Work Text:
“Does anyone know what karma is?” Millicent once asked the common room at large.
Draco, fourteen at the time, had been in the foulest of moods. The stodgy shepherd’s pie served for dinner that night was turning his stomach in tight knots, his new leather loafers were pinching his feet, and Harry Potter had just been selected—illegally—to take part in the Triwizard Tournament.
“Cereal?” Vince had grunted from the rug.
Draco kicked his thigh with the tip of his shoe and immediately regretted it as pain lanced up his toes, smarting around his arch.
“Fate,” drawled Pansy beside him. She’d been painting her toenails with raspberry-pink polish stolen from Lavender ‘Lavetory’ Brown’s schoolbag that very morning. Its acrid chemical scent had tickled under Draco’s nose, a migraine waiting to happen. “Whatever you do will come around again to meet you, whether good or bad. A vicious cycle. Cause and effect.”
“Sounds about right to me,” Draco had announced, standing when Pansy shifted sideways and pushed her over-warm bare feet against his lap, forcing him off the couch altogether. He straightened his tie, fixed his family signet ring, and ran a hand through his hair. “Potter’s going to get his, sooner or later. Karma,” he’d spat, ensuring the entire common room could hear him. “I’ll make sure Saint Potter knows the meaning of the word for the rest of his pathetic little life.”
____________________________
Ten Years Later
“And that’s sold—for a whopping six thousand galleons to the strapping young gentleman with the dark hair and white dinner jacket.” The auctioneer leaned further over the wobbly podium, old knuckles bone-white, crackly voice amplified to an almost uncomfortable degree as he uttered with dark mischief, “Our very own Harry Potter.”
Draco’s insides shrivelled.
His left eye twitched, but it was really the only thing that gave him away. Otherwise, he stood motionless onstage, head to toe in uniform. It was hardly new, but it still had that out of the box smell: clean leather, freshly printed insignia, the sharp tang of broomstick wax.
The crowd erupted in exuberant applause.
Amused murmurings and tittered laughter floated to the gilded ceilings, dancing around the glittering lights of the centuries-old auditorium. Champagne glasses clinked, and Potter waved a hand in the air, showing off his bidder’s number as it floated in all its gold, shimmering brilliance from the tip of his wand.
-
Draco grabbed the bottle of open champagne that waited for them in the back of the carriage. He tipped it upside down and dumped it in Potter’s lap.
It didn’t have the immediate, delicious effect an entire glass of red wine would; instead, it glugged messily from the neck, fizzling around the seats and Potter’s legs, the splash-back spraying them both in the face.
Potter ducked away with a squawk. The bottle slipped Draco’s grasp and tumbled to the floor with a heavy thud, disappearing in the dark.
The horses pulling them from the theatre didn’t appear to notice. They continued their journey down cobbled streets and uneven roads, their entire vehicle invisible to the Muggles hanging outside their noisy watering holes and other questionable establishments littering the pavements of London’s West End.
The air smelled of stale beer and cigarettes and spilled champagne.
“What the fuck was that for?!” Potter demanded, fumbling for his wand and casting an annoyingly efficient drying charm.
“What do you think?” Draco hissed in his face. Potter shrank back, eyes wide behind the champagne-speckled lenses of his glasses.
Draco hadn’t been this close to Potter in years. He looked the same. Smelled the same. Draco’s gaze flickered downward. The stubble was a new and striking addition, something he’d only seen and studied on paper when Potter’s pictures appeared in the press, which was, admittedly, rather frequent.
Potter licked his lips, the pink edge of his tongue swiping over a stray droplet of fizz.
Draco pulled back, gently squeezing the bridge of his nose. The leather of his flying gloves squeaked and pinched around his knuckles.
Merlin and Morgana give him strength.
“This auction wasn’t for you,” he said tiredly.
“Says who?”
Draco lifted his head and looked at Potter again, his voice full of reproach as he said, “Says anyone with a brain and common fucking sense, Potter. Win a Silver Lightning training workshop with Draco Malfoy? You already know how to play Quidditch, you absolute imbecile! You’re better—”
Draco bit his tongue, staring at the glee writ large on Potter’s stupidly pretty face.
