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Harry Potter stopped speaking nine years, seven months and fifteen days after the night he defeated Voldemort.
The first one to notice was Susannah Waverley. Susannah was not exceptionally shocked by this turn of events. The Harry Potter she had gotten to know over the years was a quiet man to begin with. He’d already been like that when she first set foot in his shop, several years after the war. She’d been a teenager then, shopping with her mum, looking for a birthday present for one of her nieces.
A kind man. But quiet. Not at all the boisterous hero her teen-self had been expecting. Harry Potter, the boy who defeated Voldemort and lived to tell the tale.
Years later, after many more visits to his shop, after finishing Hogwarts, she became his shop keeper. But getting to know the man better, didn’t change her initial impression. He was still a quiet man. She wouldn’t have applied for the job if her future boss had been the boisterous hero type anyway. In the end, she really wasn’t too fond of that sort of men. Not as her boss, nor in any other capacity. Not if she had any say in it.
Harry Potter being a quiet sort of man was a happy coincidence because Susannah had fallen deeply in love with his quaint little toy shop during that first visit with her mum. The place was neatly tucked away in a remote corner at the far back of Diagon Alley, shoulders lifted, held up between two larger buildings, their facades all very black-and-white-revival, one an apothecary, the other a hat shop.
She’d been curious about him of course, that first time. Everybody always was when they first set foot in the shop. Harry Potter had become a household name after the second wizarding war, of course, even more than after the first. But in the end the shop and its content had been endlessly more fascinating to her than the man itself. Possibly that was the reason why he eventually hired her.
The Boy Who Lived had become somewhat of an enigma in the magical world, obsessively avoiding press and limelight, or anything at all that drew attention to himself. When Susannah started working in the shop, she learned that the front door was protected by a highly specialised set of wards. It gently deflected people who merely came to gawp at her boss. Only people whose curiosity about the toys outweighed that about the man, entered the shop. More often than not, they still gawped at him. It’s why he generally hid himself in the backroom, now that he had her to manage the shop.
Over the years Susannah had pieced together his story. She learned from friends coming into the shop more than from Harry himself. Remarks they tossed in the air, jokes they cracked with him. Harry didn’t talk like to talk about himself. It was not, Susannah knew, that he didn’t like to talk. Ask him about the wonders of his godson and he wouldn’t shut up for the next hour.
This is what she learned. After the war, Harry Potter had started with auror training but then abandoned it within a year. Not knowing where to go next, he started helping out George Weasley in Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes because Harry needed to keep busy and George could use the help and also, that’s where his best friend Ron Weasley was.
Apart from Wheezes, Harry started spending a lot more time with his godchild Teddy Lupin, who was a toddler at the time. In that role, he discovered his knack for magical toys. At first, he just repaired Teddy’s toys when they got broken, apparently the boy’s Lycanthropy heritage made him stronger than the average child of his age. After a while, other parents from the magical village where Teddy lived with his grandmother, started dropping by with their kid’s broken toys.
Then, after an incident with one of Teddy’s playground friends and a toy broom, Harry began to tinker with the safety charms, thoroughly dissatisfied with their strength and adaptability.
And later again, he made a new toy for Teddy, the first of many.
All of it eventually led him to open his little shop, nearly five years after the war ended, in which he repaired the broken toys that people brought him and sold his own creations. He was a toy healer and a toy maker in one person.
Between the two of them, Susannah and Harry quickly found a good dynamic where it came to dividing the work. Susannah reigned supreme in the front part of the shop, where Harry’s new toys were sold; Harry was king in the magically extended workspace behind it. Their realms were divided by a curtain of colourful beads.
Harry didn’t much care for interacting with customers these days, not unless they were under eleven, give or take a few years. Their parents always wanted to talk about the war, Harry once confessed to Susannah. Harry hated talking about the war.
Susannah on the other hand loved talking to other people. Not necessarily about the war, but she wasn’t opposed to it either. Her own family had gotten out of the war largely unscathed. She had started at Hogwarts in the year after the Final Battle. It just wasn’t a very painful subject to her. But what she really loved was finding out what made people tick, trying to find them the right toy, whether it was for their own child or for somebody else’s, or even, occasionally, for themselves.
They made a good team, she and Harry.
Because Harry was not a talkative person to begin with, it took Susannah a whole day to figure out Harry had stopped talking altogether. When she asked him questions that day, he would answer with an appropriate noise, a grunt here, a hum there. He pointed a finger towards toys that she was looking for, silently handed over repaired ones he had finished this week. A few times Anso answered in his stead. Anso had an uncanny ability to read people’s minds. None of it was out of the ordinary.
She did notice that he got a faraway look in his eyes, the few times she asked him a question that could not be answered by pointing a finger or uttering one of his non-word sounds. A question that even Anso couldn’t answer for him. But it was Saturday and busy – it was mid-November and the anticipation of Christmas cheer could already be felt in the air by customers and shopkeepers alike – and Susannah just figured that Harry’s mind was preoccupied by the upcoming month, or perhaps some of the more intricate magic he was working on.
By the end of the day though, she was absolutely certain. Harry Potter had stopped using words. She had tested it. Had fired a number of questions at him in a row, questions to which he could not answer with any of his non-verbal methods of communication, and he had not answered any single one of them.
After they closed up shop, Susannah bid Harry goodbye with a pointed “have a good weekend, Harry”, to which he answered with a broad smile, a crinkle near his eyes, and a wave of his hand, solidifying her conviction even further.
Susannah hurried to the beginning of Diagon Alley. She was in luck. The shop was closed, but George Weasley was still inside, visible through the open door showing the back room where he was rummaging around. George was not as tall as his brother Ron with whom he ran the shop, but it was a close call. Both of them had the startlingly red Weasley hair of course.
After the war having red hair became a bit of a fashion statement, for a few years at least. All kinds of people started spelling their hair red. Or they bought a potion if they didn’t trust their own hair transfiguration skills. George had gleefully leaned into the craze by making and selling Wheezes’ own line of hair dye potions, shamelessly misusing each of his sibling’s name for different colours of red that were barely distinguishable from each other. Where better to buy your red hair than straight from the source itself.
Susannah caught George’s eye when she waved at him, standing on tiptoe to increase the change of being seen, and he hurried to open the shop for her. He led her to the back and offered her a cup of tea, which she declined. She was sure his children were waiting for him at home, and she didn’t want to take up more of his time than necessary. After a bit of idle small talk, discussing the most obnoxious customers of the day, she took a deep breath. She didn’t want to gossip about her boss. But she was worried about this strange behaviour.
She explained what she had observed during the day. George frowned. “Are you sure, Suse? Maybe he just had an off day? He has those, you know.”
As if she didn’t know that.
“No. I’ve worked with him for two years. I know when he’s grumpy or down or just plain annoyed. He was neither one of those things. I think he even smiled more than usual. He seemed quite happy. He just- didn’t talk. At all.”
Maybe it came out a little more defensively than she intended, because George replied with, “I believe you, Suse. Don’t worry. Do you think it could it be a curse?”
That question caught her off-guard. “A curse? What? Why?”
“Oh, you dear, dear girl, you innocent soul!” George exclaimed. “You think nobody would want to curse our Lord and Saviour, our Hero of the Wizarding World?” She punched his arm for his mock-condescension. He continued on a more sober note.
“There were incidents, Suse, in the first years after the war. Death eaters on the run who were looking for revenge. It happened here as well. Ron was hexed-” He heaved a slightly shaky sigh remembering. “Someone cursed my baby brother with a flaying curse right here in the middle of the shop. It was- rather ghastly.”
Susannah sometimes forgot that Harry Potter was not the only one who had witnessed the horrors of the war first hand. His entire age group had been involved. She knew George had lost his twin brother during the Battle of Hogwarts. Seeing another brother being cursed like that must have been terrifying.
She put a gentle hand on his arm. “I don’t think Harry is cursed, George. He seemed perfectly normal in every other respect. I really don’t think he is in any danger.” George visibly shook himself and looked back at her, his typical good cheer firmly back in place.
“Well, I’ll be seeing Harry tomorrow for Sunday lunch at the Burrow. Rest assured that I shall pry and prod and tease until he starts talking to me out of pure exasperation. Come Monday you will have your boss back good as new, talking your head off as much as he’s always done.”
Susannah snorted loudly at that before taking her leave and starting her own well-deserved weekend.
~*~
Sunday lunch at the Burrow was a rather small affair. Speaking from a Weasley point of view of course. When George Floo-ed into his parents’ living room, following Angelina and the kids, Percy and Audrey were already there, their own children running around somewhere in the background, as of yet unseen, most likely playing with one of Harry’s outdoor toys in the garden. However, Bill was currently working in Mozambique and Fleur decided to stay in Shell Cottage because Dominique was running a temperature. Charlie was in Romania, as always. He only came back home a few times a year, if they were lucky, and his next visit wasn’t due until Christmas.
When George asked after the rest, Molly informed him that Ginny was in Paris with Blaise, celebrating some relationship-related anniversary, George couldn’t be bothered to care. He didn’t particularly like Blaise Zabini, even if he made his sister happy, which should be enough, really, but it wasn’t, not quite. Zabini seemed like a decent enough bloke these days. His mum was as enchanted by him as his sister was. But to George he would always be a Slytherin first and he had never been able to forgive the collective of Slytherin House for their role in the war, for their help in tearing his life in two.
Hermione couldn’t make it because she was doing her monthly Sunday-shift at the hospital. Predictably, Molly tsssked George’s sister-in-law for not asking St. Mungo’s to lighten her workload on account of a seven-month pregnant belly. George knew the hospital was doing all they could not to have her work more than her assigned hours, forget about making her cut down on them. Hermione was married to her work, Ron would sometimes joke a little sourly. Ron himself was coming over with little Rose, but they were running late because Rosey had an accident with her magic during breakfast.
And Harry had cancelled last minute, because Andromeda had some unspecified neighbourhood emergency and of course Harry selflessly had to step in to look after Teddy. “He could easily have brought Teddy over,” Molly complained at Harry’s absence. “I haven’t seen him all week!” George was annoyed as well, albeit for different reasons. Now he wouldn’t be able to speak to Harry.
George sometimes teased Molly that she loved Harry more than any of her biological children. If he did that while Harry was within earshot, she would whip a tea towel in George’s direction and say, “I love all my children in equal measure” and then she would affectionately kiss Harry’s cheek, or whatever other part of his head was in easy reach. Ear, nose, chin, hair, it didn’t matter.
But if Harry was not present, she would invariably say something else. “You know that boy has a lot of catching up to do in being loved.” And just as invariably, it would shut George up more effectively than any tea towel ever could.
“Mum, you know Teddy is quickly overwhelmed by groups of people,” George now answered Molly’s complaint about Harry not bringing Teddy over. A full Weasley crowd must be your worst nightmare if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing. “Harry wouldn’t want to spring that on the boy without giving him some proper time to get used to the idea.” Teddy came over to the Burrow regularly, even sometimes for an ever-busy Sunday brunch, but Harry and Andromeda would always prepare him well in advance for these visits.
His mum only frowned some more, failing to empathise with Teddy’s outlook on Weasley crowds. She pointedly looked around. “It’s not even a full house today.” George had just hugged her. He knew Molly liked to have all of her family close to her, in one house, as often as possible.
After a copious Weasley lunch, regular Sunday quantities, George pulled Ron to the side. “Have you spoken to Harry lately?”
Ron looked at him strangely. “Mate, have you gone mental? I just told you yesterday morning in the shop – our shop, you know, the one on Diagon Alley? The one where we sell Pranks and Jokes and…” He ducked his head when George aimed a blow at it. “I told you yesterday about Friday night drinks at the Leaky. I told you that Harry was there.” George hadn’t been able to make it to their weekly pub night last Friday. Angelina had had some night off with a friend, so he had to stay home with the kids.
In retaliation Ron rapped his knuckles on his brother’s head. It hurt like hell. The Weasley brothers were never overly careful with each other. “I distinctly remember telling you about the talk I had with Harry and Theo about opening a new Wheezes in Hogsmeade.”
George rolled his eyes. “Ron, you fucking idiot, you could just have said ‘yes, George, dearest of all my brothers, I just saw him Friday night’.”
“Yes, George, biggest idiot of all my brothers, I just saw him last Friday night. Why d’you ask?” Ron sat up straight suddenly. “Is something wrong with him? Did something happen?”
