of night slowly tugged itself into dawn, daylight pulling covers, opening curtains, spilling in the thinnest line of sunshine through the narrow slat in thick stone, and by that time Harry was dead weight, dead on his feet, hardly half conscious, and swaying.
Eventually Malfoy pulled himself from the bed, toward lavatory, and when he did, Harry slid from the room, traversed halls of cheery first years and bedraggled third years, OWLs prep haunting young scholars, and then into the Tower, into bed, where, classes collateral, he crumpled and slept (and slept and slept).
He couldn’t understand it. So he went again.
The same. Scribbling, pacing, lying down.
Sleepless.
The third time confirmed pattern, committed the odd rituals to routine, resolute.
Malfoy was a ghost in all the ways that didn’t matter. He was threadbare and absent and far-off. He lingered, unsettling and unwelcome, a powdered jasmine perfume, caught in the back of the throat.
Harry doesn’t know what to do with it, only that he has to do something.
Three weeks after Harry’s first clandestine visit, Malfoy collapses in a stairwell after supper. Harry isn’t the first to find him, but he is the first to respond— wrapping him in a soft Rennervate that doesn’t pull him conscious but steadies the harp-sharp thrum of his heart, evens his shallow breathing. Harry’d scoop him in his arms, but Malfoy is all leg, unwieldy, so the best he can do, short of a Leviosa, is pull him over his shoulder. He weighs more than you’d think and less than he ought.
Half of Harry is ready to haul Malfoy into Gryffindor Tower, tuck him beneath his own bedsheets— inexplicable, (insane)— but he doesn’t do that, resists the impulse, if only just. He finds the infirmary and Madame Pomfrey, and she fusses in that steady way she has, a woman who’s seen a thousand broken bones over, who’s pulled more witches and wizards, (more children), from the brink of death than anyone would ever enjoy accounting for.
Malfoy sleeps, at last, (sort of; unwilling), and when Harry, nine hours in, follows him over the precipice, his face folds forward into the nest of his arms, elbows a press in the mattress to the left of Malfoy’s warm thigh. It’s sleep, if you can call it that, for either of them— fitful and desperate and empty.
Later, Malfoy hardly has to move before Harry’s awake, forehead pulled upward from the cool cotton of the utilitarian bedsheets.
Malfoy’s eyes open. They’re tired, rimmed red, crinkled, and they trace the rafters as he shifts his shoulders. Harry wonders if he recognizes the room by the ceiling alone, by the week he spent here, sliced- and then unsliced-open a mere two years ago. (Two years— a moment. A miniature eternity.)
Eventually, his gaze turns.
If he’s surprised to find Harry at his bedside, it doesn’t show. If anything at all, it doesn’t show. Those steel eyes, sunken, do one long blink, before his head dips back again, seeking the pillow and settling on it.
Harry feels Malfoy’s fingers flex. Pauses, processing. Feels his fingers. He glances down, discovers his own hand wrapped loosely around them, his palm crowding pale knuckles, holding somehow too tight and not tight enough. He tugs back, sharp, like burned, like steam or Fiendfyre have found him.
His hands huddle in his hoodie pocket. He forces focus back to Malfoy’s face.
The absence of him is still present, but his pallor’s faded. Which is to say— the faintest traces of pink touch his cheekbones, his chin, the tops of his ears, the tip of his nose. Pale peach, apricot.
Shying from something too sincere, (something that’d make him scatter), Harry offers: “You slept for forever.”
There’s a wobble that crosses the musculature of him, an almost-nothing that sends an almost-flicker to the corner of his mouth. Harry swears he sinks further into the pillows.
Malfoy slowly lifts his hands, and Harry sees as they move toward his torso, ready to fold again above his stomach, at his center, just shy of the beating beacon of his heart. He remembers the sight, sleepless and still, and refuses outright the false face of fatality. It doesn’t take thought, (too many things with him, Hermione says, take too little— thoughtless— though she’s said it less, of late, lax and forgiving), only instinct. Only the certainty that he won’t see him lie like a dead thing.
Hand finds hand.
