#geets microfics

Once the war ends, the world is dim and hazy and wild. For two months, it rains incessantly in Wiltshire. Draco watches his mother’s rose garden flag and flutter, run amok with weeds and ivy from his bedroom window. He spends May and June not doing much of anything but staring— out the window, at his ceiling, at his parents when they try to coax him to dinner. House arrest is not a death sentence, but Draco is empty and vacant and a little dead anyway.

He thinks of Harry sometimes. Harry, limned in fire on a broom, reaching for him, Harry, dead, not dead, clambering to his feet, wand raised, calling the Dark Lord Tom, Harry, who had met his eyes over the Aurors’ shoulders as they handcuffed him to accompany him to the Manor until the Wizengamot had the time to figure out what to do with the Malfoys. Harry, and the world winces into sharper focus, bleak and dull and unbearable. Draco tries, for all he’s worth, not that it’s much, to stop thinking of Harry when that happens.

There’s the trial. Harry Potter is in a suit, his hair damp and brushed and unfamiliar. He speaks for Draco and his mother. Draco recognises the image of Narcissa emerging in Harry’s testimony— haughty and determined and fearful and loving, a mass of contradictions worthy of exoneration after the payment of some hefty fines. His own image he recognises in snapshots and flashes— scared, yes, Merlin, yes, indoctrinated from a young age, that too, in the grip of something bigger than himself, yes, he’s never felt so small. There are other things Harry says, new, like an ill-fitted outfit hanging off him— brave when it mattered, really? and never killed anyone, technically true but the intent was there all through sixth year, doesn’t he deserve to be punished for that? and helped in bringing down the fall of Tom Riddle at great personal risk, a tall order at best, an embellished lie at worst.

Harry believes in a man Draco isn’t sure he ever was. The Wizengamot seems to believe him, and he’s exonerated too, with a magic-monitoring charm on his wand for eighteen months.

No one testifies for Lucius. He goes to Azkaban. Draco watches, dispassionate, as the Aurors handcuff his father again. Lucius watches him back, equally dispassionate. “Take care of your mother,” he says before he’s pulled away, and Draco manages a short, tight nod. That’s that.

Love, or the situation about Harry Potter as Draco takes to calling it, begins two more months after the trials.

“Malfoy,” says Harry, the picture of wide-eyed surprise. They’re in a bar on Knockturn. Pansy, Blaise and Theo finally dragged him here, Draco you need to leave that stuffy old Manor for your own good.

“Harry Potter,” Draco says, because he can’t bring himself to call him Potter anymore, and Harry sounds awkward outside his head.

“It’s good to see you,” says Harry, a sudden grin stretching across his face. Draco has to blink the light of it out of his eyes. “You’re looking better.”

It starts then, in the bar. The stirrings of life in a dead man. It’s annoying and brutal and the kind of thing that keeps Draco waking up and getting himself out of bed every morning and the nightmares occasionally at bay.

They run into each other at the bar, over and over, and each time, Harry begins conversation. Each time, it lasts a few minutes longer, until they’re spending half an hour or more chatting over drinks at the counter. Or, rather— Harry chats, Draco listens and tries not to let his heart spring out of his chest. Each time, Pansy looks considering, Blaise rolls his eyes and Theo peers studiously into his drink when he comes back. Draco wonders if Harry’s friends have their own set of patented reactions and if they’re half as lenient as his friends’.

Draco starts sleeping with Theo about it, eventually. Which is to say Draco starts sleeping with Theo hoping the sex will take his mind off dark hair and green eyes and that rapid, quicksilver smile. It doesn’t help that Theo has dark hair and blue eyes, and smiles at Draco like the sun. It makes him ache with want and loss, and the sex is great, but Draco has to end it within a few weeks.

“It’s Potter, isn’t it,” Theo says when Draco tells him.

There’s no point denying it, so Draco doesn’t. “It’s not you,” he says, and Theo’s lightly amused baleful glare is enough for their friendship to remain stable, if a little stilted.

Blaise takes him shopping and Pansy brings him alcohol and when Greg starts stepping out of his house again, he tells Draco awkwardly, “Well, Potter’s missing out, isn’t he?” Millicent, who starts coming to pub nights gives Draco a once-over and tells him he needs to get a job. Daphne tries to set him up with her sister, and takes it astonishingly terribly when Draco tells her he’s sure Astoria’s lovely, but has an entirely wrong set of bits.

