Chapter Text
Harry Potter wasn’t sure why he - the Saviour of the Wizarding World, twice over - had been the self-sacrificing Chosen One drunkenly press-ganged into sneaking down to the kitchens to steal more wine, as the party in the Gryffindor common room stretched into its third, messy, hour.
“Well, McGonagall's hardly going to expel you, is she?” a slurring Ron had argued, shouting rather louder than necessary to be heard over the screeching goblin guitars of the Weird Sisters’ latest album, Banshee Bangers.
“And neither Miss-Perfect-Prefect will do it-" gesturing haphazardly over to the far corner – Harry moved his glass out of gangly ginger octopus range – at Ginny and Hermione. Squinting around the packed room at the other candidates for alcoholic grand larceny. “And Neville's Head Boy, and Seamus would drink it all before he got back-"
Harry had given up, in the face of Ron's impeccable firewhisky-fuelled logic, and stomped out past the Fat Lady’s portrait. A moment of enjoying the silence as the picture swung - wobblingly; Harry spotted several oil-painted bottles of sherry in the corner of the frame - back into place, his head still thumping from Dean Thomas' magically-enhanced bass speakers.
He wished he’d thought to grab his invisibility cloak, but the staircase up to the dormitories had been guarded by a gauntlet of giggling sixth years who'd been trying to snog him all evening. He sighed, and began picking his way along dark corridors.
Leaping behind a suit of armour to avoid one of Mrs. Norris’ infernal brood of kittens; they were just as nosy as their mother, and there seemed to at least a hundred of them. And all evil, Ron had muttered darkly, nursing the nasty claw scratch he’d received when he’d tried to hex a portrait for sniggering at the scruffy ginger beard he was growing ‘as a new look’. It was a mark of how Gryffindor-loyal a friend Harry was that he’d managed to keep himself from agreeing with the painting. Out loud.
The tiny, beady-eyed cat swaggered off without a backwards glance.
This, Harry thought irritably to himself, was what he was doing with his life, eight months after defeating the most powerful dark wizard in history. His Order of Merlin didn't mean much when he was dodging cats and stealing average wine from cellars.
Perhaps he ought not to have destroyed the Elder Wand.
Down by the Hufflepuff common room - the muffled sounds of a raucous party in there, too - gently tickling the painting of a pear. Wishing it would giggle more softly - and less flirtatiously - as it swung open to reveal the entrance to the kitchens; now they were unionised, the house elves were far less tolerant of late-night visitors, and Harry had no desire to be on the receiving end of a squeaky lecture about unpaid overtime and health and safety. So he kept to the walls, sneaking in the shadows, imagining himself as a suave secret agent Auror, on a mission to rescue… someone beautiful; Harry could never quite get his mind to picture love interest in his fantasies properly. He just knew that they’d have white-blond hair.
Stepping carefully - ever since the Goblet of Fire incident, he'd distrusted them - over the age line restricting the entrance to the cellars. Cringing at the crackle of magic it made-
But the merry elvish cooking chatter continued; Harry willed his heartrate back under control. He'd defeated Voldemort; the thought of irate, souffle-splattered house elves wielding wooden spoons shouldn't be so alarming.
Slipping inside, silently congratulating himself on his stealth – he really would have to get back into Quidditch, he’d obviously not lost any of his first-rate agility or his alertness, he'd been an excellent Seeker – and smashed headfirst into another, very solid, body.
Harry ricocheted backward, thumping into the stone wall.
"What in Merlin's saggy bollocks-?"
Gagging, as his throat was choked in a vice-like grip. "Shut up, Potter.” An achingly posh hiss.
Malfoy.
Startled green eyes met irritated blue. After a moment – an unnecessarily long moment, Harry thought, swallowing around the bruise – the pressure on his throat relented.
“What are you doing here?” both of them demanded, at the same time.
Why did that feel electric?
A pointy-faced sneer. “Not that it's any of your business, Potter, but there’s a party in the Slytherin common room tonight.” Opening his beautifully-tailored outer robes to revealed several bottles of wine hidden in the folds. Harry felt a brief flash of annoyance that Malfoy would have already taken the best ones.
“I was sent to top up our supplies,” Malfoy continued, “since that drunken oaf Hagrid confiscated all the decent stuff I brought from home." A disgusted shake of floppy blond hair. "As though he'd know a Grenache from a grindylow."