A tangle of fingers, tugged to the side of him, resting on the bed.
Malfoy’s eyes go wakeful, a little, light coming on in the house behind them, hospitality, or at least inhabitance, trying to take shape, to sweep the floors and smooth the tablecloth.
His gaze goes sideways. Sees Harry. Sees.
“Potter,” he says, and his voice is a straight shot— Firewhiskey, arrow, to gut, to heart, to whatever feeling thing it can find. It creaks, soft and rasping, un-posh in its un-use.
“Yeah,” Harry replies, and it’s a question that fails to find the right tone, more a breath than a word, more automation than answer.
Malfoy lets his hand be held, taps a beat to the back of Harry’s, the scarred skin there, his thumb obscuring the word lies, revealing it, obscuring it again.
“You snore,” he says, short (by mere degrees) of judgment, landing instead somewhere closer to revelation, edging a slight step toward taunt.
“I do not,” Harry offers, wavering warmth rolling throatward. His free hand lands with an indignant push at Malfoy’s knee, his thigh, the tender juncture between, itself tensing beneath the touch. Then easing as he keeps it there, palm a loose splay.
Malfoy nods, an adamant thing for all the exhaustion of him, weakened and weary. “Loudly,” he expounds. He coughs against the effort, then whispers, still: “You snore loudly.”
Harry smiles, a small slip, in spite of himself, and tips his face forward again, cheek landing on the bedspread.
“Well. I’m going to have another nap.”
Malfoy’s wrist is there, just before his face, and he has to resist the muddled urge to tug it forward, to press it to his forehead, his nose, his mouth. The blue-green veins there beneath his skin tangle something in Harry’s stomach he’s unsure how to relieve. He clenches his eyes shut.
“If you want to avoid my snoring,” he says, sly, linens bunching beneath the curl of his hand, drawing closer, “then you’ll have to fall asleep first.” He opens one eye, watchful.
Malfoy hums, shifts, slowly pulls his fingers from Harry’s grasp. There’s a ticker at Harry’s middle that goes into a mortified sort of free fall.
But Malfoy’s hand doesn’t go far. The calloused ends of his fingers fix on the frame of Harry’s glasses. He lifts them from his nose, works them from the careful catch of his ears. He folds them, after a cursory glance, examining, and sets them bedside.
The quiet grows temperamental a moment, the quiver of all the unfounded proximity leaving color at Malfoy’s collar, just visible over the unfastened top button of his shirt.
His hand dips forward again, cutting tension with tenacity, taking hold, slight, of the curl falling in Harry’s face. He traces it, the unsteady spiral, gone long, more intentional now than in the handful of years before.
“When I wake up,” he says, soft, sound scratching. He swallows. “You’ll still be here.” It come like a statement, but the tail of it begs response, covered query.
“Yeah.”
Malfoy tugs the curl before letting it go.
“Swear it, Potter.”
“Solemnly swear.” He takes Malfoy’s fingers, still tremoring, fatigued. Tugs them close. “I’ll be here.”
He isn’t sure there’s more to say, and Malfoy must concur. After a beat— a heart-wrought moment that could steal the breath of twenty— he sinks in the sheets. Shuffles. Rolls his shoulders. Shuts his eyes.
one boy finding his feelings hard to explain. | harry pov | for the @drarrymicrofic prompt: incline
drarry | word count: ~125 | ⋆˙⟡
_ _ _
He tries to tell them, but the matter doesn’t seem to stick.
“That’s great, Harry,” Hermione says, eyes barely flicking up from her parchment. “Maybe he can help with that cursed amulet project you were working on.”
“Oh. Nice, mate,” Ron affirms, then draws his gaze up from the chessboard. “You’re not, like, stalking him again, are you?”
Hopeless, they agree, and it’s fond, if not strained. Harry can’t help feeling he’s closer to helpless.
So, maybe he hasn’t expressed himself clearly.
Maybe, “I think Malfoy and I are friends now,” doesn’t quite strike the heart of it.
Maybe at its center, the feeling is something more like:
Drowning. Diving. Floating. Flying.