“—than most,” Draco finished faintly. He folded his arms. “Not me, of course.”
Potter had the audacity to cackle. “Tell that to all my school wins.”
“Then why did you spend six fucking thousand galleons on this?” Draco despaired. “It’s a full weekend with overnight stays! And a binding contract! What do you need it for?”
Potter shrugged. “I don’t ‘need’ it for anything,” he said. He pointed his wand at the seats, at Draco’s champagne-splattered uniform, clearing everything up with a wordless charm that left the carriage smelling of a field in late summer, buttery and hazy and sweet.
Draco’s heart thudded loudly between his ears. Potter’s charm rippled over the minute space between the fabric of his clothes and the surface of his skin, bright and electric and alive. It felt like a touch he hadn’t forgotten but had instead left stored away somewhere in the recesses of his mind: wrapped snugly, well-hidden, for his eyes only.
He shifted on the seats, watching Potter’s keen gaze travel the details of his uniform.
Potter touched the tip of a finger to the edge of the number stitched onto Draco’s vest in shimmering silver thread. “A weekend isn’t a long time,” he said. “But—it could be like that Christmas—”
Draco inhaled sharply.
“Just give me the weekend,” Potter whispered.
Behind them, London disappeared.
-
The auction had been a Ministry-driven initiative, held annually since the year after the war. Always big, always lavish, it calendared every winter around Yule to ensure people were merry enough to donate and spend big alike.
Putting notable Quidditch players and their assets up for auction had become trendy in the last couple of years, the premier clubs generously shuffling through their MVPs and offering everything from lunch dates to practice sessions, signed merchandise to tours of celebrity players’ homes.
“Think of this as karma, Malfoy,” Draco’s manager told him when the gauntlet finally came hurtling his way. Outside, the rest of the team were carrying on with the match against the Harpies, the roar of the stadium crowd filling the air like white noise, muffled behind the changing room doors.
Draco had been perched on a bench and holding a towel to his nose, the starch white fabric rapidly soaking with blood as a Junior Healer fussed around him with clumsy diagnostic spells, stinking up the place with antiseptic and unpracticed magic.
The bastard Beater responsible for Draco’s nose job was still out there on the field.
“Karma for what?” Draco had asked angrily. His voice was muffled and nasal-thick. The bitter taste of copper lay thick on his teeth.
It was a redundant question. His manager laughed and folded his arms across his thick chest, glancing impatiently at the doors where the rest of the Magpies played on.
Magpies Seeker Malfoy Up For Ministry Auction: Will He Finally Clean Up His Image? the Prophet asked the next morning.
-
“Silver Lightning,” Potter said, evoking Draco’s ridiculous monicker.
“Don’t,” Draco sighed.
They were standing outside Potter’s home. Draco had only seen it in pictures, sections of it, pieces of a puzzle his brain patched together to create a whole that somehow lacked the majesty of this.
“Trust you to live in a castle, Potter,” he breathed.
“Technically it’s an estate house these days, not dissimilar to—”
Draco loudly and pointedly cleared his throat.
“Er, right. Well. It was rebuilt in the sixteenth century,” Potter said. “So it’s Renaissance? I think? Erm. That’s what the seller told me anyway—”
Potter continued to babble on, moving towards the grounds as Draco’s luggage floated out of the back of the carriage that sped them through the country northwards.
Draco craned his neck to take it all in.
Snow dusted the pink sandstone, clinging to the parapets and twisted chimneys. A stone imperial staircase led up to the main entrance: a door painted Gryffindor red and fixed handsomely with brass studs and a Yule wreath abundant with bushy green pine, twinkling gold bells, and a thick red ribbon.
The trees around the property were entwined with gleaming strings of Lumos orbs: gold and silver and winter-orange.
Last week, Potter had hosted a holiday party on the grounds. The next morning, the Prophet ran the coverage and called it a handsome affair and the pictures showed everyone happy and laughing and drinking and dancing. Potter had worn a green velvet suit nipped in at the waist with a smart black sash. Seeing that over his morning eggs and coffee had ruined Draco’s breakfast and he’d spent the rest of the day in a sulk.
