#nsminific

1.1.2005

Malfoy,

Robards tells me you’re joining the Auror Office.

France got boring?

Wanted to reach out before you start. Maybe we could find some time to clear the air? Grab a drink?

H.

4.1.2005

H,

Really? Just H? Am I not worthy of the additional four letters that spell out your name?

I would rather shove the Sword of Gryffindor up my arse than get a drink with you.

Draco Lucius Malfoy

10.1.2005

Malfoy,

I’m happy to ask Neville if he’d be prepared to loan the sword, if you’re keen.

Hope your first day went well.

Harry James Potter.

22.3.2005

Potter,

I suppose thanks are in order. I heard you stuck up for me with Watson. You didn’t need to.

Draco Lucius Malfoy.

24.3.2005

Malfoy,

Watson’s a dick. Don’t let him get to you.

Well done on the Troll case.

We’re going to the pub on Friday. You in?

Harry James Potter.

24.3.2005

Potter,

No.

Draco Lucius Malfoy.

12.4.2005

Potter,

Societal expectations dictate that when a colleague is going through a difficult time, one must offer a sympathetic word.

Bad luck on the redhead. At least you’re now free to seed your field—or whatever agricultural metaphor Muggles favour.

Draco Lucius Malfoy.

15.4.2005

Malfoy,

It’s sow your wild oats.

Not that it matters. Ginny and I weren’t together. It was a cover. We’re both gay as fuck and didn’t want it impacting our careers. We thought it would.

Thanks for reaching out.

It’s Robards’ birthday Sunday, so we’re heading to the pub tonight. Open invite.

Harry James Potter.

16.4.2005

Malfoy,

You missed out on a good night.

Harry James Potter.

17.4.2005

Malfoy,

Or are you just homophobic?

Harry James Potter.

19.4.2005

Potter,

Clearly, you are a defective gay if you’ve failed to recognise I’m about as queer as the sun is yellow.

I’ve simply opted to ignore your persistent requests for drinks.

Now, can you please send over the report for the Niffler case? I put the request in two days ago, and you’re starting to piss me off.

Draco Lucius Malfoy.

29.8.2005

Malfoy,

Sorry to hear about your father.

Hope you’re doing alright.

Harry James Potter.

29.8.2005

Potter,

You’re not sorry. Neither am I.

Enclosed: a sickle. Have a drink on me. Because I fucking am.

D.

04.11.2005

Potter,

Been on field duty for three weeks and come back to find out you’ve acquired a fully-fledged boyfriend?

Have to ask if you’re okay.

Smith.

Really?

Draco Lucius Malfoy.

04.11.2005

Malfoy,

I went on one fucking date because he wouldn’t stop asking. Now he’s picking out wedding linens.

What are wedding linens?

Harry James Potter.

04.11.2005

Potter,

Sorry, but this is hilarious.

I’m actually crying. Robards sent me home. I’ve claimed exhaustion due to emotional instability.

You’re such a twat.

Draco Lucius Malfoy.

23.12.2005

Potter,

Did you really send my mother a Christmas card?

Draco Lucius Malfoy.

P.S. Where’s mine?

24.12.2005

Malfoy,

I only send cards to people who either

a) Saved my life or

b) Have a drink with me at the pub.

No, you can’t use the Manor lie because I saved you from Fiendfyre. We’re even.

Harry James Potter

29.12.2005

Malfoy,

Enjoy the bastard card enclosed. Your stupid puppy-dog eyes at work were sickening.

I expect a drink.

We’re going out on NYE. A bunch of us from work. I’m not taking no for an answer.

Harry James Potter.

31.12.2005

Potter,

Suck my dick.

Draco Lucius Malfoy.

31.12.2005

Totaly wolud if u gave me a chanc.

Hapy New Yr.

HJPotter <3

01.01.2006

Malfoy,

Something tells me I embarrassed myself on NYE?

My owl came back this morning, and the last letter I received was from you. Did I write you something?

Harry James Potter.