Maybe like:
Draco’s throat is an incline. He’d like his lips to scale it.
near-death experiences & the things that follow. ⋆˙⟡ | for the @drarrymicrofic prompt: hesitate
drarry | word count: 70 | rating: t | warning: mild dubcon
_ _ _
They survive, if only just.
Harry’s arms around Draco’s middle won’t stop shaking, and when he pulls him closer, his intentions require no Revelio, don’t conceal themselves at all.
“Wait,” Draco says & Harry’s answer is immediate: “No.”
The kiss is not clean lines, not comfortable quiet, not coming home.
It cauterizes. It collapses— knees, thoughts, will. It’s a sycamore grove gone clear cut.
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mid-war, the manor doesn’t feel like home. the dark lord reigns. potter keeps encroaching. draco keeps dreaming. ⋆˙⟡ | for the @drarrymicrofic prompt: dream | title from the classic bedtime prayer (or Halsey’s “Nightmare” — take your pick! ha)
drarry | word count: ~600 |
_ _ _
“Get out.”
The command comes easy. He’s given it a hundred times before.
The response he receives is nearly as well rehearsed.
“You know by now that that won’t work.”
“Out,” he insists.
Potter’s feet dangle over the edge of the stone balcony, precarious, two vaulted-ceiling stories high. He never seems afraid of falling.
In Draco’s room, he’s out of place, and yet, it’s where he keeps appearing.
Heroes don’t belong here.
It’s only when Potter glances his way (that ardent, arresting green) that he realizes he’s said it aloud.
“Hero, huh?” Potter hums. His face is incomprehensible. The way it often is. He wears too many emotions to untangle them.
His brow is troubled.
His mouth quirks.
His eyes hold something deeper than sadness and lighter than loss.
Draco tires of trying to read him.
(He tries.)
“Go away,” he answers, under his breath.
The Manor is no place for heroes, true, but these days, it’s hardly fit for anyone. The sound of speech runs risks he can’t calculate anymore for the inconsistency of them.
Potter rises on the ledge, balancing barefoot, upright. “Hey, Malfoy,” he says, as though his attention could have possibly been drawn anywhere else. He casts his arms wide as he loses balance, wobbles.
Draco takes a halting step forward like the fool he is.
Potter glances up with a grin. Draco can’t ever decide if it’s mocking.
“If I’m a hero, what does that make you?”
Draco’s fury has no time to catch— there’s a knock at the door, and every vein inside him goes arctic, frigid.
The thought comes back to him, persistent as a premonition:
Potter is never afraid of falling.
There’s another knock at the door, demanding, but Draco’s eyes flick back to the balcony.
Potter’s tipping, tipping, tipping. He doesn’t shout. There’s not a single shade of panic to him. There never is.
Draco crosses the room faster than it’s possible to. He holds out his hand. It’s as useless as it always is.
Potter falls. The door swings open.
*
He flinches into daylight at the feel of fingers.
“Draco. Darling. The Dark Lord is waiting.”
Mother’s hands are cold. These days, they’re always cold. The Dark Lord keeps only one hearth lit in the whole Manor.
“Are you all right? You’re feverish.”
Sweat prickles at his hairline. Scalp singing with static, shivers down his spine.
“Fine.”
His voice is half of what it once was.
Grey,
like eyes & sky and lukewarm tea & lying.
“I’m fine.”
He crawls from bed, feet touching floorboards where once rich rugs adorned, patterned and pretty beyond practicality. Everything about the home has gone barren and bone-like.
He climbs out of bed and hopes the day will stop the dreaming.
He wakes, walks, brushes teeth, combs hair, clothes body. Wanders, then sits and listens, lecturial— learning, or pretending to learn (blesséd Occlumency) what it’s deemed he ought to learn.
The windows taunt. Outside spills through in pieces.
He misses the sky of his childhood; misses the tilt of broomstick without direction, only the sweep of joy, of heartbeat, boastful and quick and bright.
He misses the sky before it was a bruise too tender for touching. Too mottled for making troubles small, (troubles too big anymore to be held by cirrus, cumulonimbus, any other— each trouble outpacing every weary instance of weather).