His invitation had remained unopened in the kindling pile, the fate of everything else Potter ever tried to send him over the years.
The door opened and Draco’s bags flew inside.
“How many rooms does it have?”
“A hundred and twenty,” Potter said, a tiny trace of embarrassment lacing his tone. “Fifteen turrets. Four towers.”
“Right,” Draco said faintly. His nose was starting to turn numb in the cold.
“No peacocks, though,” Potter said with a nervous laugh.
Draco turned to him. “Shut up, Potter.”
-
This was how it all started.
They’d stared at each other from across the empty Great Hall.
Potter, with his plate of sausages and black pudding. A mound of toast and potato scones and a runny poached egg.
Draco, with his porridge drowning in golden syrup and a buttered croissant on the side.
“Might as well sit together,” Potter had said after he levitated everything over to the seat across from Draco. He was wearing a dark red jumper with a great big ‘H’ stitched across the chest. The fabric clung to his shoulders, fraying at the collar to reveal the sharp jut of his collarbone.
Draco was still in his silk dressing gown and pyjamas, his slippered feet crossed at the ankles beneath the table.
Above their heads, Christmas lights twinkled just for them.
-
“I don’t always live here alone, you know,” Potter said.
His entrance hall was as rich in tone as it was in expense: warm woods, red carpets, gilded details. A wraparound staircase and a Christmas tree as tall as the tower greeted them. The aromatic scent of pine was strong. A grandfather clock chimed tunefully, mounted against the dark panelled walls. A row of Muggle trainers and boots looked odd on the shoe bench beneath a large portrait of some unknown and handsome nobleman.
“In fact, most of the time I don’t but—it’s Christmas, so I guess everyone’s just… yeah," Potter said. "Away.”
“Is this why you paid all this money? Because you’re lonely? Am I really worth that much to you?”
Potter’s cheeks turned rosy. “No.” He blinked. “I mean—yes. I’m not lonely, but you—”
“You do realise,” Draco interrupted as a fluffy black cat came running down the stairs to greet them, going to Potter first, winding its way through his legs and ruffling his winter robe as it rubbed its nose against his shins, “that the contract includes exercise and actual training? That you don’t just get to have me—lounging around inside your home all weekend?”
The cat sniffed curiously at Draco’s Quidditch boots.
“I know,” Potter said. He crouched and picked the animal up, tucking it under his arm. “It’s fine.”
“Who’s that anyway?”
Potter’s smile was soft. “Marley.”
Draco stared at him. “Pull the other one Potter—are you joking?”
-
“What’re you reading?”
They had been sitting in the Eighth Year common room: Draco sprawled on the couch, Potter folded into the armchair, knees tucked in against his chest. The fire crackled and popped and a half-eaten plate of cheese and mince pies from the kitchen lay on the table between them.
Draco flipped over the novel in his hands to show Potter the cover.
“A Christmas Carol,” he’d said, running his fingertips over one cheek, embarrassed by the heat he could feel there. “Gra—Hermione let me borrow it.”
Potter shifted, his dark brows drawing together. “Oh.”
“Muggle writers,” Draco had said with a sigh. “It’s very good.”
Potter had asked him to read some of it aloud—“just a few paragraphs”—but by the time Draco’s voice turned scratchy, they’d missed dinner and he’d almost read through the entire book. Marley and Scrooge and poor Bob Cratchit. Ghosts and absolution and good tidings of great joy.
Potter hadn’t moved much, had just sat there with his chin on his knees, his toes curled over the edge of his chair, his big eyes growing increasingly heavy as night drew in.
Draco closed the book and ran a hand over his face when the redundant bell chimed across the castle, reminding straggling students under the age of eighteen that curfew was fast approaching.
“Do you miss them?” he’d asked Potter.
Potter nodded against his knees. “Of course. But they’ll call. On Christmas Day—they’ll call.”
Draco had a feeling Potter wasn’t telling him the whole truth. That it was highly unusual Mother Weasley hadn’t insisted he stay with them over the Christmas holidays.