George shook his head, manfully ignoring the insult, and then recounted what Susannah told him. Ron sagged back in his chair. He didn’t appear too worried by George’s story. “Mate, this is Harry we’re talking about. Susannah was probably exaggerating. You know how he gets with his moods. They always disappear- But if it makes you feel any better, I’ll pop over and see for myself tonight. ‘Mione should be home around seven. I can go when Rosey is asleep.”
~*~
Hermione was already in bed when Ron came home that night. She woke up when he crawled next to her, although barely. “Did you talk to him?” she murmured. Ron had told her why he was visiting Harry before leaving.
“Yes. Well. Talking is probably not the right word, ‘Mione.”
“Oh. The shop girl was right then? Harry stopped talking? Ron? Should we be worried?”
Ron tenderly kissed his wife’s forehead before pushing his freezing cold feet between her legs. “He will be fine, Hermione. Go back to sleep. We can talk about this in the morning. It’s nothing urgent.”
“Really?”
“Really, love. I promise. Go back to sleep. You need your sleep. The baby needs your sleep. Your patients need your sleep.”
“'Kay. Night, love.”
She didn’t sound entirely convinced, but she fell asleep again easily. As a healer Hermione had learned to catch sleep wherever she could. Or maybe the war had taught her that way before the start of healer training.
Ron, on the other hand, was staring up at the ceiling of their bedroom for a long time after. The war had taught them other things as well. His mind went over his weird visit with Harry again and again. His friend hadn’t been sad, or angry, or depressed. He’d just been his regular old self, rather more cheery than normal even. He just- he never said a word. It was just like Susannah had described to George. Harry made comprehensible noises or gestures for the questions that could be answered with a yes or a no or a maybe. An over-there, or an I don’t know. But for anything that required more than that, he simply shrugged and looked away.
He’d become amused by Ron’s obvious attempts to draw him out, asking him increasingly ridiculous and embarrassing questions in an attempt to elicit a response.
What did you have for dinner, Harry?
Ron realised that was not even the right sort of question when Harry had dragged his arse over to his fridge and showed him some pasta leftovers.
What did you and Teddy do today? How is Andromeda doing? How are you feeling? How is Susannah doing? What have you been working on this week? What club did you go to last night?
Oh, no club- Well, who was the last bloke you shagged then?
Apart from the club one, which was answered by a firm shake of his head, Ron's questions were met with shrugs and a twinkle in Harry’s eyes because he knew full well what his best friend was doing.
Which one of my brothers do you fancy?
That one sort of slipped out involuntarily as a result of the question before that. Ron had always been curious though. It got him a highly interesting red colour in response, but no actual words.
For the rest of the night Ron alternately broke his head over why Harry had stopped talking and which brother he fancied.
It couldn’t be Percy, could it?
~*~
The next morning, after hearing Ron’s story over breakfast in a more lucid state of mind, Hermione Floo-ed over to Harry’s apartment and – once she confirmed for herself what she called Harry’s ‘predicament’ – she made him accompany her to St. Mungo’s. She was not taking no for an answer.
She impatiently waited for Harry to write a message to Susannah on a piece of parchment asking her to manage the shop alone if he was not back by lunchtime. On Mondays the shop only opened in the afternoon. He sent it off with Anacleto, his heart-faced barn owl.
Hermione was interested to see that Harry had absolutely no problem writing down words. She put a fresh piece of parchment in front of him and demanded “Tell me why you are not talking, Harry. What happened?”
To her surprise, Harry obediently bent over the parchment and started writing. “Nothing happened, Hermione. I’m fine. Just let it go.”
Obviously, she couldn’t accept that as an answer. His tolerance for this predicament could be part of the problem, some kind of unknown curse. So, she dragged him to St. Mungo’s and then into her consulting room.
When she had him lying on her examination table, she started throwing every diagnostic spell she could think of at him and a few additional ones she found in the standard medi-magical books she kept in her room. When none of them yielded any result – which was a good thing, she kept reminding herself, it was good – she brought in two colleagues from the curse damage ward, which was not her own specialisation.
She made them swear strict confidentiality, quite redundant of course, since their medi-magical oath should be more than enough to cover all that. The looks on their faces told her plain as day that they were not happy with her request, although, when they saw who was on her table, they became a little more understanding.
Hermione had them re-cast every spell she had done herself and then after that any additional ones they could think of.
By the end of the morning, all three healers looked flustered and Harry, who had quietly accepted all his friend was doing for him, to him, knowing it came from a good place, now looked distinctly exasperated.
After Hermione had seen the other two healers out, and frantically started searching her bookshelves again, Harry gently turned her around and made her look at him. He purposefully shook his head at her, took the book she was holding out of her hands and put it back on its shelf. Then he looked down and placed his warm hands on her belly. He grinned when the baby kicked him hard. He looked back up and shook his head again, still smiling. Then he kissed the side of her head and hugged her, belly and all.
It almost made her cry. She didn’t need to be comforted by him, she needed to fix him. Even if everything in his behaviour conveyed that he didn’t need fixing.
Harry mimicked eating and they had lunch together in a lovely little Italian restaurant a few streets down from St. Mungo’s. It was nice, she hadn’t spoken to Harry, without Ron or Rose or anybody else present, for a long time. Hermione didn’t often take the time for an extended lunch outside the hospital. But today was her day off after all.
After Harry took the Floo from her office back to his own apartment, and his shop, Hermione still spent the rest of her afternoon in St. Mungo’s large medical library. Because that was who she was. And days off were unimportant. This was important. Harry was important. He was family. Unfortunately, by the end of the day she was not closer to a solution than she had been in the morning.
The more typical curses that affected a person’s voice had already been diagnosed negatively. Besides, those invariably focussed on someone’s vocal cords, leaving a victim unable to utter any sound at all. Clearly, that was not what was wrong with Harry. In spite of her determined research, she wasn’t able to find anything else that was even remotely close to Harry’s condition.
At half past five she called it a day, borrowed a stack of books she hadn’t had a chance to look at yet, even if she knew they were too far off topic, and hurried over to the Burrow to pick up her daughter. Together they headed back home and found Ron already behind the hob.
Only then did Hermione remember that they had Luna and Nevile over for dinner that night.
~*~
On Tuesday, just before closing time, Luna and Neville walked into Harry’s shop. Neville brought Harry a large pot of white moly, an herb, he told him, that was already used by the ancient Greeks to protect against dark incantations. Harry rolled his eyes but also smiled and hugged his two dear friends and invited them over for dinner with easy-to-interpret hand gestures.
After waving Susannah goodnight, he warded the shop and then preceded his friends up the spiral staircase – an elegant if somewhat rickety cast-iron construction – to his apartment above the shop.
While Harry and Nevile prepared dinner – Luna hung his living room full of floating crystal droplets of labradorite and amethyst, black tourmaline and obsidian. Hematite and selenite and fluorite. More protection.
She burned scented candles in his bathroom against wrackspurts, because apparently his place was crawling with them, same as his head.
By the time the couple left, they had turned Harry’s apartment into a spiritual fortress and consumed a tasty home-cooked meal but were no closer to helping Harry with his problems of conversation. Back home, in their own cottage in Hogsmeade, they realised that they’d had a lovely evening regardless and that dialogue hadn’t been much of an issue at all. And it was not as if Harry hadn’t been part of their conversation either. It hadn’t been hard for them to formulate their questions to him according to his needs.
After they left, Harry found bundles of dried sage hanging from his kitchen window and a foot-long sculpture in his bedroom. It represented a phallus and it was carved out of a honey-coloured wood, polished to a shine. There was a note underneath the balls-shaped base of the- thing.
Dear Harry,
Please accept this present. I bought it for you in Greece a few weeks ago because I thought that you could use it. Neville says you would have found it embarrassing to receive it in front of us. I’m not sure why. Is it because of social conventions? He told me to leave it here for you. It has nothing to do with your current high influx of wrackspurts. Or maybe it has. I haven’t decided yet.
Luna
Stroking one hand over the smooth surface of the huge phallus, laughter bubbled up in Harry, eventually exploding out of him. He felt brimful with love for his odd friends with their weird but thoughtful presents and their very real concerns. He had no idea what Luna expected him to do with a wooden cock the length – not to mention the girth – of his upper arm, apart from very painfully splitting his own arse in two.
~*~
On Wednesday, Ginny showed up at the shop shortly after lunch. Ginny was good friends with Luna and evidently news about Harry’s problem was doing the rounds. Ginny called it Harry’s pickle while she punched him on his shoulder. She sounded rather joyful about it too. She demanded he take the afternoon off, shamelessly making Susannah look after the shop on her own, which she was only too happy to do.
Susannah secretly thought her boss could do with fewer toys and more excitement in his personal life. She refused to continue that train of thought into thinking about… well, other kinds of toys. He was her boss for Helga’s sake, and gay on top of that. Although gay men probably used toys as well? She was not going to be thinking about that. She was not.
Ginny took Harry flying. Harry loved to fly. Even when the outing was unplanned for, from his side at least, and the invitation was given with ulterior motives, Harry willingly went along with her plans for him.
Apparently, Ginny had pulled some strings. They had the practise pitch of the Holyhead Harpies, her own club, for themselves for the entire afternoon. They had great fun racing each other, showing off moves, throwing quaffles at each other and catching the snitch. But it didn’t make Harry talk. The yoga session that Ginny threw in for good measure after a few hours on their broom, didn’t do the trick either. And she’d had such high hopes for the meditation part at the end.
When flying nor yoga nor meditation helped, Ginny gave in to desperation and started a tickle fight. It was when she accidentally kneed him in the balls and Harry yelped in pain that she thought she heard him say her name in protest, but in the end, she couldn’t be sure and it was a one-time thing anyway, so it probably didn’t count.
When Blaise came to find his wife at the end of the afternoon, she and Harry were both breathless with laughter. Harry was no closer to speaking than he had been before ascending a broom, but they’d had a fantastic afternoon.
Harry wordlessly extended a dinner invitation to them both and the evening was as successful as the afternoon had been.
Like most Slytherins after the war, Blaise had kept his distance from the great and marvellous – and yes, those words were generally dipped in a good dose of sarcasm – Harry Potter, even when he started dating Ginny Weasley three years ago. After the war, Ginny and Harry had only been an item for a little over a year, and Ginny had dated other men – and a few women – after that, but it was Harry Potter – yes, yes, the great and marvellous Harry Potter – that had Blaise slightly intimidated. Blaise Zabini was not somebody who liked to feel intimidated. He liked admitting to that fact even less. Blaise Zabini was somebody doing the intimidation. With his looks and charm it was generally a fait accompli.
It was only after that evening that Blaise realised that – in spite of Ginny’s many stories about Harry, in spite of his own prior interactions with the man, which, to be fair, had been somewhat limited until now – he hadn’t really known Harry Potter at all. Even without words, or possibly as a result of it, Blaise could tell that Harry Potter was not a man he needed to let himself be intimidated by. In fact, the evening left him curious for more, left him wondering what it would be like to have dinner with a version of Harry Potter that had words coming out of his mouth.
~*~
On Thursday, predictably, because apparently Harry’s friends had decided not to stop harassing him until he talked again, Pansy visited Harry after dinner. She Floo-ed into his living room with a bottle of Hendrick's Gin, because Beefeater or Tanqueray were for the masses and Bombay Sapphire was simply too gaudy, darling. Pansy expected Harry to always – always – have tonic available in his apartment.
“Spoke to Ginevra over lunch,” she announced by way of greeting, while she kissed the air next to his face, as if she had temporarily forgotten that she was in the presence of a close friend and not one of her socialite acquaintances. She changed gears and gave him a hug when she realised what she was doing.
“Heard you stopped talking, Potter. This is perfect, because I have got heaps to tell you.” This was not unusual. Pansy always had heaps to tell Harry.
Pansy Parkinson had been the first of the Slytherins to apologise to Harry after the war. She had armoured herself with blood-red nail polish and blood-red lipstick and fiercely walked up to Harry in heels that were higher than any she had ever worn before, which was no small feat. Harry, still an auror-in-training at the time, was spending his evening at the Leaky surrounded by his friends.
In those days, the Leaky Cauldron was managed by Hannah Abbott who was assisting her uncle. Tom Abbott would never really recover from the war. Eventually, Hannah would take over the pub, but that was much later. In the spring of 1999, Hannah simply assisted her uncle, trying to make his life a little more bearable in whatever way she could.