The days are long and colorless.
When he falls into bed, in spite of fear, sleep finds him fast.
When he sleeps, his mind, (traitorous thing), wanders the well-worn path to dreaming.
[ one boy feeling borrowed feelings & finding what he forgot. ⋆˙⟡ | or: draco needs to remember harry. harry’s memories help. | for the @drarrymicrofic prompt: tremble | title ref. “don’t you (forget about me)” - simple minds ]
drarry | word count: ~826 | ♡
_ _ _
He has assurances. Handfuls of them.
Like:
Harry’s always been a horrible Occlumens.
Too headstrong, too heart-on-sleeve, no meaningful measure of subtlety.
Of course, he can be calculated. Can hold cards close to his chest, when it’s called for.
But his feelings.
Those have always been big.
He hid them, and well, for a good long while.
He’s less good, now, at that. It’s hard, to put a freed thing back in its box. It doesn’t fit quite the same.
.
All this to say:
It’s easy, to enter.
He hardly needs to knock.
.
He finds the first time first, at Malkin’s, watches a blond boy blather and boast, too proud, and feels Harry feel no resentment, not really. Nothing sharp enough to wound, not after all they’ve been through (allegedly, alarmingly, apparently).
Instead, an annoyance so light that Draco wants to cradle it in his hands, to carry it like the gentle thing it is. Harmless.
.
Then, the Dementor costumes. He feels it finally, first-hand— fear. Harry’s, striking like a curse, moving cruelly through his middle. It makes sickness rise in his stomach, shame shearing over the expanse of his throat. He knows, now, the kind of terror those creatures call forth,
(deeper than bone, than marrow, finding whatever soul-shaped thing lives below— he’d heard Muggle-borns use the word “hellfire” once, speak of that agonizing ice at the lowest ring of eternity, that one for betrayal—
the proximity of a Dementor lands something like that).
He knows, now, and wishes to sink himself in the feeling anyway, to make whatever amends, pay whatever penance. To flagellate. To prostrate.
He wants to fix it.
He wants Harry not to be afraid.
.
He finds the Fiendfyre almost by accident— the thought crosses his mind, unbidden, intrusive, but then suddenly (flint struck) there it is.
The dominant impression is heat— the room had pulled the air out of every pocket that held it, had turned them inside out and tossed the contents flame-ward as offering.
The fire gave no grace.
It’s strange to see from Harry’s vantage.
There is no subtlety to his own expression, (pale brows folding, pinching, color high and hot on hollowed cheekbones; every ache brought forth with the intensity of each suppressed instinct or emotion before it— terror, distilled, then concentrated, made facial and human and frail); there is no subtlety and the memory ensures he knows that Harry knows, (knew;), (—knows).
But the after…
He plays the feeling back and forth, over & over (& over again), caught in a careless loop, greedy and graceless and god-damned. The feeling intoxicates— it rennervates.
Harry does not hesitate.
He sees Draco. And then he saves him.
The space of the decision is so small so as not to be a decision at all. The feeling evades description, can only be borne by function— sure. Harry sees him and is sure.
He lets the memory run over his retinas, (whatever the equivalent of his mind, that inner eye turned watery with the absence of blinking, with all that watching).
He lets it blind him. He lets it burn. & then he watches it more.
.
When he surfaces— stumbles back into himself— he could swear it’s a lifetime later. (An hour, they assure him. No more, no less.)
He trembles, whole-body, wracked entirely with the rising weight of recollection.
“Did you find what you need?”
Hermione Granger stands at the other end of the bed, furiously twisting some sort of handkerchief in her fingers.
Draco blinks down at the man on the mattress, folded beneath the blankets, (familiar, too familiar), and the memories don’t flood back, but they begin. There is a place for them now, a room that indicates there must be a start to them, must be an end.
It’s a horrifying thing— the gaps are great and hungry. They threaten to swallow, and there isn’t enough mercy in the forced forgetting to make the process so neat as to swallow him whole. Fragment and mess only.
The absence gnaws. It presses against his throat and runs its teeth over the tendons. It wants him to know it could devour.