But Draco hadn’t pushed, because it was never his place to do that wherever Potter and his friends were concerned, and all besides, Draco had learned over the years, the hard way, that pushing only led to loss.
Quietly, secretly, desperately—he hadn’t wanted to lose this.
-
The cat ran off after that, leaping from Potter’s arms and disappearing back upstairs.
“You must be uncomfortable in all of that,” Potter said, eyeing Draco’s home uniform, an outfit carefully selected by the Ministry auction committee for his official whoring out ceremony.
“Just remember—it’s for a good cause,” his manager had said, slapping him on the padded arm thirty seconds before Draco was due to walk onstage with the other players. “Several causes, actually, when you think about it. Everyone will love you after this, Malfoy. You’ll see.”
“We should probably go to sleep now anyway,” Draco said, resisting the urge to pick off the snowflake clinging to the end of the dark curl that kissed Potter’s tawny cheek in a near-perfect coil. “It’s a six o’clock start. I need you bright eyed and bushy tailed if you actually want to get something out of this.”
Draco was shown to his bedroom, two doors down from Potter's.
Plush with navy-toned furnishings and gold accents, it was cosy, with its own fireplace and a large window overlooking the water and the craggy, dramatic cliffs of Scotland’s Western Isles.
Stars poked through the wispy nighttime clouds, cold and piercing.
There, Draco peeled off each stiff layer, keenly aware of Potter doing the same just two rooms away.
He lifted his bare wrist to his nose, sniffing at a spot of champagne Potter had missed.
-
“Were you worried?” Potter had asked him one morning.
The castle had been full of peachy sunlight, and it striped bright across Potter’s eyes, turning them kunzite green. His lashes, as dark as ever, fanned generously around his lids.
The night before, Draco had found out what they felt like beneath the pad of his thumb.
Sprout, one of the only professors left on school grounds for Christmas, had lent them her old wireless. Draco pretended to fiddle with the dials while Potter had his firecall with Hermione and Weasley, their voices hushed beneath the static hum of white noise as Draco tuned into the Christmas station, listening out for the Muggle carols it preferred to broadcast. When the call was over, Potter poured them each a finger of whisky. Draco had been in his usual spot, prostrate on the couch, but Potter, somehow, had found his way from the armchair onto the rug. He sat directly beneath Draco with his head resting against the edge of the couch, dark hair spilling, lush, so very black, against the pale green velvet.
O, the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing in the choir
The holly bears a prickle
As sharp as any thorn
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
On Christmas Day in the morn
Eventually, Draco’s fingers had wound their way into that hair, and his heart pulsated quickly in his throat as he twisted gently, burying them knuckle-deep until his fingertips found the tantalising heat of Potter’s scalp.
Potter had moaned, the most divine of sounds, and when Draco gently scraped the edge of his thumb against the corner of Potter’s eyelid, Potter had arched his back and lifted his arms and then suddenly they were kissing, upside down and open-mouthed while Christian hymns crackled tinnily from across the room.
Draco looked up from his breakfast, the heat in his cheeks revealing more truth than his mouth. Last night, he’d barely slept, but when he’d eventually dragged himself to bed—whisky-warm and kissed thoroughly, hours and hours of that—Potter had been a curtain away, snoring gently into the waking morning alongside him.
“Pardon?”
“Were you worried?” Potter had asked again. “When you found out you’d only have me for company?”
Draco cleared his throat, stirring his porridge around slowly, steam curling into his face. “No.”
Potter stretched a leg beneath the table. “Liar,” he whispered.
Their ankles wound together, and they finished their breakfast in easy silence.
-
Potter looked surprisingly fresh before sunrise, an amusing change from their school days.
“And here I thought I was going to have to drag you out of bed,” Draco said as he strolled across the grass, a broomstick in each hand.
“If I’d known that, I would have stayed in my room,” Potter said.
Draco wanted to roll his eyes, but instead he found himself transfixed by Potter’s breath as it puffed into the air through full, winter-blushed lips, cotton-white and abundant.
Draco wondered if Potter still used the same toothpaste. If his mouth would taste of spearmint, like it used to.
“Enough of that,” Draco sighed when he found his voice, perhaps too late, because Potter was smiling at him, all hopeful and open.