Hannah had also started dating Theodore Nott. And this simple fact made it inevitable that the oldest pub in London became a place where Slytherins started to hang out in spite of the fact that it had been the haunting ground for a rowdy pack of Gryffindors- well, mostly Gryffindors, for nearly a year now. It was left up to Hannah and Theo to do everything in their power to avoid the pub becoming a battle ground as well. They mostly managed, by keeping both groups on separate sides of the pub, occasionally ordering them into different parlours, if the mood, still so very volatile in those first years after the war, became too heated.
Pansy was first to bridge the gap.
“I was wrong,” she said to Harry Potter, who was standing at the bar surrounded by his army.
“About what?” he asked defiantly, as if there had been any number of things Pansy could have been wrong about.
It was very clear how much effort it took for Pansy to refrain from rolling her eyes. “About wanting to hand you over to Voldemort,” she said. “I shouldn’t have suggested it.”
Harry, even with three glasses of Firewhisky on an empty stomach after a full day of training, had noticed there was something very deliberate about her choice of words. He was annoyed. But also curious.
“Gee, Parkinson. And why was that?”
She lifted her chin in challenge. On her heels she was nearly eye-level with Harry Potter. He was not a tall man. But what he lacked in height, he made up for in bearing. She pursed her blood-red lips, before saying: “you needed to discover that for yourself. You needed to find out that giving yourself over to him was the only way to stop the war. The only action to take.”
Harry had slowly nodded at the assessment and that nod had cemented the unlikeliest of friendships.
Much later he had asked her, “How did you know? I hadn’t even figured it out myself.”
“There’s some seer blood in our family,” she had said off-handedly. Then, almost indignantly, “I’m a highly intelligent witch, Harold. Even without Foresight, I was able to put one and one together. Did you know that the sorting hat wanted to put me in Ravenclaw at first. Salazar! Image that.”
She had scrunched up her nose which had lost most of its pug-ness over time. Either that or the rumours about a post-war nose job were quite true. After all, her whole family had fled the country and moved to Argentina for eight months after the Final Battle.
Later again Harry told her: “That was quite brave what you did back then, Pans, facing down a whole group of Gryffindors all by yourself only to tell me you were sorry. You could have waited until I was by myself.”
“Pfft,” she had waved her perfectly manicured hands at him, her legs neatly tucked under herself on his sofa, “don’t kid yourself, Potter,” she still called him Potter half the time, the other half she called him Harold, “I wasn’t apologising, I was telling you I was wrong. If you can’t tell the difference between those two, you’re even more of a dimwit than I thought.”
Somehow her insults no longer insulted Harry.
“Besides, I’m extraordinarily brave. You just never noticed it. Did you know that the sorting hat wanted to put me in Gryffindor at first. Merlin! Image that!”
By the time she walked through Harry’s fireplace with her Hendrick’s Gin, they had been close friends for nearly eight years. Harry talked about different things with Pansy than he did with his other friends. He loved that about her.
This Thursday, without asking for his permission, she started making them gin and tonics that turned out to be rather heavy on the gin. Her strategy was simple: get Harry drunk and then get him to talk by sharing embarrassing facts about herself. More embarrassing than usual. Which was probably quite an accomplishment, because Pansy Parkinson wasn’t shy in any topic of conversation, but especially not when it came to her sex life. She took great joy in sharing her adventures bringing them to a pornographically level of detail. She dated muggles exclusively, her lifestyle a perpetual stain on the Parkinson name, her parents always this close to disinheriting her.
Her theory, related to this evening, not to her exploits in general, there was very little theory behind those- her theory was that if she demonstrated an overwhelming amount of emotional vulnerability to Harry, he was bound to reciprocate. Pansy Parkinson was never at her most vulnerable during sex, not emotionally nor in any other way. But she figured that Potter didn’t know that. Because that was the type of man he was.
Harry was quite used to her stories about other women – the occasional other man, or just- other person – but the level of confidence she gave him that evening turned his cheeks and ears at least as red as Ron’s unexpected question about his brothers had done. Adorably so, Pansy teased. However, none of them made Harry feel like he had to share something in return. None of them made Harry talk.
By the time Pansy left it was well past midnight. Heel straps hooked between two fingers, her little black dress covered almost entirely by one of Harry’s hoodies because she had gotten cold during the evening, she showed herself at her most vulnerable by far, by hugging her friend tightly, whispering, “we just want you to be well, darling.”
Pansy would never know how close Harry came to saying something in return just then, to reassure her that he was well, that she needn’t worry about him. Instead, he held her tightly and kissed the top of her head, which was within reach now, without the added height of her heels.
When Pansy wobbled to his fireplace on stockinged feet, unstable from too much alcohol and a lack of heels, she waved a hand at him over her shoulder and said nonchalantly, “Pfft, the sorting hat wanted to put me in Hufflepuff at first. Christ! Just image that.”
~*~
By the time Friday night drinks at the Leaky came round, all of Harry’s friends but one had heard about his problem. Draco Malfoy was the last one to hear. Granted, he was not a close friend of Harry Potter. He was not even a not-so-close friend. He had in fact no idea what he was in relation to his former school enemy. But he could often be found in the Leaky on Friday nights, getting together with his Slytherin friends.
Pansy tried to have an impromptu lunch with Draco earlier that day. He’d had to decline the invitation, however, on account of an incoming emergency request at work. Draco worked in the auror’s potions laboratory. He hated it there.
He hadn’t spoken to any of his Slytherin friends this past week. And his Gryffindor not-quite-friends were unlikely to divulge such personal information to him. Not that he had run into any of them either this week. Which is why Draco was the last one to hear about Harry’s silence.
On Friday nights, Draco kept himself away from the Gryffindor-plus group as much as possible. It was not out of arrogance, or disdain, or any of the other feelings of superiority that he had entertained with so much gusto at Hogwarts. Rather it was out of an inability to know how to behave around more than one Gryffindor at the same time. One-on-one he was able to interact with any of them to an acceptable degree. In a crowd, they were simply and overwhelmingly too much. Insecurity had never looked pretty on him. So, he kept himself at a remove. It made his life much easier.
A year after the war, following Pansy’s bold gesture, Draco had decided he could do better. He began to apologise to everybody in person, starting with Seamus Finnigan and ending with Harry Potter. He took his time for each person, thinking about all the horrible things he had done to him - or her - before he wrote down and then practised the apology, trying to really feel his remorse. Only then did he approach his target.
He gracefully accepted each person’s forgiveness even if it was preceded, or accompanied, by bitter words or a punch or – in Seamus’ case – an episode of deep and intense sobbing. This had been a rather harrowing experience for a first apology. Fortunately, the rest had been less prone to crying.
Months after Seamus, he reached the last person on his list. When Draco Malfoy finally approached Harry Potter, he looked at him with a dangerous twinkle in his eyes and then interrupted Draco’s well-prepared speech after two sentences by saying: “mate, I know what you are trying to do. I’ve seen you do the rounds. Don’t worry about it, alright? I forgive you. I’ve forgiven you a long time ago. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have testified for you that summer.” The way Potter had said ‘that summer’ made it sound like it had all happened decades in the past, and not, like, a little over a year ago.
“Just- Let’s not talk about this. It’s all water under the bridge anyway, right.” He did not end that last sentence with an intonation that came anywhere near a question mark. Instead, he slapped Draco on his shoulder, a little harder than was strictly necessary, and walked away.
For a long time after, Draco seethed with resentment whenever he allowed himself to think about Harry’s arrogant reaction. He avoided him. He kept himself on the periphery when it came to all Gryffindors, but most of all when it came to Harry Potter. It became harder as the years passed though, with Gryffindor and Slytherin lives increasingly interacting, mingling, entangling. Theo and Hannah. Hannah was not a Gryffindor of course. But Draco though of her as Gryffindor anyway. Gryffindor-by-association. Gryffindor-plus.
Potter and Pansy, that traitorous cunt. When Blaise started dating Ginny, Draco felt like he lost something. He just wasn’t able to pinpoint exactly what it was.
And in the meantime, with their circles slowly drawing together into new shapes, Draco could not help but notice things about Potter. If there was one thing he’d always been good at, since he was eleven, was keeping an eye on Harry Potter.
One of the things he noticed was that Harry Potter didn’t like to talk about the war. At all. Not with anybody. Not with the best of his friends. He didn’t want to be reminded. He wasn’t always obvious about it. Depending on his alcohol intake and his mood, those two seemed to be related on Friday nights, he would gently steer the conversation away from the subject or loudly talk over the offending person. That’s when Draco realised that Potter’s reaction to his apology had had nothing to do with him, Draco Malfoy, and everything with an unwillingness to talk about the war.
Another thing that Draco noticed was that, as the years passed, Potter no longer got angry. That was something new. Draco knew how to deal with angry Harry Potter, had dealt with him for most of their teenage years. Effortless. He was not at all sure about how to deal with this post-war version of Harry Potter, one who didn’t get angry and didn’t like to talk about the war. Which was alright, really, their paths didn’t often cross anyway.
But now, to top it all off, Harry Potter had apparently gone silent. It was Pansy who told Draco. While she filled him in on the proceedings of her gin-drenched evening with Harry, of which he was not jealous, why on earth would he be jealous, Draco wondered at the same time if silent Harry Potter was another step away from angry Harry Potter, or if this was a separate journey altogether.
Since the man himself was not yet present, everybody around Draco was speculating about what had happened and, even more importantly, how to fix it. Draco listened to everybody talking over each other, effortlessly mingling with the Gryffindor crowd for a change, in an attempt to catch as much information as possible, trying to form his own image of this new version of Harry Potter through the theories and worries of his friends.
And then, in came Harry himself, together with Seamus and Dean, and Draco quietly withdrew to the outskirts of their almost-joined-into-one group. Groups. Group. He spent the rest of the evening observing Harry Potter being silent.
~*~
Draco Malfoy dropped by Harry Potter’s shop shortly before closing time the next day. Saturday being a free day for him, he had spent it thinking about Harry Potter and his Silence. During that time, he came up with a battle plan.
On any given Saturday, it was hard not to trip over small children or wandering toys in Harry’s little shop, even this far into the afternoon, but today seemed especially bad. Draco made it to the back unscathed though. However, before he could pass the sparkling beaded curtain behind which he knew – from Pansy’s stories – lay Harry’s workplace, his way was blocked by a small woman with short light brown curls and a freckled nose. Freckles were the bane of Draco’s existence. At least her hair was not red.
The woman crossed her arms in front of her chest and threw him a look. “Ex-cuse me. Can I help you?”
Draco straightened his shoulders. “Yes. I’ve come to rescue Harry Potter.” He turned beet red. “See, I mean. I’ve come to see Harry Potter.”
The woman didn’t look as if she was in any way swayed to step aside, but at that moment Harry stuck his hand through the curtain, pulling aside a handful of strings, and saved him from further embarrassment. The irony was not lost on Draco.
To his surprise, Harry threw him an easy smile, something he would throw an old friend, patted the woman on her shoulder and then nodded to where a small pigtailed child was playing a little too enthusiastically with a magical merry-go-round while the mother, looking intently at a talking stuffed bear in her hands, had lost herself in what Draco hoped were happy childhood memories. The freckle-nosed young lady quickly walked over to the pair.
Harry called Draco’s attention back to himself by putting a hand on his arm and guiding him through the beads to the other side of the curtain. It was like stepping through a magical portal. He shivered when Harry’s distinct magical signature washed over him, some complicated warding system dangling between the beads.
And then he was standing in Harry’s workspace. It looked like absolute chaos. Typical. Felt like it too. Magic was whirring and oozing and swirling and murmuring and sparkling everywhere. Draco wondered if this was what it might feel like inside Harry’s head. He let out a breathless laugh at the wonder of it all and didn’t know where to look first, trying to take it in all at once, every toy and every odd-looking tool. For a moment, he felt like a little boy again.
Someone said “Hello, what can I do for you, my friend?” and, still looking around the large room, Draco thought ‘just my luck, the git has decided to start talking again’, before realising that the voice did not sound like Harry Potter at all. Harry touched his arm again and directed his glance to a high work bench on which a wooden man was standing. He couldn’t be more than five inches tall. He – it? – walked closer to Draco and then saluted him, touching a wooden hand to a tiny wooden Tyrolean hat.
Fascinated, Draco crouched down next to the table to be able to study him more closely. The man, while clearly made of painted wood, still looked remarkably life-like. Draco wondered if he was able to tell lies without his nose lengthening.
“Hello,” Draco said, “and who might you be?”