02.01.2006

Potter,

Pure blackmail material.

How about I show you on Friday?

One-time offer.

Leaky Cauldron—8 pm.

Draco Lucius Malfoy.

14.05.2006

Draco,

Sorry, I had to dip early this morning. You look beautiful when you’re sleeping. Might be the lack of talking.

See you tonight.

Harry James Potter

X

09.09.2006

Harry,

I’ve thought about it. I’ll move in.

I didn’t mean to react so negatively. But come on—I was balls deep when you asked.

I’ll pop over tomorrow, and we can discuss the details.

Draco Lucius Malfoy

XXX

19.11.2006

Draco,

You said I was moving quickly when I asked you to move in—and then you go and propose?

What a way to make a bloke feel special. Running off before I can answer.

Get home and do it properly. I’m not answering until you’re on one knee.

Yours,

The future Harry James Potter-Malfoy

XXX

24.12.2012

Love,

Don’t forget the milk.

Scorpius is adamant that we leave a full pint out for Santa. He says you promised him.

Such a bizarre Muggle tradition you’ve brought into our house.

Draco Lucius Potter-Malfoy

“That’s right,” Potter whispers. “You’re doing so well. So good.”

Draco is close. Right on the edge. The precipice. He wants to make it last. He doesn’t want to fall over just yet, because he knows—he knows—this is their first and only time.

Breathless and spent, Draco tumbles down onto the bed. He’s laughing. A real, genuine laugh. He turns his head and finds Harry beside him, flushed and amused and a little bewildered.

The reason why sits on Harry’s finger.

A gold band.

The only thing he’s wearing.

“So?” Draco asks, shifting to face him properly.

“So what?” Harry counters.

Draco is in no mood to draw the process out. He crowds into Harry’s space, nipping gently at the sweat-slick skin of his neck, then soothes the sting with a kiss.

Against his ear, he says, “You’re wearing it.”

Harry looks at him, eyes half-lidded. “So I am.”

“I’m going to presume, then.” Draco takes Harry’s hand, draws it up, kisses the ring he had slotted onto his finger half an hour ago, then holds it tight.

“Presume?”

“That you’re saying yes. You didn’t say it earlier.”

Harry’s lips twitch. “You didn’t exactly give me the chance.”

“Is it a yes, Harry?” Draco presses.

He knows it is. It has to be.

How can it not be after everything? After the war and the trials, after both of them becoming Aurors, after the fights and the arguments, after the shared drinks where absolution was found at the bottom of a pint glass and resurrection between the sheets.

How can it not be yes, when even after all that, they spent months denying themselves the joy and love of each other because they both felt like they didn’t deserve it?

Harry tightens his fingers around Draco’s.

He tilts his head, fondness written plainly across his face. “I’m inclined to acquiesce.”

“Inclined to acquiesce,” Draco repeats mildly. “Wow. Swallowed a thesaurus, did you?”

“Swallowed something,” Harry mutters, arching a brow. “Swallowed your brain through your—”

Draco pinches his waist. Harry laughs, and then Draco is tickling him properly, ruthless with it, fingers digging into every vulnerable place he knows by heart.

“Draco—fuck—stop—”

“Answer the question.”

“I did!”

“You used four syllables too many.”

Harry squirms beneath him, panting and helpless and wearing Draco’s ring.

“Yes,” he gasps at last. “Yes, I’ll fucking marry you.”

Draco stills and for a moment, the room goes quiet around them. Then Harry reaches up, cups Draco’s face, and smiles.

Draco wakes as he often does: to warmth.

A solid body beside him. Limbs tangled with his own. Fingers clasped together beneath the duvet as if they had found each other in sleep and refused to let go.

For a moment, he does not move.

He lets himself surface slowly, blinking against the early morning light pouring through the sheer curtains, soft and gold across the room.

“Morning,” Draco murmurs, voice rough with sleep.

He turns, and there is Harry.

Messy-haired. Bare-shouldered. Warm-eyed.

“Morning, love,” Harry says. “Sleep well?”