But there is something to be said of the tenderness it implies. The tenderness that exists on the other side of violence. The presence of daylight that echoes against the threat of darkness. It refracts.
The memories he has now, (more, whole, reconfigured), have lit something in him, too bright to be overtaken.
His fingers find dark curls without him having the thought to put them there.
Harry, he thinks, rolling the name over, then fixing it.
Potter.
(It rings.)
Potter is brave.
And for the small miracles that bravery has granted (and the big ones, but mostly the small— close and near-confidential, corrosive and cataclysmic with care), and for the tandem feeling Draco feels it awakening in the heart-havoc of his veins—
He’ll try.
If his remembering him will heal Potter, he’ll try.
[ boys bonding & the one (1) wicked woman facilitating. ⋆˙⟡ | or: the intricacies of being cursed into proximity & mortal peril. ♡ | for the @drarrymicrofic prompt: bond ]
drarry | word count: ~970 | rating: t
_ _ _
Cicely Carreau was a pureblooded witch who, at Hogwarts, had been a handful of years their junior. A Slytherin, high marks, especially adept in Charms and Herbology. All, now, of course, in her DMLE file.
Her family had relocated to Luxembourg in 1996, where she ultimately finished her studies, the lot of them evading the worst of the Voldemort business and living a mild, peaceable existence as magical expats. Still, Echternach had never quite been home. That, and nothing spelled “power vacuum” quite like post-War Britain.
What could she say? Old prejudices died hard. (Well, refused to die. Rather like herself, in that regard.)
“Cuplamore cruciatus!” she snapped, red light sparking and tearing from the end of her wand. Its target— the blonde fellow, Malvo-whoever— shifting seconds too late toward defensive posture.
He needn’t worry, though. The curse wouldn’t hurt him. (Not yet.)
She sought a secondary subject, then found she hardly had to bother.
The lead Auror— quick, his green eyes keen on his counterpart— leapt between the crimson arrow of the curse and Mr. M.
A wasted effort, really, but what fun to watch.
The spell briefly split his sternum, in the same-second-span stitching him closed & searing through his spine.
Cicely missed seeing the second strike, but did not miss its measure. M’s eyes flew open before wincing shut, his hand rising to clutch at Auror Potter’s shoulder, the red robes, golden epaulet, crushed beneath his grasp.
Cicely grinned broadly, twisting the end of her wand, the shape of the knot drawn taut, tethering.
“Oh, dear,” she called, as the men staggered against one another. “No sense of self-preservation with the two of you. I’ll tell you, though, the spell’s going to love that.”
She tugged sharply at her wand and watched as, instead of reaching for their own wounds, each man turned to the other.
“So terribly sad,” she crooned, dodging a furious Bombarda, casting aside a sharp Incarcerous.
“You see,” she said, tossing up a shield and scrabbling over the rubble toward the exit, “love only gives the pain more power. A bit sick, isn’t it?”
She felt it then, the barrage of feeling that tremored through the bond, her wand still tracing the edges of it by mere proximity. The flutter of panic-recognition-secrecy-embarrassment-shock-horror-delight that tore through them.
“Oh,” she said, then cackled against the sheer idiocy. “You didn’t know? Well. Hate to be the bearer of bad news.”
She stepped through the doorway, felt the bounds of the anti-Apparition wards loose at last.
“Confringo!” Mr. M called, form precise in spite of the stagger to his step. Auror Potter caught him at the elbow as he stumbled.
Merlin, what she’d give to stay and see them struggle. Alas.
“Careful, boys! The spell’s a bit touchy, if you catch my drift. Do keep it happy.”
This line of work didn’t lend itself to play too terribly often. What a pity it would be to waste the opportunity.
“Proximity should be sufficient, you know, casual touch. Though it can get a little greedy.”
She knew monologuing was gauche, and yet they made it so easy. She grinned, sharp.
“All else failing, nothing a decent fuck won’t fix.”
Even at this distance, Potter’s ears went scarlet. M’s— Malfoy, that was it, Circe’s tits, finally— Malfoy’s fingers went sheet white around his wand.