“You should be more open minded,” she tells him, sniffing. “Astoria‘s open minded!”

Draco can only think to blink at her.

Harry’s in the papers almost every day. Sometimes because he gives speeches, but mostly because The Prophet’s society section can’t think to write anything better than “Harry Potter spotted in Diagon’s Sunday Market, with turnips! Turn to page 6 for seven delicious recipes that make fresh and inventive use of the Chosen One’s Chosen Veg!”

It’s all well and good except for the part where the accompanying photos of Harry, scowling or blank or frustrated or very occasionally, smiling at children, sends Draco’s body into overdrive. He finds himself tracing the line of Harry’s mouth, the tops of his cheekbones, his hairline. He thinks his mother notices, but she doesn’t say anything.

“Would you like to get a drink sometime?” Harry asks.

They’re not at the bar. They’re in a cafe and Draco is reading a horrible romance novel at the window.

“We get drinks all the time,” Draco says. He wants to step on his own toes.

“Yeah,” Harry says, laughing. He runs his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, course, just— I was wondering if you maybe wanted to. You know. Just us.”

“Just us?”

“Forget it,” Harry says, and sighs. He turns away and turns back. “It was good seeing you, Malfoy.” He turns away again.

“Harry,” Draco says. The look on Harry’s face when he turns back again is wide-eyed surprise again, like that first time in the bar. “I— a drink sounds lovely.”

Harry looks uncertainly pleased.

“Just not on Knockturn,” Draco says.

“We could go to Hogsmeade,” Harry says. He’s— the ridiculous man— bouncing on the balls of his feet, fidgety and buoyant and beautiful. “Or London. The Muggle bit. Or Diagon, really, but the reporters—” He grimaces.

I’ll go anywhere with you, Draco wants to say. “Anywhere,” he says instead, hacked short and inadequate.

But Harry smiles at him like he’s the sun. The persistent ache throbbing through Draco abates for a moment.

So this is peace, Draco thinks. Meets Harry’s smile with his own, wonders how Harry thinks it looks. There you are.

Well— doesn’t run into, exactly. No, more like peers through a shop window like a right barmy bastard, bits of overspilling lettuce brushing his arm and passers-by on Diagon shooting him strange looks.

Of course Malfoy has to look up from the till— because, yes, Draco Malfoy is a shopkeeper on Diagon Alley apparently— and see him goggling. So, of course, Harry has to step inside, as though he meant to make a stop at— right, yeah, Narcissus Needlework Studio— all along, holding brown paper packages of vegetables.

Malfoy’s frowning when Harry makes his way over to the till.

“I don’t want any trouble,” he says. “I’ve registered the shop, everything’s perfectly within regulation—“

“Trouble?” Harry blinks. “Oh, no. I’m not an Auror. Anymore.”

“I know that,” Malfoy says unhappily. “The whole Wizarding World all over Europe knows that. Only you’ve never left well enough alone, have you, Potter?”

Harry’s forty next month. He’s lived twenty years seeing hide nor hair of Draco Malfoy, and he’s never gone looking. Well, except for that one time when he was twenty one and went to the Manor as a trainee Auror for a— well, it was a routine check, really. And that other time when he was twenty five and thought he saw a man at a club who looked just like Malfoy from the back and was convinced for four months Malfoy was back in London and must be up to something if no one knew about it. And that time when he was thirty two— and, oh, alright, Harry hasn’t ever left well enough alone, not when it comes to Malfoy, at least.

This time, though, Harry really didn’t go looking. And it’s definitely Malfoy.

“I just wanted some— thread,” Harry says. A needlework studio should have some of that, shouldn’t it?

“Thread,” says Malfoy. He looks down, deliberately, at Harry’s lettuce.

“For Molly,” Harry says. “As a, um, birthday present. New shop on Diagon, thought I’d pop by. Seemed the place, you know. Didn’t know it was yours.”

Molly’s birthday, Malfoy doesn’t need to know, is in December. It’s June.

Malfoy continues to stare at him, until Harry’s unsure whether to get indignant about it all or turn tail and flee.

“Well,” says Malfoy before he can make a choice. “Embroidery yarn for you, then, Potter. Come along.”

-

“I’ll see you again, I assume,” Malfoy says at the end of what transpires to be a surprisingly smooth purchase.