Draco hums, shifting closer until his face is tucked against Harry’s chest. He breathes him in: musk and skin and the faint, familiar trace of laundry soap. He kisses the bare skin beneath his mouth and smiles when Harry presses a kiss to the top of his head.

“You?” Draco asks.

“Like a baby,” Harry replies. “Had this weird dream, though.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, bizarre. You and Scorpius were making pancakes, and every time you flipped one, your outfit changed.”

Draco chuckles. “What outfits?”

“All sorts. Really odd ones. At one point you were wearing Hagrid’s coat, and then you were wearing nothing but those tight swimming shorts from our honeymoon.”

Draco pulls back, amused and offended in equal measure. “Tight swimming shorts in front of our son?”

“Don’t blame me. I don’t control what my dreams do,” Harry says defensively, though he is smiling, gaze dipping down Draco’s body as if he’s imagining them now.

“You’re a heathen,” Draco says flatly. “A perverted heathen. Now you’ve made me crave pancakes.”

He sits up on the edge of the bed, stretching until his spine clicks.

“Make me some?” Harry asks, moving behind him, thighs bracketing Draco’s hips, arms wrapping around his waist. “The fluffy ones.”

“You’re on coffee duty, then,” Draco says, leaning back into him.

Harry kisses his shoulder.

Draco tilts his head, giving him more room. “This isn’t making coffee, Potter.”

Harry hums against his skin. “No, it’s much better.”

Knock-knock-knock.

Draco sighs. “That’ll be Scorp. I bet you anything he sensed pancakes.”

Knock-knock-knock.

“Alright, alright. I’m coming,” Draco chuckles.

He stands, and Harry’s hands slip from his body.

Draco turns back to him with a smile still on his face.

Then—

He wakes as he often does: to cold.

The cold press of a stone wall against his back. A thin blanket twisted around his waist. Morning light spills weakly through the open barred window of his cell, grey and misty, smelling of sea-salt.

Knock-knock-knock.

“Inmate 3946,” an Azkaban guard calls through the door. “Wake up. If you do not respond, we will enter.”

Draco lunges forward, heart battering against his ribs, breath tearing through him.

“I’m awake,” he calls, too loudly. “I’m awake.”

He’d rather not be, because his dreams are a sweeter place. Even if they provide him nothing but the ache of a life he’ll never have.

Draco presses his shaking hands to his mouth and closes his eyes.

Inhale. Exhale.

Draco paces, fingers worrying the velvet box in his pocket.

Ten past five.

The Floo roars green.

Harry steps out, ash in his hair, smile blooming.

Draco drops to trembling knee.

Before he can speak, Harry laughs, breathless and bright.

Harry reads Draco like a history book.

He knows every inch of him.

Tracing his fingers over Draco’s pale skin, Harry knows every hill and valley of his ribs. He knows the exact way his hands fit around Draco’s hips, as though they were moulded specifically for his palms. He knows the freckle behind Draco’s ear, discovered one night early in their relationship when Draco had been beneath him like this, hair spilt across the pillows, throat tipped back in invitation.

Harry had pressed his mouth there and felt Draco shiver hard enough to make the bed creak.

He knows all of Draco’s sensitive places, too.

The tops of his V-lines, where goosebumps flicker across his skin when Harry drags his thumbs across them and presses him down. The hollow of his collarbone, where Harry licks across pale skin and earns a low, broken groan. The sharp dip of his waist. The soft give of his thighs. The way Draco’s entire body seems to tense, then melt, when Harry touches him exactly right.

Then there are the scars.

Jagged lines from groin to neck. A criss-cross of anger, fear, and sixth-year stupidity. A history Harry wishes he could rewrite with his bare hands.

But Draco is beneath him now, arching and gasping, his mouth open around Harry’s name, and the scars catch the low light with every movement.

Silvered, raised and alive

Harry reads them.

With his hands. His mouth. The slow roll of his hips.

He reads an apology into every kiss. Devotion into every touch. Love into every place he once left pain.