It wouldn’t help, of course— fucking. But such a red herring was the least of her crimes. The pocket watch hanging from her belt pulsed, once, twice, thrice, a warning, a reminder.
She took it in hand, quickly recasting her Protego.
Potter remained cleverer than he looked, seeming to divine that the curse was somehow still yoked to the length of aspen caught in the curl of her fingers.
“Expelliarmus!” he shouted through gritted teeth, and what a thrill, to have that particular spell directed her way.
But he was too late, and too weak now, besides. The pocket watch gave one final, violent shake against her palm, and then she vanished, cataclysmic. Debris went crashing in her wake, the doorframe folding— fractured, buckled.
The seconds stammered.
Quiet fell.
Dust did its level best to settle.
“Potter,” Draco breathed, the tense composure of him gone tremulous.
Harry turned toward him, then startled at the raw line of red between them, tracing from one ribcage to the other, the light of it emanant and pulsing, venous. He stumbled a half-step back, and Draco coughed, one hand sweeping sharply towards his heart, the other scrabbling at Harry’s shoulder, drawing him closer.
“Don’t—” he said, choking around the word, whatever after it dying in his throat.
The pang seemed to hit Harry on some sort of delay— he winced, teeth clenched, palm grasping harsh and heavy at Draco’s arm where it linked them. The sound that rose was equal part pain and fury.
“What the fuck kind of curse—?” he murmured beneath labored breath.
Draco bowed toward him, forehead dipping forward, leaving the barest room between the imminent press of their skin.
Harry closed the distance, the relief immediate and unkind.
“The kind that kills slowly,” Draco whispered, fingers trailing the seam of Harry’s uniform to the collar, the exposed side of his neck.
“She can track us. And they’ll try to separate us,” he said, hand curling over Harry’s nape.
Harry sighed into it, dropping his face to the crook beneath Draco’s jaw, nosing along the column of his throat.
Draco hummed, barely conscious of the sound, but Harry felt it go through him like lightning. Every feeling had gone frenetic, fundamental.
Draco exhaled heavily, turning his face into the impulse, pressing his cheek to Harry’s curls.
“They’ll separate us,” he went on, desperately reaching for reason, the sunken semblance of rationality. (Harry’s hand sliding up his spine made thinking very hard.) But vital, and thus vehement:
[ boys dancing & daring. ⋆˙⟡ | or: one inebriated draco malfoy, one dutiful harry potter, an effort at dancing, and some rather public proceedings. ♡ | for the @drarrymicrofic prompt: ball ]
drarry | word count: ~800 | rating: m
_ _ _
The charity ball had been a horrible idea.
“Draco— Merlin’s sake, watch your feet.”
Draco’s Oxfords go traipsing over Harry’s brogues. Again.
“Your fault, Potter. If you’ll recall, you’re the one who kept—” (here, he stumbles) “—kept handing me glasses of Merlot.”
“God, it was a Malbec. You taught me that.”
Draco’s right heel finds his left foot, and Harry winces.
“You’re also the one who taught me to dance, though I very much doubt anyone would believe that at the moment.”
The following step on his toes feels more pointed.
The music swells, and he loses the frame, form shifting against Draco’s self-righting grip on his jacket— pulling himself upward, inadvertently closer.
“Hello,” Draco says, nose bumping against Harry’s chin as he straightens.
“Hi,” Harry answers, quiet, the pinched edge of panic ebbing a moment. “You could try for composure,” he murmurs. “There are photographers.”
“Photog—?” Draco’s gaze swings sideways, spotting the young woman from the Prophet, Qwik Quill scribbling at her shoulder. “Hm,” he breathes, forehead dropping to Harry’s shoulder.
Harry’s hand finds his elbow, steadying. “What? We can sit. Do you need—”
His words stall— hands, cold and hands, are suddenly beneath his shirt. He can feel the fabric rucked upward, his back and sides exposed.
He tugs at Draco’s wrists, immediate and adamant, until the offending appendages drop to his sides.
“Hands, watch your hands,” he hisses, skin tingling under the memory of his palms.