Harry nods.

He only realises after he leaves that there’s no reason for him to come back. He’s seen it for himself— what Draco Malfoy’s up to these days. Nothing nefarious or suspicious, just yarn and needles and tapestries on Diagon.

Except, well, he’s committed now, hasn’t he? And Harry Potter’s a man of his word. He said yes, when Malfoy asked— Malfoy asked!— so he’ll be back.

And really, if he has to invent Hermione’s sudden new and passionate interest in needlework— well. That’s between Harry and his lettuce.

Draco says. “It’s beginning to show.”

Harry tugs the comforter higher until it covers his ears. “I don’t like the sun.”

Draco sniffs. Harry can’t see him but knows he’s probably hovering at the edge of the bed, inspecting his nails.

“At least draw the blinds up,” Draco says. “I’d do it for you, but—" he breaks off and hesitates, then continues with more exasperation, "For Merlin’s sake, Harry, at least get out of bed.”

Harry doesn’t respond. There’s a glass of water on his bedside table. Even in the room’s abject dimness, he can see the dust motes floating in it. How long has it been there?

“Hermione’s been Owling you every day,” Draco says after a while. “And Weasley keeps Floo calling. Longbottom showed up at your door with one of his Delightful Daisies.” At Harry’s silence, he adds, quieter, “Darling. Come on. You can’t shut them out forever. They’d like to see you, it’ll do you good.”

“I don’t want to see them!” Harry cries, suddenly frustrated. He sits up, the duvet pooling around his hips, determined to face Draco and immediately burying his head in his hands at the sight of him. “I don’t want to see them, Draco, I don’t want to talk to them, I don’t want—”

A rush of cold in the closed bedroom. Harry shivers.

“Harry,” Draco says. It sounds so like him, taut and fond. Harry wants to reach for the glass of water and throw it at him. He doesn’t. “I don’t have anything to give anymore. I’m— Salazar. There’s no coming back from this, you know. And this isn’t what I want. For you.”

“Well,” says Harry, falling back into his pillows. His spine aches. “This—” he gestures at Draco’s floating, spectral figure, “—isn’t what I want for you either, is it? We don’t all get what we want.”

“What do you want?” Draco asks.

To have pulled you back when it counted. To join you now.

“Stay,” Harry says, swallowing, not meeting Draco’s eyes where they’re translucent, boring holes into his forehead. “I know you think that—” he closes his eyes, “—that they’ll keep me company and I’ll begin to feel better and move on or whatever, Draco, but I—”

He opens his eyes again. Draco looks so pained his heart hurts. What are emotions like for ghosts? No stomach to fall through, no heart to clench, no hands to shake— what would it be like to feel something without a body?

“—I never want anyone’s company but yours.”

“Do you want to get high?” Draco asks, sharp knees knocking against Harry’s. They’re lying on the worn-down mattress on Draco's floor— a relic of a thing Harry admires for not just giving up and bursting— staring up at the cracks patterned like lightning on the ceiling.

“No.” He reconsiders. “I mean yeah, obviously, but no, can’t. There’s this— thing in two hours. Have to be there and I can’t show up—" he gestures at the air. “Y’know.”

“I know,” Draco clumsily pats Harry’s forehead. “Oh, I know.”

There’s a touch of condescension there, and Harry knows Draco well enough to hear everything he isn’t saying— I know you don’t want to go, I know you want to stay with me in my shitty apartment, I know you don’t talk about me to them at these things. There’s a version of Harry, lying somewhere in a ditch on the highway between who he was and who he is, who’d tear Draco apart for those insinuations. This version sighs a little and pokes him in one pointy shoulder.

“Hannah probably won’t understand the urge to stay holed up in here with my disreputable stoner boyfriend instead of attending her birthday party." He means it as a joke, it falls very flat. "I’m sorry.”

“You keep assuming,” Draco says, drawled and posh, despite the mould growing in the corner of the room, “that you need to justify yourself. You live your own life, Potter, I stake no claims on it.”

They say nothing for a while.

“Muggles have this thing,” Harry says eventually, breaking the silence. “The share market. Stocks.”

“Stocks.”

“Yeah. Hermione explained it to me. It was complicated and most of it went over my head but, but it all boiled down to— ownership, really. You— buy out parts of a company and you own those parts till you sell them. I think? I guess. The more you own, the more decision making power you have. Or something like that.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“It’s— whatever, if I was a company, you’d own— fifty eight percent of my stocks.”