“I am Anso,” the little man said importantly, his voice seemed louder than his stature warranted. “I assist Harry around here. Wonderful to make your acquaintance. How may we be of assistance to you?”
“Well,” Draco said slowly without looking up at Harry who was hoovering next to him. “It has gotten to my attention that Harry Potter has stopped talking.”
The little man abruptly dropped down onto the tabletop with a quiet little thump, crossing his legs and placing his elbows on his knees in a remarkably fluid motion. “Has he now?” he asked with interest. “I hadn’t noticed. He’s not one for talking much anyhow.” He pronounced ‘anyhow’ like ‘anywhoo’.
“Well, he has,” Draco confirmed. “And I’ve got a plan.”
“A plan. To get him talking again?” Anso sounded a little sceptical. He probably knew the man. If Harry didn’t want to talk, nobody would be able to make him.
“No, in fact. If Harry Potter wants to be silent for a while, I think that’s his choice to make and people should just get off their high horses and start learning to respect that.” Draco ignored the sound of surprise coming from his right side.
“Then what is it you want, lad?”
“Well, I thought, instead of trying to get him to talk, maybe I could take him to some activities that do not require talking at all. I’ve made a list.”
“Did you now? A list. Care to let me know what’s on that list of yours? Harry is very dear to me, lad. I do not want any harm to befall him.”
“Oh. Yes, of course. Neither do I, in fact. Although if you knew our history together that may come as a surprise to you. I thought of music.”
“Music?”
“Yes. Live music. That only requires listening to, not talking. I’ve made a list of all the concerts in London this week and I’ve taken the liberty of selecting one for each evening. Monday is the only evening that was difficult to fill. But there’s a poetry slam in Brixton. Do you think he is into that?”
Draco kind of got a thrill out of talking to Harry’s little wooden studio assistant - friend? - as if he wasn’t standing right next to them. It was not as if he could put his protest into words. Although Draco could image there were probably less civilised ways to voice one’s protest.
“Mmh, he might. He listens to poetry night on the wireless, you know. He thinks I can’t hear what he’s doing up there while I’m down here,” Anso pointed a tiny finger towards the ceiling. Draco knew that Harry’s apartment was situated above his shop.
He nodded. “Poetry on Monday it is then.” Out of the corner of his eyes Draco felt rather than saw Harry sit down at his working table, coming into view behind Anso when he lowered his face and put his chin on his fists on the table, getting closer to their level.
“What have you got for tonight then?”
“Oh. The Jazz Café. It’s very famous, you know. Among Muggles. It was very difficult to get tickets this late.”
“Jazz. Right. That should definitely work for him.” Anso rose from his cross-legged position, abruptly done with the conservation. “Well, off you go then, lads.”
Harry snorted mildly and then blew at Anso through pursed lips so that the little man had to crouch back down and hold on to the tabletop to keep from falling over.
“Hey!” Draco cried, indignant on behalf of his new little friend. He cupped his hand protectively behind Anso but found he was unprepared for the touch of Harry’s breath against the back of his hand.
Harry just grinned at them, chin still resting on his fist.
At that moment freckle nose stuck her head though the curtain and they all straightened. She looked at them weirdly, but then said: “Harry, I’ve just chased the last of the customers out and I’ve closed the door. Can you lock up? I need to go. Got a hot date tonight.” She waggled her eyebrows at them.
Harry hummed and nodded and stood from his chair. He handed the girl her coat and bag, kissed her cheek, and ushered her out of the door in no time. Between colourful strings of beads crackling with magic, Draco could see Harry close the shop door behind her and ward it for the night. Then he walked back, smiling expectantly at Draco, eyes shining bright and green, and gesturing towards the spiral staircase in the far corner of his studio.
Draco uncertainly looked back at the worktable, face pink. “What about Anso?” he asked, trying to hide the fact that he hadn’t really expected for his plan to meet with so little resistance. Or to work at all really.
“Oh, don’t mind me, lad,” Anso said, “my home is right there.” And he marched across the tabletop to a little wooden house at the far end. Draco huffed in surprise and then quickly followed Harry up the stairs before he disappeared out of sight. At the top Harry was already making lazy gestures over the door there, adjusting his wards without wand or words, welcoming Draco inside.
Draco already knew that about Harry Potter of course, that he didn’t need either one of them, words or wand, hadn’t been needing them for many years, but seeing it up close, feeling it- it made his knees go spectacularly weak.
Harry held the door open for him and Draco stepped past him, thinking how he couldn’t remember the last time he had been this close to Harry Potter, close enough to feel the warmth coming from his body, to hear him breathe out, to smell his cologne. It didn’t last longer than a second or two, three, then he was inside Harry Potter’s home.
The door entered directly into the living room. It had a large adjoining kitchen, with windows facing Diagon Alley, the space between the two rooms divided by a large breakfast bar. The place looked not unlike his own flat in size and architecture, although the furniture in his own place was more modern and decidedly better matched. This place was- well, eclectic was probably the most generous term Draco could come up with.
Harry was also clearly not somebody with a compulsive need to keep his place impeccably tidy, although it was probably better than his workspace one floor down.
“So,” Draco said uncertainly. “How do you want to do this? The doors of the Café open at half past seven and they stay open until nine thirty. The main act starts at nine though. It would probably be wise to be there before that. I guess you’re tired after a day of work? Saturday must be your busiest day. Do you want to rest first? I can meet you here later? Or we can meet at the Café?”
Draco abruptly shut up when he realised that he was firing quite a lot of questions at a man who currently didn’t use words to communicate. But Harry looked unperturbed. He walked around Draco and started tugging at his coat. When Draco shrugged it off, Harry took it and hung it neatly on the coat rack next to the door. Then he led Draco through the living room to the kitchen area, one hand on his upper arm, lightly, although to Draco it felt like a scorching grip, and gestured him to sit at the bar. He found – and held out – a bottle of beer and a bottle of wine, and it was not very hard to guess the question behind it.
“Wine please. Potter, look. I didn’t come here to invite myself over for drinks, I came here to rescue you from your friends who have been harassing you all week in their horrible attempts to fix you. I don’t think you need fixing.”
Harry, who had been busy uncorking the wine and filling two glasses, looked up at him with a smirk that expressed amusement and something that Draco chose to read as gratitude. He handed Draco his wineglass. The way he touched his own wineglass to Draco’s and then smiled, left little room for doubt as to how he felt about Draco’s presence in his kitchen.
Harry started making lasagna, something he had clearly already planned for because all ingredients were present. Harry didn’t appear to need a recipe like Draco generally did when he cooked. While sipping his wine, Draco absently wondered if that had anything to do with the fact that Harry hadn’t grown up with house elves who did everything for him.
He made Draco help him, by simply putting a copping board and a large knife in front of him and then handing him ingredient after ingredient.
Aided by the wine, hands busy, Draco quickly felt at home at the kitchen bar and started chatting. It was quite alright that Harry didn’t say anything back. In fact, in a twisted sort of way, it kind of made things easier, because Harry not talking quieted the nerves that Draco generally felt when he was near the Gryffindor.
After dinner Draco insisted on doing the dishes by himself so that Harry could relax for a bit and take a shower if he liked. Harry accepted the offer, smiling gratefully and then winked. It made Draco blush, but he thought he got away with it unseen, with Harry already disappearing up the stairs to the next floor. Draco hated his light complexion.
They decided to walk to Camden. Or rather, Draco tentatively suggested it and Harry nodded along as easily as he had been accepting all of Draco’s company this evening. It was a cold evening, but it was dry and, enveloped in Harry’s warming charms, the walk was quite enjoyable. Again, Draco talked more easily than he could ever have anticipated talking to Harry Potter. But there were also moments where he didn’t say anything, and, perhaps equally surprising, those didn’t feel uncomfortable either.
The music was fantastic, the main act was a band called Earthworks. Draco had heard of them before – he and Blaise both enjoyed the occasional jazz-fuelled evening – although their pianist was new, an incredibly handsome man and a very talented musician, not necessarily in that order.
But more rewarding than listening to the music, or enjoying the view of the musicians play, was watching Harry Potter. He seemed enraptured, leaning forwards in his chair, hands curled around the ends of his armrests, eyes wide and unblinking as if he was afraid to miss anything.
“Have you ever been to a jazz concert before?” Draco asked him during the break. Harry shook his head. No, he hadn’t.
At the end of the show, when they had clapped their hands raw, Harry leaned over and planted a kiss on Draco’s cheek. He beamed so happily that Draco was certain it was a friendly gesture to thank him, and not for any other reason, but it was hard to focus on anything else after that, walking back home.
By way of distraction Draco challenged Harry to scale the high gates of Regent’s Park when they passed them. The park was typically closed after dark. Draco needed to say “Scared, Potter?” only once, and Harry was on it. Draco was relieved to find that not everything had changed.
He followed Harry quickly. He cast a few notice-me-nots over them just in case the muggles had the gates surveyed by those cameras they were so fond of these days, and would come searching for two delinquents that they had seen scaling the gates. While walking through the empty park, no longer minding the direction of either of their homes, Harry added his warming charms to Draco’s spells and their magic mingled over Draco's skin, heated notice-me-nots.
Walking through Regent’s Park in the middle of the night was possibly the most romantic thing Draco had done in a very long time. It had not been his intention to do anything romantic. He had just needed to sidetrack his own treacherous mind. And now here they were. Harry didn’t seem to mind though. They walked through the park, drifting towards Primrose Hill and then climbing it.
At the top, Harry renewed his warming charm, aimed a cushioning charm at the ground and sank down. He looked up at Draco expectantly and not for the first time that evening Draco marvelled at how easy it was to read Harry Potter, to know what it was he wanted. Draco sat down next to him. Harry immediately shuffled closer until their arms were pressed together, their thighs. Draco shuddered in spite of Harry’s charms. Not in spite of the warm body next to him but because of it.
In silence, they enjoyed the lit-up view of the London skyline and when they’d each had their fill, Draco suggested they could Apparate to their respective houses from here. He didn’t think the evening could get any better and decided it was best to leave now, before he’d spoil anything by saying – or doing! – something entirely foolish.
Harry was fine with that as well.
They said goodbye, Draco with words, hands nearly reaching out, but not quite, and Harry with one of his smiles, this one very soft around the edges, and then Disapparated from the top of Primrose Hill in two separate cracks.
~*~
The next evening, they were going to the opera. Draco had managed to get them last-minute tickets for Turandot. A few years ago, he had dated a man doing the stage lighting for the Royal Opera House and he was able to coax two tickets out of him in return for a dinner at some fancy restaurant with a two-months waiting list. Draco only said yes to the exchange because he knew that David was currently in a serious relationship with one of the opera singers, so this dinner would not feel like a date.
Draco was not interested in giving the man the wrong idea, even if – at the time – it was David who had broken up their liaison. He’d stated that Draco had too many secrets for a healthy relationship. He’d been right of course. One of Draco’s biggest secrets was that he was magical and David – unfortunately – was not. The other was that Draco had a rather complicated past of which he refused to share anything. It hadn’t worked out. In the end, it never did, with muggles.
Still, it was good for two opera tickets, if nothing else.
On Sunday morning, Draco decided to send Harry an owl with an invitation to share a quick dinner at his place before the opera started. It only seemed fair since the man had fed Draco the day before. But in the end his careful planning fell by the wayside when Harry walked through Andromeda’s fireplace early in the afternoon.
It was a sort of dance they had been doing over the years, avoiding each other in his aunt’s cottage, a choreography, making sure to never be in her house at the same time.
After extending his apologies to the Friday night Leaky crowd one year after the war, after his failed excuses to Potter, Draco realised he wasn’t done yet. Offering his apologies to his aunt was maybe the most important of all, because she was family and family still meant something to Draco even if his own parents had done their utmost to twist his ideas of family beyond recognition. With Andromeda – and Edward – Draco had a sudden wild hope that a fresh start was truly possible.
Andromeda did not forgive him as readily as most of his peers had done. He hadn’t expected her to. She was a Black after all. And she had lost so very much, in the name of family, even before the war. But when he was done, she allowed him one hour with Edward, supervised by herself like a hawk.
After that, she allowed him to come over on Sunday afternoon, every two weeks, always one hour and not a minute more. He showed up. He showed up without fail. Draco cherished that single hour like he would have cherished the Malfoy signet ring all those years ago. He now no longer cared for jewellery.
After a few months, that single hour became two and after some more, a whole afternoon. After a year, Andromeda started to invite him to dinner. He gracefully accepted everything she offered. He never asked for more.