Draco’s mouth curls into a slow smile. “But you told me to watch my feet.”
“You’re a menace,” Harry says, with far less bite than could be reasonably afforded.
Somehow, they’re still moving, slow-spun circles that have lost the better sense of timing.
Draco leans in (and in) and laughs direct into his collar, the soft hum of it a heady warmth against Harry’s throat.
“We could give them a picture worth printing, don’t you think?” Draco says, low, stepping closer, their chests practically flush.
Harry’s feet stop, the Morganese waltz brought to sharp conclusion in spite of the ongoing lilt of the orchestra. His hand at Draco’s waist has gone a bit desperate, fingers all ache and restraint.
“That’s it. I’m taking you home.”
Draco hums approvingly.
“Your home,” Harry amends, certain the plum stain of his cheeks must be visible fifty meters out.
“Good,” Draco mumbles, nodding, then effortfully pulling himself into near-proper posture.
He dips his lips to Harry’s ear, too close, brushing his jaw just so as he sways, whispering: “I have better bedsheets.”
Harry’s grip goes rigid at his wrist. He does not deign an answer.
As he tows him toward the cloakroom, into its meager privacy, unmistakable is the mechanical shutter, the camera flash, accompanying their retreat.
.
“You’re being ridiculous. And nothing could happen anyway,” he tells Draco, practical, tossing his cloak (grey wool, dovish) around his shoulders, helping to fix the fasten at his front. “You’re drunk. Very drunk.”
Draco’s mouth pulls into a pout, and Harry forces his focus elsewhere, suddenly intent on buttoning his own coat.
Then, Draco’s fingers, just above the top loop, catching tight and tugging him forward. Harry startles, the proximity even more… proximous than prior.
“I’ll take a sobering potion.”
Draco’s free hand wraps around, finds the nape of Harry’s neck. The steady press of his fingers sends a shiver stippling through Harry’s shoulders, outward and through. Draco’s eyes are alight, expectant, as he whispers: “And I’ll still want to fuck you.”
Jesus, Mary, and Merlin.
Harry stammers out: “That— You— I—”
He takes a breath and gently pulls Draco’s grasp from his skin.
“I’m not negotiating this until we at least get you through the Floo.”
Draco snorts, then covers the sound, pink tipping his ears. He coughs, a clearing thing.
“Negotiation,” he says, fixed flat and smirking. He pokes at the breastpocket of Harry’s coat. “Very sexy.”
Harry rolls his eyes, but feels the smile insisting at the edges of his mouth. He guides Draco out of the gallery, down the corridor.
“Potter,” Draco whispers, his fingers once again seeking, finding, touching. They thread themselves through the very ends of his curls.
“Hm?” Harry says, maneuvering open the gate on the lift, trying to carefully tuck Draco inside without having him stumble over the edge of it.
Draco drops his chin, finding the downward slant of Harry’s focus.
“You danced very well,” he says, the sound of it too soft, his gaze searingly sincere. He slumps against Harry’s shoulder, letting out a huff, mildly disgruntled. “But I won’t say that sober.”
Harry warms, and whether it’s the cramped space (it isn’t), the stuffy robes (wrong again), or the easy presence of the man beside him (…), he finds he doesn’t mind.
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[ boys dancing & daring. ⋆˙⟡ | or: one inebriated draco malfoy, one dutiful harry potter, an effort at dancing, and some rather public proceedings. ♡ | for the @drarrymicrofic prompt: ball ]
drarry | word count: ~800 | rating: m
_ _ _
The charity ball had been a horrible idea.
“Draco— Merlin’s sake, watch your feet.”
Draco’s Oxfords go traipsing over Harry’s brogues. Again.
“Your fault, Potter. If you’ll recall, you’re the one who kept—” (here, he stumbles) “—kept handing me glasses of Merlot.”
“God, it was a Malbec. You taught me that.”
Draco’s right heel finds his left foot, and Harry winces.
“You’re also the one who taught me to dance, though I very much doubt anyone would believe that at the moment.”
The following step on his toes feels more pointed.
The music swells, and he loses the frame, form shifting against Draco’s self-righting grip on his jacket— pulling himself upward, inadvertently closer.
