Chapter Text
I’ll think about it, Draco said… when every fiber of his being wanted to say yes.
Three days. Seven clients.
Can I kiss you?
Draco cannot remember the last time someone asked to touch him. He cannot remember the last time he wanted someone to touch him.
I’ll think about it, he’d said. And, Merlin help him, Draco can’t stop thinking about it.
The Thestral’s Wing is one of the smaller pubs in Diagon Alley, and it caters to a younger, louder crowd than, say, the Leaky Cauldron. On any given night, Harry will have been at Hogwarts with at least half the people there, which means they are far less likely to mob him—wanting autographs, to buy him drinks, to touch him in some way—or to criticize him for any un-Savior-like behavior—like losing at darts, drinking too much, or punching Seamus Finnigan on the nose… something he hasn’t completely written off the night’s “to do” list.
Harry appreciates that the lads think he ought to be bringing home a different witch or wizard every night… but that’s just not him and they all know it. Harry is sure that Seamus came up with the plan, and that Dean, Dennis Creevy, and maybe Michael Corner and a few others, egged him on, and that George supplied most of the galleons to hire him a prostitute. That, Harry thinks, is bad enough, but to purchase a reparations detainee… that is so much worse. The entire program disgusts him and horrifies him, and Harry can’t help but feel that if he had been just a little less exhausted, just a little less heartsick in the months following the War he might have been able to put a stop to it.
The fact that they bought him Draco Malfoy…
Draco Malfoy… whose lips were so soft under his own… whose fingers were so gentle as they traced along his cheek… whose eyes were so haunted and frightened.
Who sat with him and held his hand and made him feel… not alone… for the first time in ages.
Can I see you again?
Gods, he hopes Draco says yes.
“There’s the man!” Seamus’s brash voice rings out across the pub, turning heads, and Harry finds the expected crowd—and Ron—seated at their usual table. He accepts the beer Dean passes his way.
“I expected to find you banging down our door singin’ our praises before the sun was even up,” Seamus says.
“He was probably too tired,” George laughs. “Needed a couple of days to recuperate.”
“What happened?” Ron asks.
“We finally got Harry laid,” Dean says… at the same time Dennis announces, “We all got together and bought him a night with a reparations detainee—Draco Malfoy.”
“You what?”
“We’re going to need details,” Seamus says.
“Exactly,” George says. “We’re going to need to know everything. How you fucked him and where you fucked him and how many times you fucked him…”
“I think you say ‘it’ when it’s one of those detainees,” Dennis interrupts.
“… and how badly it was limping when you were finally done with it.”
“Did it wear the ribbons?” Dennis asks. “We thought you’d fancy that.”
“Why?” Ron sounds properly horrified.
“I expect they meant to humiliate Draco,” Harry says, engaging only with Ron. He is becoming aware of a slight burbling sound. His beer is beginning to boil. The ribbons were Gryffindor-colored, Harry realizes, feeling something sharp twist in his gut.
“What the fuck?” George hastily sets down his glass. Maybe everyone’s beer is beginning to boil.
“Now, Harry,” Seamus says, “I want to hear everything… blow, if you will, by bl—”
There’s a sharp crack and Harry feels his knuckles slamming into Seamus’s face.
“Harry, I cannot believe you would do something like that!”
Hermione is whirling around him wearing a flowery bathrobe, with a bonnet over her curls, hissing at Harry to not wake the children, while applying ice to Harry’s hand and burn cream to his arm and bruise paste to his eye and fretting about whether the slice on his shoulder needs a knitting charm or a just a bandage.
Harry doesn’t remember Seamus punching him back… or rolling around in broken glass and scalding beer, but judging by his injuries, those things did, in fact, happen before Ron grabbed ahold of him and apparated them both directly into his and Hermione’s kitchen.
“I didn’t! I mean we just hung out, watched a film… it was really nice, actually.”
“I meant punch Seamus,” she says, pointing a needly spell at his shoulder. “Did you just say that you watcheda film with Draco Malfoy???!”
“Seamus deserved it,” Harry said, making an effort, if not to actually whisper, to at least be quieter than Hermione, which wasn’t, really, all that quiet. “And yes, I did. I also said it was nice.”
“Harry, how could you?”
“What? What was I supposed to do?” Harry asked, still making an effort to keep his voice low. “He was there! I certainly wasn’t going to…to… engage with someone who literally had no choice!”
Hermione must have put up a silencing charm around the kids’ rooms, right?
“You should have sent him right back to the nearest streetcorner—where he belongs!!!”
There is a muffled wail from the back of the cottage.
“Now look what you’ve done! You’ve woken up Hugo!” Hermione snatches up the first aid supplies, shoving them all into her robe pocket, before stomping out of the kitchen.
Hermione, Harry remembers, had been absolutely, and almost shockingly, silent about the Reparations Company, Incorporated.
Harry and Ron are left at the table, staring at one another other over the table, still littered with bits of bloody gauze and melting ice.
“How’s your hand?”
Harry wiggles his fingers, experimentally. “Better.”
“You’re going to see him again, aren’t you?” Ron asks quietly.
“I hope so.”
Ron nods. “Just be careful, yeah?”