By the time Edward turned three, his aunt had accepted him as a steady presence in Edward’s life. Over the years, Draco had only cancelled his biweekly Sunday afternoons thrice, two of those times he was in St. Mungo’s after a potion’s accident at work and once he was down with the flu and was running a temperature. He still went over to the cottage, but Andromeda had resolutely directed him back home, refusing to let him pass on his flu to Edward or herself. After sending him away, she had Fire-called Pansy Parkinson and ordered her to visit her friend to see if he needed anything.
During all that time, Draco carefully avoided running into Potter, who was as steady a presence in his nephew’s life as he himself had become. With Andromeda’s help, he mostly succeeded, only running into the man a handful of times during birthdays. Those couldn’t be avoided - they were important for Edward - and Draco moved through them as best as he could, keeping himself diligently out of Potter’s way, this particular choreography quite familiar to him from their Friday nights.
All this was why, when Harry walked through Andromeda’s Floo shortly after lunch, Draco was absolutely positive it was no coincidence. Potter was well aware of Draco’s schedule with his nephew and had always kept to the rules of their dance. Until – apparently – today.
“Uncle Harry!” Edward cried in surprise when he saw his godfather walk out of the green flames. Edward generally did not like surprises, most of them made him anxious. But he liked his godfather more than he disliked surprises and upon spotting Harry he looked so happy that Draco pressed his mouth shut. Protesting seemed an exercise in futility anyway, since he would be seeing Potter over dinner and for the rest of the evening.
Edward hugged Harry and then, adapting to this new situation with unexpected ease, he cried, “Uncle Harry, we’re going skating! The skating rink opened yesterday. Draco is taking me. Will you come with us? Please, please, pleaaaase?”
Each winter, a skating rink was set up in the main square of the village that Andromeda and Edward lived in. It had become tradition for Edward and Draco to go there on the first weekend it opened. Clearly Harry had forgotten about it, because he now looked up at Draco with an expression that showed an appropriate amount of guilt. And then his face became all hopeful question mark. Can he come with them, please, please, please? Pretty pleaaaase?
“Fine Potter, you can join us if you like. It will be amusing to see you fall on your behind.” Edward and Harry both squealed in delight, then Edward giggled, probably picturing his godfather falling on his bum.
Of course, Harry skated like he flew and never once fell over, not on his arse nor on any other part of his anatomy. It was annoying as fuck. After the skating and the hot chocolate that went hand in hand with skating, they accepted Andromeda’s invitation to stay for dinner. It was accompanied by loud cheers from Edward, who seemed to delight in having both his uncle and his godfather all to himself at the same time.
Somehow, Andromeda had learned about the opera, Draco didn’t know how, he certainly hadn’t told her and Harry- Well, Harry couldn’t have told her now, could he? Even more annoyingly, his aunt kept calling their evening a date, no matter how many times Draco declared that it was no such thing. She just winked at them and blatantly ignored his protests. Draco blatantly ignored her.
He didn’t ignore the opera though. Over dinner, Draco told them all about the cold-hearted princess Turandot and the foreign prince Calàf, who fell tragically in love with her. Draco and Harry were only allowed to leave after solemnly promising Edward that next time, they would bring him with them.
They Floo-ed to their respective houses to quickly change into something more theatre appropriate, because “no Potter, you obviously cannot go to the opera wearing your oldest jeans and a hand-knitted Weasley jumper with a hole at the elbow.”
When Harry Floo-ed over to his place wearing smart black jeans, a midnight blue button down and a dark grey jacket, Draco almost fainted with how good he looked. He fussed over his own cashmere polo neck for a bit, in an attempt to get himself back under control. When he looked up, Harry was looking at him with approval written all over his features and something else that Draco couldn’t quite place.
He smirked at Draco when he caught his eyes, eyebrows slightly raised, and suddenly Draco felt like this was every bit the date that Andromeda had kept insisting it was. Which was absurd. He wasn't going on a date with Harry Potter. This was all Andromeda’s fault. He was only helping the man evade his meddlesome, know-it-all friends.
He grabbed his woollen overcoat and offered Harry his right arm for a side-along.
In a satisfying repeat of last night, Harry was sitting at the edge of his seat for half the performance, utterly enchanted with everything that was happening on stage, with the voices, the drama, the theatrics of it all. By the time prince Calàf kissed Turandot and whispered his own name in her ear, thus putting his faith into her cruel hands, Harry was crying. He had pulled Draco’s hand into his lap and was clutching at it with both of his own. He only let go to participate in the standing ovation, and later, when Draco needed his hand to put on his coat, but he reclaimed the hand after both occasions, like he had decided it was his to take whenever he felt like it.
When they walked out of the theatre and found that it was snowing softly, Harry looked up and laughed a sob, still shamelessly emotional over the drama that had been his first opera experience, and now the fairytale weather. They randomly started walking the streets, it was a ten-minute walk from the Royal Opera House to Diagon, but both were clearly reluctant to go home, to part.
Harry kept walking with his face turned up towards the floating snowflakes and wordlessly left it up to Draco to navigate him through the clusters of people outside the theatre and the London traffic and other obstacles on their way.
Neither of them cast a warming charm, unwilling to encase themselves inside a cocoon that would make the snowflakes melt prematurely. When they got too cold, Harry pulled them into a quiet side street and Apparated them straight into Draco’s flat. He then kissed Draco goodnight with a quick peck on his cheek and before Draco could do more than blink, he was by himself in his empty living room, feeling such a swirl of emotions, he didn’t know where to begin to untangle them.
~*~
“Potter, I discovered an interesting new word on the internet today.”
They were waiting for the poetry slam to begin. The venue couldn’t be more different from the red plush and bright gilt of the Royal Opera House. They were in a concrete basement full of graffiti, the vibe it was trying to evoke was probably off by a decade, but Draco felt oddly at home here. The gilded splendour of the Opera House had looked too much like the places he grew up in, the Manor and the estates of his parents’ friends. The Parkinsons, the Notts, the Bulstrodes, the Carrows. Concrete and graffiti was so far removed from all of it that it became safe. A haven.
He knew he stood out, his outfit too posh by far, even if he tried to adapt it. He couldn’t help he had expensive taste in clothes. Harry fitted in much better with his scruffy t-shirt – its blackness faded to a cloudy dark grey from too many laundry spells – equally ancient jeans and - as a concession of some sort - startlingly new trainers, white with black stripes. His hair, as usual, was a mess. But clothes didn’t matter. This crowd was so much more forgiving than his parents ever would have been, had these people showed up at the Manor.
Harry raised his eyebrows expectantly.
Right, the new word. Draco had been searching the internet for clues on Harry’s condition of course. Not to cure him, but to see if there was more Draco could do to make Harry’s life easier. Obviously, he was not going to say that.
“The word is onomatopoeia. Is that not the most beautiful word you have even heard, Potter? It derives from Ancient Greek, and it literally translates as name-making. It means the creation of a word that describes a sound. Like the sound a clock makes.” He forced his throat to imitate the sound of a ticking clock. “The word to describe the sound became tic-tac. And it’s similar in all languages. Isn’t that fantastic! It transcends language. Most animal sounds are onomatopoeias. Like meowing, or chirping, or mooing.”
Harry snorted.
“Yes, exactly, Potter. Snorting is an onomatopoeia!”
Harry laughed in surprise.
“Well, not the word laughter itself probably, but ‘haha’, or ‘hihi’, those are definitely onomatopoeias. It’s alright, you’re still learning, a mistake is easily made.”
Harry slapped him with the back of his hand.
“That’s it, Potter! You’re catching on. Slap or smack. Both of them are onomatopoeias. I have no idea why all of your friends call you dense.” Laughing, Draco ducked to avoid the next blow, which was aimed with more intent – and more force – than the last one. He wondered if ‘blow’ fitted the category, it might, but before he could start to monologue about it, the lights dimmed and the first poet climbed the stage.
The evening left Draco slightly bewildered, but Harry in good spirits. He seemed to have had a great time, which is what this was all about anyway.
They took the subway home, sitting close to each other on the dingy chairs. After a few stops, Harry’s hand found Draco’s again and, while yesterday Draco could blame the gesture on sentiments caused by an ancient Chinese princess and her sappy prince, today was definitely more deliberate and less drama-driven. Harry acted as if it was no big deal, however, the most natural thing in the world, so Draco went along with it.
But it was a big deal. To him it was.
~*~
On Tuesday they saw a band called The Courteeners play in a small venue called The Luminaire in North-West London. Neither one of them had heard of the band, or of the club, but they liked the energy of both and had a good time trying to shout along with the chorus.
It was only halfway through that Draco realised that Harry may not be talking but he most definitely was still singing. The realisation felt like a break-through, even if he didn’t know what to do with the information.
After the concert they drank ale in the pub below the club. It was crowded and their bodies were continuously mashed together when somebody tried to squeeze through a non-existent opening between either one of them and the surrounding people. They pretended not to notice. Draco told Harry about work and how much he hated the dreary monotony of it, always the same stupid diagnostics, always the same stupid potions. Or well, maybe not the same but- similar. The same uninspired family tree of potions.
“You’d think criminals were more imaginative,” he complained. “But it’s always the same thing. Variations on only a handful of potions. It’s utterly pathetic.” He’d given this particular rant to his Slytherin friends so often they completely ignored him these days. He knew they were bored with him. He’d even given it to Hermione Granger a few times. For no reason that he could think of, Granger liked to talk to him about potions. She at least had listened politely to his rant.
It was good to give it to a new audience though. Harry looked anything but bored, or polite, he looked intently at Draco and nodded and hummed and looked shocked and appalled in all the right places.
Draco loved it.
“Fine, I suppose you want to know why I don’t quit my job if I hate it so much. I tried. Nobody wants to hire a former death eater. It’s…”
Somebody shoved him in the small of his back particularly hard and he nearly tipped the last of his ale over Harry. He was done with this place. “Fuck. Let’s get out of here, Potter,” he said and Harry nodded. They didn’t even finish their ale.
Outside they kept as close together as if they were still hemmed in on all sides by a crowd of people. It felt good. Draco’s mind was still on work though. “I haven’t tried very hard to find anything else,” he confessed. “I’m scared to lose what I have. I need the income. My father cut me off from my inheritance years ago, right after I started associating with muggles and desiring a job and – oh, horror of horrors – insisted on being gay."
"‘Don’t be gauche, Draco’ he said to me when I first suggested I wanted to become a potioneer." He’d said the same thing, in fact, when Draco announced that he was gay. Draco was uncannily good at imitating Lucius' voice, even to his own ears. He shuddered. He didn’t like it. Harry hummed and then put his arm around Draco’s waist in apparent comfort. Draco tried not to stiffen. Even through layers of winter coats, he was ridiculously aware of Harry’s arm.
“To hum. Another onomatopoeia,” he tried to distract himself. For the same reason, he continued with his confession, having a rare flash of self-insight, “Change scares me. My head always expects change to be for the worse, never for the better. I’m not a very brave man, Harry. I’ve never- I admire you, Harry. I admire you so much. You quit the aurors, you didn’t do what everybody expected of you. You found your own path, and you are happy with your shop and your toys. You are happy with them, right? With your work?” It was suddenly very important to know this for certain. He turned to looked at Harry, but their faces were too close to read him well.
Harry nodded though. He wasn’t smiling for a change. He looked very earnest. He nodded again. He let go of Draco’s waist, but only to tug Draco’s arm around his own shoulders and re-fit himself against Draco’s side more comfortably. Arm back around his waist, he drew Draco in even closer. Draco thought Harry would have crawled inside Draco’s coat if he'd given him half a chance.
It was only then that Draco realised he’d made a fatal mistake. He’d just called Harry Potter Harry to his face. Twice. Draco never before allowed himself to do that. In his head Harry Potter had been Harry for years now, but in real life they weren’t friends like that, were they? In real life he was Potter. He’d slipped up.
“I wish I was brave like you,” he said wistfully.
~*~
On Wednesday, they went to a gig in a record shop called Rough Trade in East London.
“Muggles are weird,” Draco noted with satisfaction when he took in the shop-turned-stage.
The band played an acoustic set and were not bad per se but in a week’s time Draco had forgotten their name. In two weeks’ time, he’d forgotten their music.
It was still a wonderful evening because he got to spend it with Harry Potter.
~*~
On Thursday they went to a museum. The Horniman Museum owned the largest collection of historical musical instruments in London, possibly in all of Great Britain, and regularly hosted live concerts by letting famous and not-so famous musicians play them.