Harry, Ron, and Hermione had spent several enjoyable evenings in Hagrid's hut sampling the contraband from Malfoy Manor's cellars. But he was spared having to confess, to that, or his own would-be larceny tonight, by the sound of footsteps echoing across the flagstones toward them. Footsteps that were too heavy to be elvish-
"Merlin's tits," Malfoy yelped. "It's Filch - and he looks like he's in a filthy mood."
Acting on the instincts of a lifetime of sneaking out of bounds, Harry grabbed a fistful of Malfoy’s robes – stolen wine bottles clinking – and shoved him into a tiny storeroom off the corridor. Yanking the door shut behind them just as Filch's vengeful grey shadow passed across the opening.
Harry held his breath, face wedged against the wood.
Heard Filch pause, and sniff suspiciously at the air. Harry was uncomfortably aware of how strongly his robes smelled of spilled butterbeer and Dr. Filibuster's ash..
"Can you see them, my sweet?" Filch addressed, presumably, the quisling of a kitten that Harry had encountered earlier.
"If we're caught, I'm telling Filch that you Imperiused me," Malfoy hissed in his ear.
Harry rolled his eyes in the dark, tightened his fist in Malfoy's robes to shut the ferrety pillock up.
It felt as though they were caught in the spinning of a broken Time Turner, the minutes stretching on and on; Harry's heartbeat pounding so loudly in his ears that surely Filch would be able to hear...
Until, finally, the caretaker seemed to decide that the tiny cat must have been mistaken. "Never mind, my sweet. We'll catch the blighters next time. Sneaking about like drunken nifflers. Now, how about we find some nice tuna for you?" Sounding more affectionate than Harry could ever have imagined Filch being, as slippered feet and tiny paws shuffled off into the depths of the kitchens.
A deep sigh of relief. And then his pulse was leviosa-ed right up to the top of the Astronomy Tower again as he felt Malfoy’s warm breath on his cheek. Realising - like he'd been hit with a stinging hex - that his lungs were full of the scent of Malfoy’s cologne. Deeper, spicier than he’d imagined – when had he been imagining how Malfoy’s skin would smell? – sandalwood and black pepper.
It was almost magnetic, the desire to lean in-
He was shoved back, hard enough that he cracked his head on the opposite wall.
“Lumos,” Malfoy drawled, and Harry, rubbing the lump developing at the back of his skull, scrabbled for his own wand on the floor. Reformed Death Eater or otherwise, it seemed prudent not to be unarmed when he was trapped in an enclosed space with Draco Malfoy.
So why had the idea sent a frisson up his spine?
“Idiotic as usual, Potter.” Malfoy towered over him, pointy-faced and scornful. “You do realise that we're trapped in here?”
“Most people would say, ‘thankyou for saving me from three weeks of scrubbing slugs off the floors’," Harry grumbled, glancing around. They were in some sort of larder – cold stone walls and dusty wooden shelves. Not a large space, at all.
“Most people would have remembered that McGonagall's hosting a feast for the Board of Governors, tonight. The kitchens will be swarming with house elves clearing up after dessert. So we’re stuck here, for at least an hour.”
Curiously, Harry found that he didn’t feel disappointed at the idea of missing the rest of the party in the common room. In fact, between the memory of Malfoy’s hot breath on the side of his face, and the ice blue of the eyes glaring into his right now, he’d already forgotten about it.
Malfoy's thin lips curled, and Harry realised that he'd been staring for far too long.
“Right. Well. Then, err-" flailing a hand at the floor. "We should make ourselves comfortable."
A derisory flash in Malfoy’s eyes. "Of course you're used to living cupboards, Potter."
It was going to be a long hour, Harry sighed, wedging himself against the wall. Very aware of how close Malfoy was, as he snobbily scourgify-ed a patch in the dust, before stretching his long limbs out to take up most of the tiny floorspace and reaching into his robes to pull out one of the stolen bottles. Frowning at the label; a resigned shrug, and a mutter of 'peasants' and an incantation under his breath. The tip of his wand turned into a corkscrew.
“Handy spell.” Harry raised an eyebrow. Captivated by the tendons in Malfoy's forearm as he worked the cork free-
Merlin, how much had he had to drink this evening?