Draco’s looking at him like he’s lost his mind. And alright, that’s fair, but he’s trying here. He needs Draco to— understand. Swallows. Realises he cares a little too much about how well Draco understands this.

“You own,” he begins, swallowing again, Merlin, he’s parched, “fifty eight percent of me. Most of me. So much of me, Draco. I’ve never given myself over— like this. To someone else. But there’s a remaining thirty— no, Merlin, should have taken Arithmancy— forty two percent? That they still own. Ron and Hermione and Ginny and Neville and Luna and—” He gestures at the air again. Doesn’t turn to look at the softly breathing body next to his.

“Corporation,” Draco says slowly, words rounded without the razor sharp edge of before. “Corporare. Corpus. Corpus means body, do you know that? That’s the root of these entities, the body.” His hand, fine-boned and blunt-nailed, cards through Harry’s hair. “I own fifty eight percent. They own forty two. How much of your body do you own, Harry?”

“I don’t—”

“You don’t?”

They lie in silence again, the gentle scratch of Draco’s nails against his scalp a monotone soundtrack to their thoughts.

“Pansy bought me a book on anatomy once,” Draco says conversationally after long minutes have passed. “It was kind of awful. And I was thinking about making some grand statement about how you own the percentage of me that my heart weighs, but that’s about—? 0.69%? Which isn’t a declaration at all, it’s actually kind of offensive. So I thought of adding in the percentage of blood, which is about 10%, but even that sounds ridiculous.”

He pauses. His hand stills in Harry’s hair for a beat too long before starting up again. “What you own—” he clears his throat. “You own my thoughts, Harry. And they can’t measure that. Every time you walk out, you own my grief. Every time you stay, you own my joy. I can’t measure it, Harry, but immeasurable and infinite are synonyms.”

“I’m not going,” Harry says, sitting up. “I’m not going to Hannah’s stupid party, Draco, fuck it, I’m not—”

Draco just stares up at him. “42%,” he says after a second too long of silence.

Harry laughs. It’s wild, maybe a little hysterical. “Fuck it,” he says again, looking down at Draco’s flushed cheeks. “Yours. All yours.”

“Theo said I’m a failed boyfriend because I’ve never taken you out on a date.”

The crunch-snap! of Harry’s knife dicing onions ceases for a moment. Draco can see his poised hand, the leather bracelet at the wrist brushing against the chopping board, the raised bulb of the onion secure between his fingers.

“Taste the sauce,” Harry says, starting back up. “And stop paying attention to Theo after he’s had more than two drinks.”

“How did you know—”

A bare hint of a smile curls around the edge of Harry’s mouth, soft under the yellow lights. “Taste the sauce, darling.”

Draco wants to grumble, just a little. Answer me. You didn’t say he’s wrong. I won’t taste the sauce till you look at me. I need you to look at me because when you do, I forget to worry. But the kitchen swells with the scent of the sauce, bubbling quietly in a lopsided pan and Draco doesn’t have it in himself to protest something he wants right now.

“Kiss me,” he says at Harry’s shoulder.

“The sauce—”

“You’ve been tasting it every two minutes, don’t pretend otherwise. I know you.”

Harry laughs. He’s quiet about it, low and sweet, happiness a simple secret Draco adores too much to let him keep.

“You know me, and yet—”

“And yet?”

Harry tips the chopping board sideways, diced onions sliding gently into a bowl that rattles with the soft thuds of them falling in. He reaches for Draco, thinks better of it, and pulls him in, the back of his hand slung around the nape of Draco’s neck. The leather bracelet, worn soft with use, presses in.

The kiss is quiet, unhurried, welcome home and stop worrying and I love you. Draco tastes the sauce on Harry’s lips, on the brief brush of his tongue. It’s good— of course it is— but it tastes better this way.

Draco pulls away. Presses a kiss to the five o’clock stubble shadowing Harry’s jaw. Presses another one to the crinkle at the corner of his eye. Harry laughs again, so Draco does it again, and Harry draws away, still smiling.

“Good?”

“Always.”

“The sauce, Draco.”

“I said what I said.”

Harry turns back to his onions, shaking his head.