This evening a small man with piercing blue eyes and a goatee, which only served to camouflage the man's chinless condition, played a seventeenth-century virginal before the break and an eighteenth-century harpsichord after. Before he started playing, one of the museum’s curators droned on about the fascinating histories of both pieces, and a conservator told them how both instruments had been meticulously restored by him.
Throughout the evening, Draco had an increasingly hard time suppressing his yawns. Harry elbowed him in the ribs for each one, bringing Draco ever closer to a bout of giggles. It didn’t help that the audience consisted of only a handful of people, which ensured numerous moments of eye contact with the musician, who was getting increasingly annoyed by Draco’s lack of enthusiasm. As if his sole purpose tonight was to personally offend the man with his presence. Which it wasn’t! It just happened that he wasn’t much into solo keyboard music from the Baroque area. He hadn't known that about himself beforehand.
By the time they were outside again, Draco exploded into apologies. “Oh Merlin, Harry, I’m so sorry I subjected you to that. That must have been the most boring thing I ever did for fun. Fun! Oh my God, this is not my idea of fun. You know that, right, Harry?”
Since the proverbial floodgates had been opened two nights ago, Draco hadn’t been able to stop himself using Harry’s first name in every other sentence.
Harry just grinned at him, chuckling a little when Draco continued to rant while they walked away from the museum.
Draco groaned dramatically and rubbed a hand over his face. “I now know more about harpsichords and virginals than I ever cared to know. Imagine all the space in my head that is now occupied by all that nonsense while it could have been filled with much more useful information.”
They were randomly walking a direction. It was too far to walk home from here anyway. They either had to find the bus stop they needed for public transportation, or they could Apparate home. But Harry seemed fine with walking just now and letting Draco continue his tirade, even if was miserably cold and the drizzle threatened to turn into full-blown rain any moment and was soaking them regardless of its description.
“Fine,” Draco sighed after a few more minutes. “I’m done now. What do you want to do? Find a bus?”
Harry shook his head. His black hair was sparkling with thousands of miniscule droplets and Draco resisted the urge to touch it, just to see what would happen.
“Apparition then?”
Harry nodded.
Draco glanced around. They were in a suburb with broad streets, well-lit. Not a dark corner or an alleyway in sight. He sighed at the unfairness of it all. “I think we should continue walking a bit. We need to find a place where we can safely Apparate from.”
But Harry stopped him, shaking his head. He waved his hand and threw a notice-me-not over them that was so strong, it felt like a heavy velvet stage curtain was covering them. Draco was certain no muggle would have noticed them if they had a flickering neon sign floating above their heads, pointing down in scintillating green and blue and orange light.
Looking smug, Harry took Draco’s arm and Side-alonged him into his own apartment. They lost the curtain of the notice-me-not on the way home.
The abrupt change from the rain-driven chill of the street to the warmth of Harry’s living room felt like a shock that took Draco’s breath away. Well, there was that, and then maybe the nearness of Harry and his wild magic had something to do with it as well.
Draco took a step backwards, then another towards the hearth and the Floo powder.
“I’d better go, Potter,” he said crisply, trying in vain to get himself under control. But Harry followed him step by step and before he knew it, the wooden beam of Harry’s fireplace was pressing into Draco’s back. Harry very slowly lifted both hands towards Draco’s face, giving him ample time to say no, to say something. He didn’t. He just held his breath.
Harry put his hands against Draco’s cheeks, cold and damp, although Draco didn’t know if the hands or his face felt like that, and rubbed his thumbs along Draco's cheekbones. He looked very earnest now, and very focussed. Gone was the easy smile, or the smug one. The soft one was still close though, just around the corner.
When he moved his face closer, as slowly as his hands had done before, Draco became light-headed and then remembered the need to breathe if he didn’t want to pass out before Harry could kiss him. Merlin, Harry Potter was going to kiss him. This was going to be their first kiss. His chest constricted under the lack of oxygen. Then somehow, miraculously, he managed to heave in a lungful of air, and then another. The feeling of light-headedness didn’t exactly disappear. The idea of Harry kissing him, apparently, had the same effect on his body as a lack of oxygen.
Harry was smiling again by the time his face was so close the tips of their noses were touching. He moved another half an inch forwards and rubbed the side of his nose against Draco’s. Then he drew back a little and calmed Draco’s nerves with a soft “ssshh.” More thumbing of Draco’s cheekbones.
Draco wasn’t able to help himself. “Shushing. Onomatopoeia,” he gasped. The distraction helped. And it made Harry smile more widely, mouth fond and indulgent, and then Draco couldn’t stop thinking about how much he liked to make Harry smile.
When Harry’s lips touched Draco’s, they were warm, not cold, and only slightly damp. The kiss was soft and sweet until Harry’s lips became a tad more demanding. Draco felt the tip of his tongue and he parted his lips. Harry was slowly deepening the kiss, kept it soft and sweet still, but now with more intensity and decidedly more wetness. And then it was all taken away from Draco, and it was all he could do to suppress a whine.
Harry had drawn back – apparently – to assess Draco’s reaction. He was asking for his permission, Draco knew. Without words.
“Yes,” Draco answered as quick as he could, so there was no mistaking it, any of it, his want, his yearning. “Yes, Harry. Yes!” Harry didn’t need to be told twice. The sequel of the kiss was less soft and less sweet. It was tongue circling tongue, faces tilting trying to find a more perfect angle. It was Harry’s hands holding the sides of his head, then moving to the back of his skull, trying to get Draco impossibly closer. It was lips demanding and teeth biting.
Draco managed to shrug off his heavy wet coat without breaking the kiss and then started on Harry’s. He undid the zip and shoved it off his shoulders. Better. So much better. His hands found Harry’s hips, and he drew Harry’s body closer. Harry softly moaned into their kiss when he felt Draco press his erection against his hipbone.
Draco was about to declare another fucking onomatopoeia, but just then Harry ground his own erection against the crease where Draco’s thigh met his groin, pushing himself against the base of Draco’s cock, the softness of his balls. Moaning, humming. Onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeia. Draco suddenly realised that a lot of sex-related words were bound to be onomatopoeia. Sucking, slapping, whining. The potential for distraction was endless. This was going to take effort.
Draco’s hands circled to Harry’s back, impatiently working their way underneath jumper and shirt until he found bare skin. Harry gasped dramatically into his mouth but that may easily have been from the fact that Draco’s hands probably still felt like clumps of ice. Draco was not thinking of onomatopoeias.
Underneath the clothing, he roamed the plane of Harry’s back, relishing in all the warm skin he was allowed to touch and using the pressure to bring Harry closer. Always closer.
He let his hands drift lower, over the small of Harry’s back, leaving behind the cocoon of clothing to travel down to Harry’s arse. Draco loved Harry’s arse so much. He loved looking at it. Had made such a perfect study of it over years’ worth of Friday nights at the Leaky from his usual spot at the periphery of everything. He had never dreamt he would ever get to touch it. Fantasised yes but never dared dream it. But now was not a dream, was it? Not a dream and not a fantasy. This was reality. The reality of touching Harry’s perfect arse.
The added pressure forced Harry’s very obvious hard on against his own. The angle wasn’t quite right, though. Draco was too tall, standing against each other like this, their cocks didn’t align. It was rather disappointing.
Then Harry pushed himself away from Draco, not just his face, but his entire body. He looked dishevelled, his hair worse than ever, from the rain, Draco’s fingers. His lips were red and wet from the kiss. His eyes looked wider than usual. Maybe he was disappointed as well? Draco immediately started to panic. Had he misread the situation, gone too far too quickly? He should have checked in before pulling Harry’s shirt out of his trousers-
Harry caught his reaction. His eyes softened. He cupped Draco’s face with one hand and shook his head a little, reassuringly. Then he took Draco’s hand in both his own and led him away from their spot in front of the fireplace, sidestepping the wet coats now carelessly ruining the wooden floor underneath and tugging Draco to the spiral staircase.
He ascended the rickety thing, walking up the steps backwards, as if he couldn’t bear to let Draco out of his sight. The stairs led straight into Harry’s bedroom, no landing, no door to open, just a wide-open space under the wooden beams of the rooftop and a generous bed under a large roof window against which the rain was tapping a persistent rhythm. Tapping, onomatopoeia, Draco’s brain supplied. This was no longer funny. It was tiresome.
It was nerves he decided. It must be nerves, his brain was going haywire with them.
Harry waved his hand and then the room glowed in soft yellow light from small lamps along the walls. A fire now crackled in the hearth. When Harry pulled him closer to the bed, Draco’s eyes caught something on the bedside table, and the soundtrack under his romance movie came screeching to a halt.
“Harry, what the fuck?” It was a wooden statue of a rather realistic-looking - but definitely larger-than-life - penis. What was Harry into? He realised he didn’t know the man at all, not really, Draco had been the only one doing the talking all week- and how the fuck were they to talk about something like this? How did you discuss sexual preferences and, and…. eventual kinks, oh Merlin – he eyed the huge phallus again – when one’s bed partner wasn’t talking?
Draco thought he should have invested more time in teaching Harry how to use sign language. Forget the fucking onomatopoeias.
The phallus was snatched out of his hand and Harry looked absolutely mortified. He searched the room in panicky glances as if trying to find a hiding spot for the offensive thing, but then his eyes fell to his mantel shelf where an assortment of photos and postcards was standing upright against the wall. He walked over and took one, all the while holding the phallus. And wasn’t that a sight to behold in and of itself!
Harry handed Draco the card and turned the light higher with a wave of his hand, so Draco could read the handwriting on the reverse.
After reading Luna’s card, realisation on the origin of the sculpture dawning, Draco burst out laughing, his nerves amplifying the eruption. “Oh Merlin,” he gasped, holding his sides. “For one moment I panicked and thought, how are we going to discuss kinks like these, if you cannot talk?”
Harry laughed as well, although it sounded strained, face going even redder than it already was, at Draco's mention of kinks. He put the wooden sculpture carefully back on the bedside table and then mimicked writing something.
“Oh. Right. Yes, I suppose we could have done it in writing. Is there something I should know, Harry? We can discuss it now, if you want to.” All of this was rather effectively killing the mood they’d been in. His dick had gone completely soft.
Harry shook his head. The tension now gone, his soft smile was back, the one that Draco realised he loved most of all, the one he pretended was only meant for him.
Harry waved his hand to lower the lights again and, oh sweet Salazar, this man and his wandless magic. It had Draco ‘s cock swelling again in no time. When Harry started to undress him, just his hands, no magic, that helped as well.
But then the smile fell from Harry’s face when he uncovered Draco’s chest. The scars were barely visible, in the candlelight Draco didn’t think Harry should be able to see them at all, but the memory of that day in the bathroom was probably enough. Harry closed his eyes and Draco was suddenly glad that Harry didn’t talk. Because he was unwilling to put up with apologies of any kind, which he was sure Harry would be offering right now if he was speaking. Draco didn’t want them. Not after all that Draco had done to him.
Harry had frozen however, so Draco still needed to say something, needed to deal with apologies even if they weren’t given to him in words.
“It’s alright, Harry,” he sighed. “I don’t blame you.” Of course he didn’t add ‘not any longer’. His sixteen-year-old self had done a tremendous amount of blaming, all bitter and dark and so brim-full of hatred. He had blamed everybody but himself, his own actions, failed to see his own guilt in all of it.
That part, his own part, he only saw much later, after the war, and not even immediately after either. He'd needed time to gain perspective on his past. His views had been so narrow at the time. Constricted tunnels shaped by family and blood and bigotry. It had taken time to deconstruct them. Time and effort. But he had learned. Had done it. He was a better person now. Or he tried to be.
“Harry, look at me. Look at them. There’s hardly any scarring at all.”
Harry opened his eyes and looked and let the flat of his hands roam Draco’s chest as if to feel what he couldn’t see. Then he put his lips there as well and traced a line of barely-there kisses along the cut that had gaped widest of them all, baring rib bones, and Draco didn’t know if he saw the scar after all, or if he just remembered the exact location of the cut.
Trying to get away from scars and pasts - his penis was fucking flagging again - from the pain on Harry’s face and from the idea that Harry blamed himself over this, Draco undressed himself further, unbuckling his trousers. He gently pulled Harry upright, away from his chest, so he was free to slip off his shoes and socks and step out of his trousers. Then he started to undress Harry. Harry let him, still subdued from his encounter with the scars, and really, Draco had no idea why, because clearly Harry was not without scars himself.
