#hufflepuff 5

I am playing @gameofdrarry Exploding Snap 2021. This is for Club Magicana’s Five (5) of Hufflepuff card.

Title: Forged through flowing water

Author: @tedahfromtayla

Rating: Explicit

Exploding Snap Trope: Desi!Harry

Word Count: 40,394

Tags: Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE; Post-Hogwarts; Desi Harry Potter; Black Hermione Granger; Healer Draco Malfoy; Auror Harry Potter; Diplomat Hermione Granger; Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley; Discussion of Colonialism; Magical Theory (Harry Potter); World Travel; Pining; Enemies to Friends to Lovers; Tattoos; Magical Tattoos; Sikhism; Hinduism; Hindu Holidays; Indian food; Decolonization; Accidental Drug Use; Promises; Happy Ending; Rimming; Hand Jobs; trapped in a cave; Curses; Dark Magic; kissing under the influence; Mention of Injured Children; H/D Erised 2020; POV Alternating; Yoga; Redeemed Draco Malfoy; Vegetarians & Vegans; India;Bearded Harry Potter; Anal Fingering; Love Bites; Dirty Talk

Summary: When Hermione sets up a diplomatic mission to begin repairing the damage British colonisation did to Indian magical communities Harry isn’t going to pass on the opportunity to visit and help his family’s home country. Maybe he should have asked a few more questions about the personnel she had recruited for it before signing on because Malfoy surely has an ulterior motive to be there.

Or

Harry goes back to India to rediscover some of his lost roots. He meets Malfoy there. Hijinks ensue!

Excerpts: "If we could go up [Shaheed Minar] you would be able to see the entire city from there. It used to be the eye of Britain on its subjects and now it's the men who freed her standing tall in its centre." Harry looked up at the top quietly, there was something pulling at his heart as he stood under it. He was the exact same as this monument. England had claimed him as its own, making his face a symbol for something Harry wasn't sure he could represent. He never wanted to stand for anything bigger than himself and his family. But without a real family or a definite sense of self, it had been all too easy for other people to build him up into a figurehead. Could he be rededicated too? Find his true meaning now that Voldemort and the war had been gone for a decade?

**

There were no more words exchanged between them until they finished eating and left the temple. There was nothing Malfoy could offer and Harry was satisfied he was starting to understand. When they gave back the scarves and slipped their shoes back on, Harry knew that something had passed between them, that the effort of making himself seen by Malfoy was paying off. In the end, Hermione might have been right again, it looked like there was something salvageable in the man, after all.

**

In those quiet moments, Draco looked at him, the dying sun turning his profile into cut bronze, and saw the fire that never left his green eyes. He'd imagined Potter would retire to a life of leisure after the war. He'd seemed the type to need to settle down, process his trauma and get a family, go back to a peaceful home. But he'd miscalculated. The fight wasn't done for Potter, and there was no home for him in England, just like there was no home for Draco there, not anymore.

Rec Notes: Draco is Healer, working with the wizarding equivalent of Doctors Without Borders, when Hermione recruits him for the mission in West Bengal. Harry, an Auror, is brought on as security, partnered with the only other Desi Auror on the force. 

The writing in this story is so vivid. It makes me crave these places I’ve never visited and foods I’ve never eaten. The author’s world building is amazing as well, with fleshed out wizarding cultures and the ramifications of wizarding colonialism. 

This was an amazing enemies to lovers slow burn. In the first couple chapters, Harry hates Draco so much, it's difficult to imagine him falling for Draco. From Draco’s POV, it appears that he has atoned and that he is the right, but then there is a switch that's flipped and we see that maybe Draco hasn’t truly atoned. But once Harry see’s that Draco is willing to really make a change, he loses his anger and starts to help him. It's just so beautiful!!

The story is truly a masterpiece. I recommend it to anyone that wants a slow burn that takes place in another fully actualized wizarding community.