“Am I, though,” Draco says, perching on the counter. “A failed boyfriend. I thought all those late nights in the bullpen, Indian takeout from that place Hermione recommended, those were our dates, but—”

Harry sighs, exasperated and a little amused, knife snipping at chillies. “It was never about— takeout. Or dates. Or whatever it is Theo has decided is the reason he dumped the last one.”

“Oh.”

“It wasn’t about those things, it was about you.”

Draco stays quiet, watching Harry’s deft fingers sweep the chopped chillies into the sauce. “Oh,” he says again, because sometimes watching Harry makes him stupid, makes him fumble with his words and repeat them, because words aren’t— haven’t ever been— the point of this.

“Stop listening to Theo,” Harry says, looking up at him, serious through his eyelashes. “He doesn’t know me. He’s lonely and being a dick about it.”

“Alright.”

Harry gestures between them, smile dimpling his cheek. “Good. Always.”

It’s Draco’s turn to laugh, surprised and punched-out. The kitchen is quiet, sauce turning heavier with every stir. They’re both smiling. 

“Set the table,” Harry says when the stirring spoon comes away thick with red, peppered with cooked, clinging herbs. Draco swings down from the counter and reaching around Harry with one arm gripping his shoulder, pulls out two china plates.

“This,” Draco says, boot squelching into the soft decay of leaves underfoot, “is not what I expected from you.”

Potter sits on the front stoop of what can be generously described as a log-cabin, though Draco feels log-shack is more appropriate. He doesn’t appear surprised by Draco’s presence, just wearily resigned.

“They sent you?”

Draco bristles at the insinuation. “Sent— Merlin. You self-important arsehole. No one gives a shit about you anymore. No one sent me.”

“Then why are you here?” The question is simple, unassuming. Obvious, even. Draco feels resentful when he comes up short of adequate answers.

“No one sent me,” he says again. The answer in those words is implicit. I came by myself.

Potter lifts a wildfire-tipped cigarette to his lips. His long hair is tied back, but a loose strand tangles in the plume of smoke from his mouth, fluttering delicately.

“Here, though,” Draco says, when Potter remains silent. The surrounding forest thrums with the sounds of life, wind through the treetops, insects burrowed under fallen branches. Birds twitter, curiously loud, and the day darkens infinitesimally with every passing second.

“Here,” Potter acknowledges. “Peaceful.”

“Mother said you died here.”

“No,” Potter says, and looks at Draco for the first time. Surrounded by the uncanny greenery of the deep woods, his eyes aren’t quite as startling as they used to be. “I died far away from here, almost at the edge. Voldemort never touched this part of the Forest.”

And oh, Draco understands that. He can’t walk through Diagon Alley without thinking of his path echoing Dolohov’s. He’d had to walk through the thinner edges of the forest with his eyes closed and hands trembling, trying to keep the memories of Fenrir Greyback to the far limits of his consciousness.

A part of the world Voldemort has never touched.

“Why are you here?” Potter asks again. Quiet. Weighted. “I’m not going back. And if you try to walk away now, I’ll leave you to the wolves, Obliviated.”

Draco sighs. His boots stick to the soft soil as he trudges closer to Potter. “I asked you once,” he says, when he’s close enough and the smell of Potter’s cigarette smoke is overpoweringly familiar. “To let me stay. You said no.”

Harry smells good underneath the smoke, woodsy and clean, a hint of fruit lingering. Clearly there are bathing facilities in the shack. This is not a hideaway, he reminds himself. This is his life.

“This time I’m not giving you a choice,” Draco continues. “Let me stay.”

“The wolves are still an option,” Harry says after a beat and a swallow, and Draco laughs. They both know they're not. Over the years, Draco has missed Harry. Hated him even, in short bursts. Questioned everything they had. Never once has he doubted that Harry loved him— loves him.

Harry stands, and vanishes the cigarette burned down to the filter now. Looks at Draco for long minutes, breathing a tangle of smoke and spice into his space before tucking a lock of Draco's hair behind his ear. His touch is warm despite the chill in the air, thumb slight against the shell of Draco's ear.

“You followed,” he says. It sounds amused. It sounds relieved.

“I followed.”

Harry turns, walks through the open door of the cabin behind. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t need to. Draco knows.

Draco follows.

The fact of the matter is: Harry’s pants at writing. 