Draco ignored them.
He knelt down in front of Harry and undid the laces of his trainers. He pulled them off, socks too, guiding Harry to keep his balance by leaning on his shoulder. Then, still on his knees, his head close to Harry’s crotch, biting his lip in anticipation, he undid the buttons of Harry’s jeans and slowly pulled them down.
He stared in bewilderment.
Harry was wearing boxers that were bright orange with little golden snitches on them, dancing between as many logos of the Chudley Cannons.
“Pretty,” Draco commented drily, when his eyes had adjusted to the offensive neon colour. Above him a strangled sound of embarrassment escaped Harry’s throat and something that sounded suspiciously like ‘Oh my God’.
“Let me guess. A present from Ronald Weasley?” Draco enquired conversationally. He knew the favourite Quidditch team of all members of the Friday night Leaky group. Ron was the only one who staunchly supported the Cannons, who had never wavered in his loyalty, even if they hadn’t won a championship in a literal century. As far as Draco was concerned, their obnoxious team colour alone was reason enough to completely ignore them. As evidenced by these boxers.
Another strangled sound from above.
“You know, I think they are actually hurting my eyes,” Draco said, finally tearing said eyes away and looking up. He'd never seen Harry Potter with this particular shade of red on his cheekbones before. “Can I please take them off?”
Harry nodded frantically, humming short little hums for extra confirmation. If he had spoken, he would have begged, Draco was certain of it. His cock seemed pretty interested in that idea. Harry Potter begging Draco Malfoy to take off his pants. Another fantasy.
Draco slid his fingers inside the elastic waistband and pulled them down Harry’s hips, carefully easing them over his hard cock – Salazar! Harry Potter’s hard cock right in front of Draco’s face – and sliding them all the way down. Harry stepped out and kicked them far under the bed while Draco slid his hands back up over Harry’s bare legs.
They were shapely. His knees were a little on the knobbly side maybe, but that was not a deal-breaker. Not by far. If anything, it was kind of cute, as if his knees had refused to grow up with the rest of his body. Harry was hairier than Draco had imagined, fantasised. He loved the feel of it against his palms.
Having reached the top of Harry’s thighs, Draco stroked his thumbs over the crease where thighs became groin. Harry’s cock stood out from a nest of dark hair. With amusement Draco noticed it was as unkempt as the hair on his head. Harry was clearly not a man who carefully trimmed himself down there. Without thinking about how it might look, Draco followed his desires and buried his nose there, inhaling the heady scent that was Harry, so strong here at the base of his cock.
Harry. The name sang inside his head. He couldn’t believe he was allowed to do this. He felt Harry cock twitch against the side of his head. Thank heaven it was nowhere near the side of that monstrous wooden thing on the bedside table, or it wouldn’t have fitted his mouth. What on earth had possessed Luna to buy it?
He looked up at Harry, who had buried the fingers of both hands in Draco’s hair. He’d already pulled loose the small bun that was all Draco could manage with his current length. Harry was breathing heavily.
Draco suddenly wished Harry could tell him what he liked. Draco wanted to ask. He didn’t even know if Harry was a top or a bottom, although that was maybe too much for their first time together anyway. He hoped tonight wasn’t a one-time thing. He hoped it was alright to take this slow.
Instead of asking Harry what he liked, Draco asked a simpler question: “can I suck you?”
Harry’s fingers tightened painfully around the roots of his hair and he nodded frantically.
Draco pressed a kiss to the thigh right in front of him. “Go lie on the bed,” he told Harry, who immediately scrambled backwards, eager to obey. Draco followed him with his eyes. The mattress would be kinder to his knees, and he liked the idea of having Harry on his back in front of him. He slid off his own pants and crawled onto the bed and between Harry’s legs.
He didn’t tease, didn’t start lightly, that would be for other times. He just took Harry’s cock inside his mouth as deep as he could, which turned out to be Harry’s entire length. Draco wasn’t particularly good at deep-throating, but Harry wasn’t particularly large so that helped. Thank fuck, Draco thought to himself, seeing the wooden phallus behind his closed eyelids again.
Above him, Harry was tangling restless hands in Draco’s hair, caressing neck, shoulders, finding purchase there, but he never stayed for long. He was undulating his hips in time with the rhythm that Draco found for himself, occasionally trying to thrust upwards, but without much space to move because Draco was leaning on his thighs.
Draco curled his tongue along the underside of Harry’s cock and added some pressure. He wavered between impatience and wanting to make this the best blow job Harry ever had. From the noises Harry made, he could tell that he was not doing a bad job at least. He uttered the most exquisite sounds.
Onomatopoeia, Draco thought for the hundredth time this evening. Moaning, gasping, panting, humming. The English language was nothing but Onomatopoeias. And yet there ought to be more of them. A different word for each of the myriad of noises that found their way out of Harry’s mouth. For once, the English language failed him miserably.
When Harry started pulling at his hair, trying to get him away from his cock, Draco knew it was a warning that he was close. He felt it in Harry’s balls as well, tightening themselves under his fingers which had been massaging them, adding subtle pressure underneath. Draco didn’t particularly relish the idea of a flood of come into his throat. Too bitter.
He pulled back and let his hand finish the job. He kept his head close though, let Harry paint his face with white when he came. This way Draco could look at him too, which was an added bonus. He found he liked looking at Harry’s face when he came.
Draco knew the debauched picture he made, face streaked with come. He smirked at Harry whose eyes had briefly fluttered close, but who now stared at Draco with a dopey, sated smile on his face. Draco licked at a bit of come close to his mouth for added effect. He was glad he hadn’t swallowed. Nothing sexy about a gagging man.
Harry smirked and pulled Draco upwards. Draco thought he was going to kiss him, come and all, but instead he put his hands over Draco’s face and smeared the come all over. Like a face mask. Like a fucking toddler playing with finger paint. He giggled like a toddler too. Horrified Draco wanted to pull back, but Harry’s hands pulled him closer and he kissed him after all. Come and all.
After a while, he rolled Draco off him until they were both lying on their sides facing each other. And then Draco forgot all about his messy face because Harry put a hand over his cock and slowly started to pull him off and it was easily the best jerk-off Draco had ever had. Harry’s hand felt like heaven. Let’s face it, the simple fact that it was Harry Potter doing this was probably enough to make him come without much effort at all. But Harry did put effort into it. He was good at it.
Draco wondered how many men Harry had been with to become this skilful and discovered that he didn’t like that train of thought at all. Maybe Harry was just a natural.
Harry kissed him again, pulling his face close with his free hand, and rubbing a thumb over his cheekbone. Even in his distracted state, Draco felt the little tendril of magic reaching out over his skin, a cleaning spell from Harry’s fingers, and fuck, didn’t Harry know how much of a turn-on the feel of his magic was for Draco. He gasped. Then gasped some more when Harry tightened his fingers around his cock, upping the rhythm.
When he came, Harry pressed their foreheads together and whispered his name, “Draco.” In the blissful aftershock of his orgasm, it took a while for Draco to register the meaning of that. Then his eyes flew open to search Harry’s face. Bright green eyes were already waiting for him.
“Hey,” Harry whispered, a little hoarsely, as if he had been the one giving a blow job and not Draco. Harry’s hand, wet with come, still holding onto Draco’s penis, testified to the fact that that was not what had happened.
Draco wanted to make a stupid joke about if he’d known that a blowjob was all it would take to make Harry talk, he would have done it a week ago, but then he didn’t. Because it wasn’t true. He wouldn’t have wanted to miss this past week for anything in the world.
So he just echoed the sound back. “Hey.”
Harry searched his face some more, then said, “thank you.”
Draco smirked and couldn’t help sarcasm after all. “What for? My superb blowjob skills?”
Harry huffed out a laugh, then lifted his head, as if suddenly realising something. The temperature maybe, now that they were no longer… more physically engaged. Harry waved his hand towards the duvet which had fallen half on the floor at the foot of the bed. It untangled itself and drifted towards them, settling itself down in a cloud of warmth. Harry must have added a warming spell to the fabric.
“Fucking show-off,” Draco muttered.
Harry kissed him again, then continued the conversation as if he hadn’t just done something fairly impossible with floating textile-covered duck down and temperature. “I really like your blowjob skills. They are fantastic. But I meant thank you for this week, for not trying to fix me. For finding things for us to do that didn’t require talking. For taking me out every evening.”
Draco nodded. All his instincts were screaming to joke again, hide behind mockery. Deflect. But he forced himself to simply nod. For politeness’ sake, because he was not raised a heathen, he added, “you’re welcome.”
Harry’s fingers traced his eyebrows. “Sleep here tonight?” he asked. And it was such a simple request, and yet it held such a world of possibilities.
“I…,” Draco stuttered eloquently.
“I’d like to make you breakfast tomorrow morning,” Harry added quietly. So full of hope.
“Alright then,” Draco sighed in defeat. He reminded himself that not all changes were bad. This could very well be the best thing that had happened to him in a long time. Some changes he didn’t need to be scared of. Some changes were worth taking a risk for.
Harry smiled his softest Draco-smile yet. He waved his hand to turn off the lights, to lower the fire in the hearth, then turned himself around to fit his back against Draco’s chest. He draped Draco’s arm around his torso and tangled their legs together. Draco let himself be manhandled until Harry was satisfied with their sleeping arrangement.
Harry sighed contently. “Goodnight, Draco.”
Draco blew Harry’s wild hair away from his face.
“Goodnight, Harry.”
~*~
Draco woke up from a strangled shout. Harry was no longer in his arms but was sitting upright next to him, all strained muscle and sweat-soaked skin and panting breath. The fire had died down completely, indicating that they’d been sleeping for a while a least. Harry was a blur of shadow against the dim light coming in through the roof window, stars, half a moon and Diagon’s streetlamps below.
“Harry?” he murmured.
Harry lay back down, his body still a tight bundle of adrenaline-fuelled tension.
“Nightmare,” he declared curtly, staring up. “Sorry about that. Go back to sleep.”
As if that was a possibility.
Draco waited a little, uncertain about what to say, what to do. How much touch Harry could tolerate right now. The body next to him didn’t relax but the breathing got better. Eventually Draco reached out and stroked Harry’s shoulder. Harry flinched at the first touch of his fingers but then quieted under them. And then he moved himself a little closer to Draco. Not like before, not against him, just- closer.
“The war?” Draco asked quietly. Stupid, stupid question. He knew, he knew Harry never talked about the war. Besides, what else could it be?
“No,” Harry said. “Not always. Not this time.”
Draco stayed silent. Waiting. Breath held.
“I was trapped somewhere- somewhere small and dark. I couldn’t get out. It’s always the same, this nightmare. It's always-”
Draco’s fingers dared to move a little further, now smoothing the skin of Harry’s chest.
“You’re safe now,” he whispered, when Harry didn't continue. Then, against his better judgement, he added, “come here.”
Harry shook his head and didn’t move. Draco tried not to take it personal. He knew from experience that nightmares could keep their vice-like grip on you for hours after waking.
“Do you want me to get you something? Water? Or I can make you some tea?” It would take some effort to navigate a largely unknown house, but he would manage.
“No.” Harry grabbed the hand on his chest. “No, please don’t go. Please don’t leave me.”
Oh.
“Shh,” Draco soothed. Harry’s grip felt like he was planning on crunching the bones of Draco's hand to powder. He ignored the pain. “I’m not going anywhere, Harry. You’re safe here. You’re safe in this bed. You’re no longer trapped. This is your own house, and you're in your own bed. Your house is protected by wards. You are safe.”
Harry’s fingers relaxed a little. Draco folded his free hand over Harry’s and started to stroke his knuckles, his wrist. The angle was awkward, but it seemed to help as well.
“It’s where the silence came from,” Harry said eventually. Draco had no idea what that meant but from the clenching of his own gut, he felt the statement was- meaningful.
“The silence came from the place where you were trapped?”
“Yes.” It’s barely more than a breath. Then he let go of Draco’s hand and rolled over, pushing against Draco until he was on his back. He made himself comfortable in the circle of Draco’s arm, head on his shoulder, arm on his chest. Finally. Draco curled his arm around Harry's back, trying to keep it light, unconfined. With the other he stroked the arm that lay over his chest, the back of Harry’s hand. He pulled the duvet a little higher, but not too much. Nothing restricting.