“I’ll try.”
“Honestly, Harry? I don’t think you will.”
In some, twisted way, Draco cannot help but feel that he should be grateful to the Reparations Company, Incorporated… because, realistically, the post-Voldemort world has no place for him—a second-best seeker and unwilling Death Eater with a flair for Arithmancy and conversational French. With his father in Azkaban, the Manor and all the money gone, and his mother…
Draco thinks, maybe, you can die from a broken heart…
Chances are he would have been selling his body, anyway, to survive—but doing it cold and hungry in the darkest corners of Knockturn Alley. The Company provides him with food, shelter, and clients… and, the fact is, Draco is fucking good at his job. It would seem that the skills he honed as a child—to observe and then exploit is classmates’ weaknesses, the skills that made him such a loathed schoolyard bully—translate rather spectacularly into the ability to assess and then grant his clients’ desires… often before they are even aware of them themselves.
His clients adore him. Or delight in him, which isn’t the same thing.
Or delight in using his body, which isn’t at all the same thing.
But at least he’s not in Azkaban which, to hell with whatever Potter said at his trial, is where Draco belongs. He did do all the things they accused him of. Yes, he was underage, and yes, he did them to avoid having to watch his mother be fed to a fucking snake…
But he still did them.
And Potter knows it.
Potter knows what he’s done… knows what he is… and still…
Can I see you again?
Potter wants him. Potter wants him.
And, Merlin help him, Draco wants him back. Maybe he always has.
But Draco is a whore. A prostitute. A Reparations Detainee. And Harry Potter is the Boy Who Lived. The Savior of the Wizarding World. They have no business in each other’s lives.
Draco knows what he has to do… knows what he should do.
He takes out a piece of thin parchment, a ratty quill, and bottle of watery ink… and with a hand that he cannot keep steady, he writes out the words he needs to say. He whispers a spell to dry the ink, and carefully folds the parchment.
Draco’s ancient eagle owl watches him from his perch on the wardrobe. He clucks softly to the owl. “Nicholas, will you carry a letter for me?”
The owl hoots softly, and flutters down beside Draco, landing with a soft flump. Technically, of course, Nicholas is no longer Draco’s owl… but even though he doesn’t have to, and even though he’s ancient, he is still willing to carry Draco’s mail.
Not that there’s much of it these days. The Company takes care of Draco’s bookings, and everyone he would ever want to correspond with is either dead, or not in a position to receive mail, or here at the Company with him.
Everyone except Potter.
Draco opens the note again, sprinkles a little silver-gold glitter into it and refolds the parchment. The owl watches him, carefully, with wide, amber eyes.
“I know,” Draco says. Draco knows he’s lost his mind – and apparently the owl knows it, too.
Draco pets him gently. “Are you sure you’re up for the trip?”
The owl hoots again, reproachfully, and sticks out a leg.
“Thank you, Nicholas.” Draco carefully attaches the letter. “Potter will take care of you… feed you, let you rest. There’s no need to rush back until you’ve rested properly.”
The window in Draco’s room is far too small for Nicholas to fly out of, so Draco has to carry him, maneuvering his arm and the owl out the window. With a final, farewell hoot, the owl takes off.
“Fly safe,” Draco whispers into the night.
Harry likes his house. It is cozy, but with plenty of room to grow into. The house has sheltered him, and Teddy when he visits, with two bedrooms to spare. There is a sprawling garden that, in the summer, plays host to bees and butterflies, all congregating around an array of vegetables and rather weedy-looking flowers, and the living room—especially when the fire is going—just feels like home. The kitchen is large and Harry is experimenting with learning to cook on his own terms.
He’s in the kitchen now, watching his cornflakes go soggy.
Because ever since Draco turned up on his doorstep, Harry has begun to notice the empty places in his home… that he hadn’t before. The dining room that just waits for dinner parties and large family meals that haven’t happened yet. The bookshelves, holding only his meager DVD collection and a few textbooks that long for tomes on theoretical charms and experimental potions and so many novels. His half-empty wardrobe and the whole other side of his bed, untouched except by Athena the Cat. The extra chairs around his kitchen table, and the empty space in the cupboards waiting for dishes he doesn’t yet need. It’s the same in the linen cupboard.
But there’s a speck of glitter in the back of his shower, and the brilliant sparkle catches his eye whenever he looks in the mirror to shave or brush his teeth. There’s more glitter in the bedroom and in the living room, shimmery reminders that Draco was real and that he was here, and that maybe, just maybe, he will come back.
I am those things, Harry.
No! You aren’t. Not to me, Harry had wanted to say.
There’s a speck of glitter in the kitchen, too, on the counter by the sink… and Harry stares at it… wondering…
wishing…
as a bundle of mottled brownish feathers swoops through his open window.
The feathers are more grey now, than brown, but Harry would recognize the eagle owl that used to sweep into the Hogwarts Great Hall laden with sweets for… Draco… Malfoy anywhere. The owl lands in front of Harry, and, with trembling fingers, Harry opens the letter, his heart swooping as silvery-gold glitter spills out onto his fingers. Three words flow, in watercolor script, across the page: Ask for me.