His homework at Hogwarts had been subpar at best and the letters he wrote to Ron and Hermione and once-upon-a-fantasy to Sirius were too concise for embarrassment. There had been a memorable attempt at writing one to Ginny when that had still been— something, but had the presence of mind to realise comparing someone’s skin to a Sphynx’s belly wasn’t the genius compliment he’d assumed it to be in the shower. 

(Which is more than can be said about Ginny’s judgement at eleven— he still mouths fresh pickled toad at himself in the mirror sometimes— but then again, being eleven is a pretty solid defence for terrible judgement calls.) 

Harry’s just— he’s just bad. The words never say what he wants them to, scratched out lines like wet wounds. He spends hours trying until too many balled up parchments are littered around his desk, and realises he’s forgotten to write what he wanted to in the first place by the time the owl carrying it is a speck in the distance. 

But Draco’s in a remote village in Belgium for research and looks gnarled and green in the thready Floo connection, speaking indecipherable streams of gibberish. So Harry’s here at his desk, staring at the checklist he made last night, trying not to fuck it up too badly. 

1. Dear Draco. 

Darling,

2. Tell him why you’re writing this. Tell him you love him.

I love you. I miss you. The Floo’s shit and you look confused every time I speak. There was that one time after a late dinner when I went to sleep without telling you I love you and you asked me if I wanted to break up in the morning. It’s been a week and you look tired look like you’re waiting for something look like you need to hear it  so here, seven times: I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I re-counted that six times to check if I got the number right. If I didn’t— I meant seven anyway. 

3. Tell him something about home. Tell him you love him. 

The Mimbulus Neville gifted you lives in the shed now. It’s a bit dark, but it’s squirted Stinksap at me twelve times. Your plants hate me. The Venus grew eight heads and tried to eat all my fingers. I put that one in the attic because you said this one needs light. Do you ever want children? Will they hate one of us too? We can’t put them in the attic or the shed. I want to scratch that bit out, but Godric Gryffindor is whispering in my ear. Anyway, I love you. We can talk about children later. Months later, years later. Decades—

4. Tell him about his friends. Tell him they love him. 

Pansy came over two days ago and spent the evening drinking all your wine. She misses you, she told the sofa. She whispered it to the leather, I was watching from the kitchen. Zabini came by to drop off a suit. Hermione left a book for you on the coffee table, something about the intersection of Potions and Chemistry. It’s thick and heavy as three bricks and I think you’ll love it more than you love me. Parvati asked when you were coming back. 

5. Ask about his research. About Belgium.

How’s the birdwatching going? You’ll kill me for calling it that but Orini Onith Onther Ornithomancy takes me four tries. I’m jealous of magical crows. Did you spot the corvids you were looking for? How’s Thomas? Does he still smell like garlic? Is the host treating you right? Are the pillows soft enough? What’s the village like? Are the people kind to you? Are you happy? Do you miss me? I asked too many questions so I scratched some out. Tell me everything, though. Everything you want to. 

6. Tell him you love him. 

I’ll try to write more. I know you’ll laugh at the way I write, this isn’t fancy and I’ve only now realised that this parchment is the one you bought to wrap books, it’s soaked with ink. But— Floo’s shit. And I needed to tell you I love you. And that I miss you. And that I’m very happy for you and your research but that the bed is very cold when I wake up in the middle of the night. I made a checklist and everything. Come back soon When you’re done, I’ll be waiting. 

7. His. 

Yours,  Harry. 

is a saviour complex at best and a death wish at worst, but Harry hasn’t ever made a secret of either so nobody’s surprised. Hermione teaches him some fire safety charms when she finds out. Ron calls him a head-case in a resigned, affectionate, concerned tone he’s patented, being Harry’s best friend for the better part of two decades.

The only person who takes Harry’s admission of love less than well is Draco because within two hours, Harry is pulling him out of another burning building— a warehouse the Aurors were trying to prove as the headquarters of a notorious child trafficking ring.

“They need to be faster with these sort of cases, I was just trying to send a message,” Draco says as Harry washes the ash out of his hair in the tub. “In the time it takes them to go from circumstantial to undeniable, actual children—”

“Johnson thinks you— the arsonist— is involved.”

“Johnson thinks the arsonist is involved every single time because patterns of justice fly miles over that thick head of his.” He turns his face away, lashes fluttering, lips turned down in an upset moue. “Terrible quality in a Head Auror, that. Aren’t they supposed to be the enforcers of justice? Shouldn’t you understand something to enforce it?”