“I grew up with my aunt and uncle,” Harry said, the cadence of his breath warm against Draco’s collarbone. “They were muggle. They were mean. They hated magic. They hated me.” Draco tried not to stiffen under the words, the implication of the string of short sentences coming out of Harry’s mouth. For all that it thrilled him that Harry was confiding in him, confiding something that was not common knowledge in the wizarding world, he suddenly wasn’t certain if he was ready to hear any of this. The horrors he felt were about to unfold.
“I didn’t have my own room. Their son had two. Dudley. He was my cousin. Me they stuffed away in a cupboard. A cupboard under the stairs. Like a household appliance. My aunt had me do household chores. So, I guess to them I was nothing more than that. A household appliance. I tried to behave. I did. I tried. I tried to be good. I did everything they asked. But no matter how hard I tried, they always found fault with what I did. Who I was, how I looked. There was always, always a reason to yell at me, to punish me. They would lock me up in the cupboard, so I was trapped inside. I was trapped. I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t even go to the loo. I-"
He sounded like he was sliding towards panic again, like the nightmare was pulling him in once more, so Draco shushed him, and rocked him a little. He kept stroking his arm, planted kisses on his head, stroked his hair with his other hand, anything comforting he could think of. The rest of him was dumbfounded by the information. Harry Potter had had an abusive childhood? Why had nobody ever told him? Did Harry’s friends even know? Pansy certainly didn’t. Draco was positive she would have slipped something, even if she hadn’t meant to. Draco loved Pansy to bits, she was his oldest friend, but she was not very good at keeping other people’s secrets.
“I never talk about my childhood,” Harry said as if he’d been reading Draco’s mind. His breathing had quieted again under Draco’s ministrations. “Hermione and Ron have probably figured it out along the way. Molly definitely suspects.”
He didn’t elaborate further, so eventually Draco simply said, “thank you for telling me.”
Harry didn’t answer and Draco thought that maybe he was drifting back to sleep. He hoped so. Harry deserved a long dreamless night after this, even if Draco still had a thousand questions for him. He was likely going to remain awake for hours. It was a small burden to bear after this horrible revelation.
But after a while Harry continued. “I created a space in my own head. As a child. A room of my own. It started as one room, but when I grew older, I made it into a whole house. A house of my own in which nobody hated me, and nobody yelled at me or called me a freak. It was a place of silence. Of quiet. When things became too much to bear, too hard, I retreated there, and nothing could touch me.”
“Fuck. Harry? Is that why you went silent two weeks ago? Did something happen to you? Harry, did somebody do any-”
“Nothing happened, Draco,” Harry stroked his hand over Draco’s chest in reassurance, reversing roles. “It’s not the same thing. I no longer need that place. I haven’t been needing it since Hogwarts. Not even during the war. I’ve been in graver danger at Hogwarts than I ever was at the Dursleys, but I was never alone. I had friends. I was loved. I kind of forgot about the House in my Head, that’s how I used to call it as a child.”
Harry sighed dramatically. “I know. Not very original.” Draco was just happy that he had the headspace for self-depreciation again.
“I’m guessing that maybe my subconscious made a connection between me not talking and the House in my Head and the cupboard under the stairs, and then decided to give me a fucking nightmare tonight. Bollocks! I hate this, Draco. I hate that I woke you up like this during our first night- I promise you, this is not something that happens a lot. No longer, anyway.”
“Don’t worry about it, Harry. Please, don’t feel bad on my account. You haven’t spoilt this night,” Draco said, and kissed the top of Harry’s head again. “Please don’t think that. There's nothing you could have done to spoil the memory of tonight.” For a man who appeared so calm and confident to the outside world, Harry needed a lot of reassurance.
Draco wondered if maybe Harry was more like himself than he had ever considered. He wondered if Harry had become somebody who found comfort in relying on routine and stability as well, finding small things that made him happy and keeping them close. Maybe that living though a war did that to you. Well, a war and living through an abusive childhood as well, apparently.
“I really couldn't care less,” he repeated, searching for things to say to make Harry feel better. “Well, I care of course, but only for you. I have nightmares too sometimes.” If this was something that he got to have, sleeping in Harry Potter’s bed, beyond this one evening, it was bound to happen at one point. He thought it best to change subjects altogether for now.
“Wanna go downstairs and make ourselves a cup of tea? I don’t think either of us is able to sleep right now.”
Harry sighed again. “Alright. Let’s do that. I’m so sor-”
Draco caught the apology in a kiss. He refused to listen to any more of it.
They went downstairs and made themselves a cup of tea, which they drank at the kitchen bar. When Harry confessed that the one thing that always helped him after a nightmare was a long hot shower, Draco made Harry tell him where the bathroom was and then proceeded to pull Harry in there. After, in bed, they had sex again and it was slow and delicious and perfect for falling asleep after.
The next morning, they woke up far too late and had to rush through a quick breakfast and coffee and kisses and goodbye-for-nows to get to their respective workplaces in time. Draco’s boss was not very forgiving of tardiness and reprimanded him for the few minutes he was late, but for a change, Draco couldn’t care less. He felt so happy, his day couldn’t have been spoiled even if his boss had fired him.
~*~
Harry only had himself to scold for being late of course, him being the only boss in the shop. Susannah just looked mildly exasperated when he stumbled downstairs and into the shop, which she had already opened. Since there were no customers yet, she was sipping a coffee.
“Did you have a hot date, boss?” she teased when she took in his dishevelled appearance. She clearly thought he’d just been working late into the night like he so often did. She wasn’t expecting more than a head shake. She looked stunned when he muttered, face all red, “something like that.”
Harry didn’t know if her expression came from the fact that he was talking again, or from the fact that he’d had admitted to a date, and a hot one at that, although that clearly was none of her business. He didn’t wait for her to recover. He quickly retreated behind the curtain. Hopefully Anso was easier to deal with.
Susannah had mostly recovered from her initial shock when she walked through the curtain half an hour later, in search of more coffee. She tactfully didn’t say anything about the fact that he was speaking again. Harry knew she was there to listen to him if he wanted to talk about it, talk about anything really, even hots dates, but she would never push. She wasn’t like that. He liked that about her in fact. He knew that his friends at the Leaky tonight would not extend him the same courtesy.
How was he going to explain to them where the silence had come from, when he couldn’t even explain it to himself.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
I heard Simon & Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence on the wireless during muggle hour.
I felt like it.
It was an experiment of sorts.
Something needed to change and I didn’t know how to go about it.
I needed it.
All of these were true and yet none of them were the reason. There wasn't one single reason.
Two weeks ago, there had been two things he knew for certain. One was that he was completely fed up with Draco Malfoy avoiding him like the plague. Harry had tried to interact with him for so long, tried to force some sort of interaction out of him that lasted longer than a strained few minutes. He’d tried so many times. It never worked.
While Draco had become friends with all of Harry’s friends over the years, he refused to become Harry’s friend, to come any closer. It drove Harry round the bend. Whenever he tried to approach him, Draco simply took a step back, physically, or mentally. Or both. He always got away from Harry, flowing through his fingers like water, unable to hold on to.
He was not the same Draco he once was. He was polite and distanced. But there was still fire in his eyes, Harry caught it when he was talking passionately about something with his friends. Occasionally, Harry caught it when Draco was looking at him. It gave him a thrill. He wanted to see much more of it. He had looked for it in other men he was with. It was never the same.
The second thing Harry had known was that only something unexpected would be able to draw Draco in.
He never expected it to work this well. But he was not complaining. Not at all.
And then came the fucking nightmare. And he remembered that he’d been Silent before. As a child, inside the Room in his Head silence had reigned, had been his friend. Inside his Room, his House, nothing could touch him. Not Petunia’s shrill voice, grating against the inside of his skull like nails on a blackboard, scolding him for some perceived negligence. Not Dudley’s physical meanness, or his equally mean friends, the sound of their fists punching Harry’s flesh. Not even Vernon, screaming at the top of his lungs, face purple with rage, shaming him for who he was. For what he was. A wizard. A child.
His silence then had been for different reasons than his silence now. His silence then hadn’t saved him from anything. It usually only served to make the Dursleys more mad at him. Whenever he retreated into his own head, whenever he became untouchable, he always paid for it afterwards. It was a high price to pay for a few precious moments of peace.
This time. This time there was no payment extracted from him. This time there was only reward. It was very hard to believe.
By the time his working day, his very normal, two-a-penny working day, ended, the past week had started to appear distanced, like a luxurious daydream, last night felt even more surreal. Harry was terrified that when showed up at the Leaky tonight, nothing had changed. Draco would hoover along the edge of their group like he always did. Like he had done for years. Harry resolved that, no matter what, he was not going back to that again.
He needn’t have worried. When he entered the Leaky, Draco, who was talking to Hermione, caught Harry’s eye and then gave him a tentative smile. Harry had grown to love Draco’s unguarded smiles this past week, shared so easily with him in the safety of muggle London. He had grown to love Draco’s chatting about anything and everything, fire burning bright. Harry suspected he could listen to Draco’s voice for the rest of his life without ever tiring of it.
He was thrilled that Draco felt comfortable enough to smile at him here, in the Leaky, among their friends. It made Harry feel bold.
So, when he reached Draco and Hermione, Harry didn’t hesitate and kissed Draco full on the mouth, long and hard, ignoring the vague noises of protest he received, then he leaned against him. He was happy to discover that Draco immediately put his arm around Harry’s shoulders. Maybe it meant that the protest had not been for the kiss but for the rather rude interruption of his conversation with Hermione. Hopefully.
Only then did Harry remember his friend. He turned to her sheepishly. “Hello, Hermione.”
She was speechless. It filled Harry with a wild sort of glee. Hermione was not easily stunned into silence. He knew Draco experienced something similar when he felt the fingers that were curled around his shoulder, twitch.
“Hello, Harry,” she finally said, slowly, looking him up and down, as if to check for anything unusual. Another inexplicable curse maybe. “I guess this means you’re talking again?”
Harry leaned forward and kissed her cheek, then retreated back into Draco’s embrace. “It does. I’m sorry if I made you worry, Hermione. I never meant for that to happen.”
Hermione looked like she had something to say to that, something like ‘what the hell did you think would happen, Harry?’, but before she could form the words, Pansy walked in, immediately zoomed in on Harry and Draco with their arms around each other, and shrieked loudly before rushing at them both, embracing them. “It happened,” she squealed, while Draco hissed, “Pansy Parkinson, keep your fucking voice down.”
“Hermione was just telling me,” Draco told Harry, now ignoring his best friend, trying to counter Pansy’s hysteria with absolute calmness, even if Harry could see that he was struggling to keep his equilibrium under the onslaught of attention from everybody around them. Pansy’s wild shrieks had drawn the attention, not only of the rest of their group, but of the entire clientele of the Leaky.
“Hermione was just telling me that the St. Mungo’s potion’s lab opened up a job position for a junior traineeship today.”
“It will mean a step back initially,” Hermione latched on, ignoring their friends starting to make rude jokes around them about Harry breaking his silence and, well, about other things as well- About Harry breaking his silence as a result of- other things. “But it will mean you can do research, Draco. It’s what you’ve always wanted! And you don’t need to decide right away, there’s time to think about this. I know it's a big change. We can meet for coffee next week. I can fill you in on the details.”
Harry was amazed at how well Hermione seemed to know Draco.
Pansy, who was now hanging off of Draco’s other arm, stood on tiptoe, as much as the height of her heels allowed for, and kissed his cheek. “That’s wonderful, darling,” she said, much calmer than before. “You deserve a break from that fucking job of yours. Not to mention us deserving a break from your endless complaints about it.”
Draco had blanched under her words and Harry thought he knew why. It was the word ‘deserved’. Deserve was not a word that Draco felt should in any way apply to him. Harry was often described as unobservant and dense by his friends. But he was none of that when it came to Draco Malfoy. He had never been any of that when it came to his former enemy.
His kissed Draco’s cheek and said softly, “She’s right, darling. You deserve this. It’s going to be wonderful.”
Draco breathed out sharply in uncertain disbelief.
In the kerfuffle of all their friends talking and shouting around them, Harry turned Draco’s face towards himself, held his cheeks and looked into his eyes. Then he said earnestly: “A huff. Onomatopoeia.”
The tension dropped from Draco like his wet coat had done last night, and he laughed surprised and bright. Then he kissed Harry, deeply and hungrily, as if the world around them no longer existed.
Harry vaguely wondered if a kiss was an onomatopoeia, before the forgot all about it and the only thing he focussed on, was the pure pleasure of being allowed to kiss Draco in front of all their friends.