“Hello,” Draco says, nose bumping against Harry’s chin as he straightens.
“Hi,” Harry answers, quiet, the pinched edge of panic ebbing a moment. “You could try for composure,” he murmurs. “There are photographers.”
“Photog—?” Draco’s gaze swings sideways, spotting the young woman from the Prophet, Qwik Quill scribbling at her shoulder. “Hm,” he breathes, forehead dropping to Harry’s shoulder.
Harry’s hand finds his elbow, steadying. “What? We can sit. Do you need—”
His words stall— hands, cold and hands, are suddenly beneath his shirt. He can feel the fabric rucked upward, his back and sides exposed.
He tugs at Draco’s wrists, immediate and adamant, until the offending appendages drop to his sides.
“Hands, watch your hands,” he hisses, skin tingling under the memory of his palms.
Draco’s mouth curls into a slow smile. “But you told me to watch my feet.”
“You’re a menace,” Harry says, with far less bite than could be reasonably afforded.
Somehow, they’re still moving, slow-spun circles that have lost the better sense of timing.
Draco leans in (and in) and laughs direct into his collar, the soft hum of it a heady warmth against Harry’s throat.
“We could give them a picture worth printing, don’t you think?” Draco says, low, stepping closer, their chests practically flush.
Harry’s feet stop, the Morganese waltz brought to sharp conclusion in spite of the ongoing lilt of the orchestra. His hand at Draco’s waist has gone a bit desperate, fingers all ache and restraint.
“That’s it. I’m taking you home.”
Draco hums approvingly.
“Your home,” Harry amends, certain the plum stain of his cheeks must be visible fifty meters out.
“Good,” Draco mumbles, nodding, then effortfully pulling himself into near-proper posture.
He dips his lips to Harry’s ear, too close, brushing his jaw just so as he sways, whispering: “I have better bedsheets.”
Harry’s grip goes rigid at his wrist. He does not deign an answer.
As he tows him toward the cloakroom, into its meager privacy, unmistakable is the mechanical shutter, the camera flash, accompanying their retreat.
.
“You’re being ridiculous. And nothing could happen anyway,” he tells Draco, practical, tossing his cloak (grey wool, dovish) around his shoulders, helping to fix the fasten at his front. “You’re drunk. Very drunk.”
Draco’s mouth pulls into a pout, and Harry forces his focus elsewhere, suddenly intent on buttoning his own coat.
Then, Draco’s fingers, just above the top loop, catching tight and tugging him forward. Harry startles, the proximity even more… proximous than prior.
“I’ll take a sobering potion.”
Draco’s free hand wraps around, finds the nape of Harry’s neck. The steady press of his fingers sends a shiver stippling through Harry’s shoulders, outward and through. Draco’s eyes are alight, expectant, as he whispers: “And I’ll still want to fuck you.”
Jesus, Mary, and Merlin.
Harry stammers out: “That— You— I—”
He takes a breath and gently pulls Draco’s grasp from his skin.
“I’m not negotiating this until we at least get you through the Floo.”
Draco snorts, then covers the sound, pink tipping his ears. He coughs, a clearing thing.
“Negotiation,” he says, fixed flat and smirking. He pokes at the breastpocket of Harry’s coat. “Very sexy.”
Harry rolls his eyes, but feels the smile insisting at the edges of his mouth. He guides Draco out of the gallery, down the corridor.
“Potter,” Draco whispers, his fingers once again seeking, finding, touching. They thread themselves through the very ends of his curls.
“Hm?” Harry says, maneuvering open the gate on the lift, trying to carefully tuck Draco inside without having him stumble over the edge of it.
Draco drops his chin, finding the downward slant of Harry’s focus.
“You danced very well,” he says, the sound of it too soft, his gaze searingly sincere. He slumps against Harry’s shoulder, letting out a huff, mildly disgruntled. “But I won’t say that sober.”
Harry warms, and whether it’s the cramped space (it isn’t), the stuffy robes (wrong again), or the easy presence of the man beside him (…), he finds he doesn’t mind.