Draco trembles beneath him, beautiful and undone, and Harry presses his lips to the worst of the scars.

Then he turns to the faded scar of the Dark Mark on Draco’s arm.

Gone, but not forgotten.

Harry kisses over it anyway. Slow. Deliberate. Reverent.

Draco’s fingers twist in his hair, his breath catching as if the tenderness hurts more than anything else. As if he still cannot quite believe he is allowed to be touched there with love.

How can you love me? How can you see past that? I am nothing compared to you.

Harry is devoted to showing Draco how much he is actually worth.

He does it every morning. Every night. Every second that Draco allows.

He does it not with ink or parchment, but with patience. With his mouth. With the thrust of his hips. With the careful press of his hands against every place Draco once used to flinch.

He does it by paying attention.

In the early days of their relationship, Draco had wondered about the little notebook Harry kept on his person.

It was a small thing, barely big enough to fit in the palm of his hand. Plain black leather. Muggle-made, with crisp white paper instead of the aged yellow of parchment.

Then, as the days bled into weeks and the weeks into months, Draco’s curiosity only grew.

Harry rarely got it out in front of him, but when he did, he was always careful to angle it away, shielding the contents as he scribbled. Tiny little scratches of his hand, sharp and quick, so frantic that Draco often wondered how Harry managed to read his own writing afterwards.

On the morning of their first anniversary, Draco finally asked.

“What is that?”

Sleep-mussed and bleary-eyed, Harry took a moment to realise Draco was speaking to him.

“Darling?”

“Huh?” Harry looked up, blinking once.

He looked adorable like this. Curled up in the corner of the sofa, wearing the ratty grey joggers Draco claimed to hate but, in truth, didn’t. Bare-chested because, apparently, Harry was allergic to clothing on Sunday mornings.

Draco didn’t hate that either.

In his lap was the notebook, perched precariously on his thigh. In one hand, a Muggle biro. In the other, his coffee.

“What is that little thing you’re always writing in?” Draco asked, curling up beside him.

The smile Harry gave him was coy and lopsided, a flush of pink spreading across his cheeks. He cleared his throat, set his coffee down, and leaned forward until there was barely an inch between them.

“A present,” Harry explained, his voice a whisper.

Puzzled, Draco tilted his head. “A present?”

It took Harry a moment to respond. “Yes. For you.”

Then it took Draco a moment to hear the words properly.

“For me?”

And another for Harry to offer the book over.

Carefully, tentatively, he held it out.

Confused, nervous, and a little bit excited, Draco accepted it. Harry’s eyes remained fixed on him as he opened it to the first page.

365 Reasons Why I Love Draco Fucking Malfoy

“I started this the moment you said yes to a date. Three hundred and sixty-five days ago,” Harry explained. “I knew then that I wanted a million plus one days with you. Three hundred and sixty-five reasons are simply not enough to even begin to explain why I love you.”

With shaking hands, Draco flipped through the pages, and with each turn, he felt his heart grow larger and larger until it threatened to tip over and spill out of him entirely.

#16 – Owled me just to say hello.

#45 – Remembered Hermione’s favourite wine and brought it round for dinner because he knew I’d forget.

#51 – Bought me a limited-edition Puddlemere jersey for my birthday. How he did that, I don’t know. They were sold out everywhere.

#96 – Took Teddy to his Junior Quidditch club when I couldn’t get out of work.

#148 – Brewed me Pepper-Up Potion when I caught a cold.

#193 – Booked us a surprise weekend trip to France. He wants to introduce me formally to his mum.

#228 – Saved Christmas dinner when Molly burnt the turkey by Apparating home to get the one he’d saved for our Boxing Day meal.

#274 – Ate my arse out for a solid forty-five minutes until I was a whimpering, fucking mess before shagging me something rotten.

#319 – Took Ron to St Mungo’s when he fell off his broom like the idiot he is.

#339 – Agreed to move in with me.

#365 – Said yes.