There’s a discussion in there somewhere about Wizarding police brutality and traditionalism but Harry is very tired, his lungs are burning and Draco’s fragile face is still streaked with soot. He reaches out to cup it, thumb swiping over a smear on his cheekbone.

“We need to have a conversation.”

Draco’s jaw clenches under Harry’s palm. “Look, I know you didn’t— you couldn’t have— meant it. So you don’t need to take it back, it doesn’t— I’m not going to be offended.” He turns to face Harry, cheek curving into his touch. Opens his mouth, shuts it. “You really don’t need to say it, you know. You don’t need to give me the whole spiel, Oh Draco, it slipped out, I’m not ready for that yet. I just— it’s okay, and I understand, but I don’t want to hear it.”

Harry feels his jaw hanging low, the part of his lips incredulous. “You think— did you seriously think— oh Godric. Draco, is this about me telling you I love you?”

The tips of Draco’s ears are turning pink. He blinks too rapidly, defensive and cross, “What else would it be—”

“I said we need to have a conversation and you assumed it’s going to be about me taking back saying I love you instead of the part where I dragged you out of a burning warehouse? Where you almost died?”

Now Draco looks honestly confused. He pushes his hands through the water of the bath, sending little waves rippling over his submerged body. “I don’t—” it comes out small. “I don’t understand. You’ve… you’ve dragged me out of burning warehouses before?”

“Yes,” Harry says, trying to be emphatic. “Yes. We need to have a conversation about how there are other ways to communicate than to throw yourself into a fire to prove something. You can just— talk to me.”

Draco stares at him for a while, uncomprehending. Harry stares back, desperation tingling at his fingertips. He doesn’t know whether to shake Draco or pull him close or kiss him or wash his back or all of those things at once.

“You said you loved me,” Draco says at last, voice cracking over the words. “You said you loved me and it felt like— it felt like I was on fire already.” Which is enough to make Harry’s decision for him, because soaked robes be damned, he needs to feel Draco in his arms, solid and breathing and undeniably alive.

“You stupid man,” he whispers into Draco’s hair. It still smells of smoke. “You stupid, stupid man. You could have died. Each of those times you threw yourself into one of those damned fires, you could have died. And then where would I be?”

“But I didn’t,” Draco says, muffled into Harry’s shoulder. “Because you saved me.”

Patterns of justice. Shouldn’t you understand something to enforce it?

A bank set on fire the first time Harry cooked Draco dinner. A bus station sponsored by a Wizengamot member who voted in favour of a Muggleborn registry up in flames the first time Harry stayed the night. A storefront for a drug den demolished when Harry gifted Draco a DVD player— oh.

Shouldn’t you understand something to enforce it?

“I can’t read your mind,” Harry says gently, rubbing circles into the wet skin of Draco’s back. “The best I can do is try to save you from the things it comes up with.” Something like a sob from the vicinity of his shoulder. He holds Draco a little closer. “But I can’t do that if you don’t talk to me.”

“You like saving people,” Draco says. “And when you— when you say these things, or do things— I need to give you something back. But I don’t know what to give you. You like saving people. So I let you save me. Each time, I just, Harry, it’s— you really like saving people.”

“Alright,” Harry says, glad Draco isn’t facing him. “Alright, that’s— alright. See? You can talk to me. You can tell me these things before you go and do them.”

“It doesn’t make sense!” Draco pulls away. “It doesn’t make sense when I say it out loud.”

“Okay,” Harry says again, trying to think through the fog of too many revelations in his brain. “Let’s try that for a bit then. If you say something out loud and it doesn’t make sense, then you try— you try not to do it.”

“But what if you stop meaning it. If you stop saving me. What if you—”

“Meaning it?”

“The thing you said. Today.”

“I don’t need to save you from burning buildings to love you, Draco.” Draco’s unconvinced expression is heartbreaking. “Come back here,” he says, opening his arms. Draco leans in, hesitant at first, lightning quick when he realises the offer continues to stand.

“I love you,” Harry whispers into his ear, holding him through the shudders that wrack his frame. “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you…” and he keeps going till his voice is hoarse and Draco is still and calm and staring into the distance without looking haunted.

It’s true— Harry doesn’t need to save Draco to love him. But maybe there’s a different kind of saving to be done here anyway.