Draco tossed Potter a broom—the signed one, his own edition of the Firebolt—and Potter caught it deftly between gloved fingers.
“Fifty loops, and then we play,” Draco said, pointing at the sky.
Later, when they landed, Draco’s cheeks stung and his eyes were streaming. Moisture clung to Potter’s lashes, his cheeks copper-rose from exertion. The sun crept over the cliffs, the darkest of blood orange. Potter’s castle stood against it like a toy model cut from black paper.
Breathless, Draco retrieved the Snitch from his pocket and let it go. It buzzed between their heads before flying off into the morning sky.
They played for two hours, until Potter won. He caught the Snitch by the water’s edge, the tail of his broom skimming the surface of the shore, spraying seafoam and getting them both wet. Draco flew up behind him and they rode together, landing on the castle’s parapet, snow skidding beneath their wet feet on impact.
They tossed their brooms away simultaneously.
Draco grabbed Potter by the upper arms and walked them backwards through the closest door, his vision quickly obscured by dark hair and his own eyelids as he sought the magnetic heat of Potter’s mouth, all sense and temperance shattering behind him, lost to the winds as they blew across the sea.
-
“I wasn’t expecting this,” Draco had said, turning the piece of parchment back and forth on top of the dining table. “This isn’t—it can’t be real.”
“Let me see.”
Potter dragged the letter towards him. He poked the letterhead with his thumb. “Real. Look at that stamp. It’s from the official Magpies camp. Can’t you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
“The magic. It’s subtle but—it’s there.”
Draco had licked his lips, bereft of something he hadn’t known existed until Potter mentioned it.
“I—no,” he said, ashamed.
“Give me your hand.”
“What?”
“Your hand. Give it here.”
Potter held out his palm.
Draco awkwardly slid his fingers across Potter’s and Potter twisted around on his seat, scanning the room despite the fact they were mostly alone. He smiled and pressed Draco’s fingertips to the stamp. “Close your eyes. Focus.”
Feeling silly, Draco did as he was bid. “I can’t feel anything,” he said after a beat.
“Just wait.”
Draco had waited. And waited.
And, there it was. A tingle, a tickle, a ripple of magic, unique and cadenced like a song.
“I feel it.”
Potter had laced their fingers together. They held hands across the table.
“Are you going to go?” he asked Draco.
“I don’t know, honestly.”
“How could you not? The chance to be a professional Quidditch player? It’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?”
What he’d always wanted?
No, that hadn’t been what Draco always wanted. But perhaps it was all he would get.
“Do you think I should?”
Do you want me to go?
“I think you’d be daft not to.”
Do you want me to leave?
“Everyone will hate me,” Draco whispered.
Why is it so easy for you to let me go?
Potter let go of his fingers, slipping his hand beneath the table and out of sight. “Let people think what they want to think. You know the truth. That’s what’s important.”
“It’s in the summer.”
Draco glanced between the letter and Potter, his fingers tingling with the ghost of his touch. He wanted, desperately, for Potter to take his hand again. To squeeze his fingers and let Draco cradle his face and touch his hair.
But Potter wanted him to go to Quidditch camp, and Draco knew Potter would probably prefer to spend his last summer before employment with his friends. His real friends.
Not doing—this, whatever this was.
“Then it’s perfect,” Potter said. “You don’t have your par—I mean. There’s, er… no one to… erm…”
“My parents aren’t around to say no, you mean,” Draco whispered. His chest was starting to feel tight. His eyes prickled. He’d hid it well, he thought.
“Exactly,” Potter breathed.
-
Harry’s hair smelled of ice and brine.
It spread across the pillow, soot-black, and as Draco ran his fingers through it, Harry arched upward to seek the warmth of Draco’s touch. The covers slipped further from Harry’s chest, almost exposing the sharp and delectable jut of his hips, and Draco’s other hand skimmed across the sheen of their shared sweat, of their come. It gleamed against Harry’s naked skin—and his own.