Tears fell freely, but Draco didn’t care. He wiped them away, stomach in knots, heart lodged somewhere in his throat.

Three hundred and sixty-five reasons why Harry loved him sat in the palm of his hand.

He looked at the last page again.

“Said yes?” he asked.

Harry nodded, his own eyes welling. With a shaky breath, he said, “Will you marry me?”

The question landed hard and firm between them, and Draco knew he would need three hundred and sixty-five ways to say yes.

He started with the simplest one.

With a teary chuckle, he nodded—resolute.

“Yes. Merlin, yes.”

From the pocket of his joggers, Harry pulled out a small box and opened it.

Inside, nestled in the velvet cushion, was a silver ring.

 (August 2025 prompt)

“I’m back!” Harry shouts, slamming the front door of Grimmauld Place hard enough that—out of habit—he braces for Walburga Black to start screaming.

Then remembers Draco finally got her down after she hurled one homophobic insult too many, and he snapped.

“Really?” Draco drawls, appearing in the kitchen doorway with his sleeves rolled up, a tea towel slung over one shoulder and a plate in hand. Harry almost swoons on the spot. There is nothing—nothing—hotter than Draco Malfoy doing domestic things like a Muggle. “Never would’ve noticed. Slam it louder next time—don’t think the trolls in Wales heard you.”

Harry snorts, kicks off his shoes, and follows him into the kitchen.

“You going to show me, then?” Draco asks casually, setting the plate aside. “Or does this require the privacy of a closed door?” He throws Harry a wink.

“I mean, it doesn’t,” Harry says, sliding up behind him and wrapping his arms around Draco’s waist, “but I’m not opposed if you are.”

Draco leans back into him with a quiet sigh, all warmth and familiarity, still smelling faintly of the spearmint tea he drinks every morning.

“Romance truly isn’t dead,” Draco says. “Go on, then. Show me.”

Harry steps back, crouches, and rolls up his trouser leg.

Draco squats to get a better look. “What is it?”

Harry taps the tattoo. Green ink ripples and reshapes itself, the squiggles stretching and sharpening until a small dragon stands proud on his shin, wings unfurling.

Draco goes very still.

“You got a dragon,” he says, voice suddenly smaller.

For one horrible second, Harry thinks he’s misjudged everything. His mouth opens. Closes. Panic creeps in.

“Draco, I didn’t mean—shit, I just thought—it’s okay if you hate it, I can—”

“You got a fucking tattoo of my name?”

Harry blinks. “Well. Sort of.”

Draco looks up at him, then back at the dragon. “You got a tattoo of my name,” he repeats, softer now.

Harry nods, suddenly meek. “I’m sorry. I can get it covered.”

The dragon flexes its wings and shoots a thin stream of fire up Harry’s shin before settling again.

“Did you feel that?” Draco asks, pressing his thumb gently against the ink. It’s already healed—magic saw to that—but still warm beneath his touch. The dragon dodges him, flapping just out of reach.

“No,” Harry breathes.

Draco studies it, expression unreadable. Then a small, disbelieving smile tugs at his mouth.

“It’s beautiful,” he says quietly. “But I thought it was bad luck to get a tattoo that represents your partner.”

Harry shrugs. “After everything we’ve survived, I doubt a bit of ink is what’s going to do us in.”

Draco scoffs. “You’re insane, Potter.”

“Excuse you?”

Draco smirks. “Sorry. Potter-Malfoy.”

Harry grins. “So… you don’t hate it?”

Draco shakes his head. “I love it.” He looks up, eyes soft. “Like I love you.”

Harry smiles. Draco doesn’t say it often—but when he does, Harry knows it’s real.

“Love you too.”

The dragon suddenly takes flight, circling Harry’s ankle once, twice, before darting up his leg and disappearing beneath the fabric.

“Oi—where’s it gone?” Draco laughs.

Harry shrugs. “Guess we’ll have to check. Behind a closed door?”

Draco’s eyes light up. “Last one upstairs has to get a tattoo that the other chooses.”