He jumped, at the soft ‘pop’ of the cork, and the unmistakable challenge in Malfoy's eyes as he lifted the bottle to his lips and took a long swig.
Harry absolutely didn’t watch Malfoy’s Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed, didn’t find himself transfixed by the soft pale skin of his neck. Or the way the shadows danced across his sharp features in the dim glow of their wands.
Malfoy gave no appearance of being aware of Harry's gaze; wiping the neck of the bottle on his robes and holding it out.
“Barely a tolerable vintage; Merlin knows that even the stuff they serve at High Table tastes like vinegar. But it's better than any of the swill you'd be drinking up in the Gryffindor tower."
Harry rolled his eyes in anticipation of a long and boastful dissertation about the Veela vintner employed at the Malfoy's French chateau, or a shiraz that was distilled from Salazar Slytherin's haemmorhoids-
“Still," a longsuffering aristocratic sniff, “it’ll do, if we’re trapped in this stupid cupboard for an hour or two.”
Something about the way blue eyes danced in the wandlight made Harry reach for the bottle and gulp down nearly half of what was left.
Harry kept track of the passing of time by the accumulation of empty wine bottles on the floor around them, and the blurring of his vision into a pleasant soft haze.
Tugging the collar of his robes looser; he was sweltering in the tiny larder, in spite of the cold stone. Hyperaware of how Malfoy’s leg had somehow come to be pressed up against his in the tiny space, every nerve ending vibrating like a flustered flitterby.
The warmth, the touch, Malfoy’s cut-glass drawl declaiming his – utterly rubbish – opinions on the offside rule the League had introduced this season... Harry chuckled tipsily to himself at the thought that, a year earlier, if anybody would have suggested that he'd be spending an evening locked in a cupboard with Draco Malfoy holding forth about the Falmouth Falcons, and rather enjoying himself, he’d have suggested they check themselves into St Mungo’s.
Draco Malfoy, who was looking at him expectantly; Harry realised, much too late, that he'd been lost in studying the line of Malfoy’s pointy aristocratic profile, and missed whatever question he'd asked.
And, from his kneazle-got-the-cream smirk, that Harry's staring had been quite obvious.
Harry settled for giving him an uncoordinated shove, for being full of Hippogriff shite about Quidditch and for being so infuriatingly attractive.
A long arm – Malfoy seemed, irritatingly, far more in control of his own motor functions than Harry felt right now – rescued their wine from being knocked over. And then reached, ostentatiously slowly, across Harry’s body to place the bottle out of harm's way. Harry held his breath as Malfoy’s robes brushed against his chest.
A long-fingered hand came to rest on Harry’s leg. Just above his knee, its weight resting like a challenge.
Harry swallowed, hard. Felt as though his insides had been levicorpus-ed into freefall.
“You really can’t handle your drink, can you, Potter?” Tone rich with dark amusement.
Harry tried to focus his glare on the more solid-looking of the two Malfoys he could see. Although, focusing seemed like an unfair ask, when the press of Malfoy's hand was sending tendrils of white fire snaking up Harry’s thigh, right to his-
“Pity,” Malfoy shrugged, abruptly pushing himself up off the floor. “Could have been an interesting night.”
What in Merlin's blue bollocks-?
Head swirling, Harry clambered hastily upright, too. With significantly less dignity; swaying and clawing at Malfoy's robes as though he were a skinny blond climbing frame.
Found himself shoved, once again, against the stone wall. This time, crowded by long limbs and the overwhelming scent of sandalwood and black pepper. Harry was certain he must have been concussed in the collision, or maybe Malfoy had hexed him in the head, because he was gripped by the insane impulse to lean up and snog the smug expression off Malfoy’s stupid pointy face.
Green eyes locked with blue, for a long moment. More intense than the time Harry's wand had connected with the Dark Lord's in the Little Hangleton cemetery; he was panting like he'd just come in for halftime in a hard-fought Quidditch match. Malfoy was so close-
Malfoy blinked first. Harry's insides wrenched with a sharp stab of victory and a twinge of disappointment.
When he looked back up, that infuriating unreadable Slytherin mask was back in place.
“It sounds as though the coast is clear,” a sharp nod at the cupboard door. “But you'd better go out first, Potter, just in case I’m wrong.”