The first room they’d found was a guest room, filled with furniture and art covered in white dust sheets. They were dotted around the space like ghosts, almost as if they were watching them as Draco kissed and kissed and kissed Harry, as he knelt before him and peeled down his training leggings, looking at him for the first time like that, hard and leaking. Tasting him for the first time too, the tang of fresh sweat and precome bright on his tongue.
Harry had ran his hands through his hair and begged, “Say my name,” and Draco did, whispering it worshipfully against Harry's thigh, fingers working him open as Harry stood, one heel lifted on the covered bed, his knees wide open, his hands cradling Draco’s skull.
Draco had mouthed at his balls, had licked up into him, pushing past the tight ring of muscle as Harry rode his face and pleaded and begged and that—that had been enough. Enough to bring Draco to his feet. Enough to flip Harry onto his back.
They’d fucked like that, face to face on the bed, gasping into each other's open mouths, hands slipping over wet, overhot skin.
“What happened?” Harry asked from across the pillow. His eyes were soft. Sleepy. His mouth was sweet and slack. Draco closed the distance to taste it, just for a second, licking softly until Harry's tongue gave way.
“What do you mean?” Draco murmured, flopping back onto his side of the pillow.
“When we were eighteen. What happened?”
“I—” Draco stopped. Blinked. “What do you mean?” he asked again in a hush, like the room really was full of ghosts, listening to them talk, waiting for one of them to fuck this up. Their classic cause and effect.
“You ignored me,” Harry said quietly. He shifted, and for a moment, Draco thought he was going to get up and pull on his discarded clothes. To tell Draco to leave.
Instead, Harry moved closer and fit himself into the space between Draco’s arms.
“After Christmas,” Harry added softly when Draco left his question unanswered. “It was like we never happened. You wouldn’t sit next to me in lessons or the common room. You barely talked to me. You didn’t even look at me sometimes. And you didn’t tell me where you were going, after camp. You gave me nothing to go by, not even a crumb. I had no way of reaching you—”
“What do you mean?” Draco asked again, helpless, his heart beating hard in his throat, Harry a warm weight against his chest.
“Draco,” Harry said. He was obviously trying for stern, but his voice cracked down the middle, giving him away. “Don’t fuck around, I’m trying to be vulnerable here.”
“I’m not fucking around,” Draco whispered. “You—you told me to leave.”
Harry blinked. “I didn’t.”
Draco sat up. The sheet fell away, puddling around his waist. “You did! You said you’d be stupid not to go.”
“Not to go—” Harry said, bewildered, staring up at Draco from the pillow like a damn Botticelli painting, all doe-eyed and sad and perfectly formed.
“To Quidditch camp. It was almost as if—as if you couldn’t wait to get rid of me.”
“I—that’s not why I told you to go!”
Harry sat up too, hair wild, eyes wilder. “I told you to go because—because you deserved it! Because you earned it and it was a chance to—to do something you love! I didn’t tell you to go because I wanted to get rid of you! I told you to go because I—I cared about you.”
“You told me to go,” Draco repeated faintly, “because you cared about me.” His hands fell heavily into his lap. Harry took them, folding their fingers together.
Six years they’ve wasted.
“I’m an idiot,” Draco whispered, probably for the first time in his life.
Perhaps Harry made him stupid.
“Yes,” Harry agreed with a lopsided smile. “But so am I. I should have been clearer. But I thought—I don’t know. I thought you’d get it. I thought you’d understand.”
Draco shook his head. “I did not.”
“It’s okay,” Harry said. He squeezed Draco’s fingers. Brought them to his mouth and kissed them. “And yes,” he added quietly.
“Yes what?” Draco breathed.
“Yes, you really are worth that much to me. You’re worth sixty thousand galleons. Six hundred thousand galleons. Six million. More. I’d empty my whole fucking vault if it meant getting to have you like this. If it meant having another chance at this.”
“We’re idiots,” Draco said softly, laughing as giddiness wriggled its way through his ribs, bursting bright and joyous from his mouth. “We’re so fucking stupid, Potter.”
“Harry.”
“Harry.”
“Yeah. We are.”
Draco hummed. Stole a kiss. And another. “Are you ready to get up at six again tomorrow?”
Harry smiled against his mouth. “Why don’t we just stay up all night?”