Chapter Text
“What do you mean, you don’t love me?” Cressilda asked. Harry froze. The charmed bubbles continued to twinkle above the table, the warty, tuxedoed toad chorus still warbled through an All I Want for Christmas is You acapella rendition, and the diners around them continued to titter and simper.
“Erm,” Harry finally mustered. It wasn’t as if Cressilda was Harry’s last chance, but Harry felt like she was. She was—what?—Hermione’s fourth law classmate that Harry had tried to date. Tried, and apparently failed with great aplomb, if Cressilda’s quivering lip and glistening eyes were anything to go by.
“Pardon me,” the maître d' said smoothly, and swooped in to relight the candle on their table. It had been snuffed out with gusto when Harry gripped Cressilda’s hand tightly across the table and she had asked that horrible question. Harry willed the server away. Cressilda looked to be approaching a violent strop every second Harry kept silent, face puffing up like the toads on the golden dais in the centre of the restaurant, but Harry could not—would not—have the details of his latest bust-up splashed all over the front page of the Prophet. Again.
But then the server’s wand tapped elegantly once, twice next to the candle, and a breath of minty soft magic swept over them both and the candle flickered softly back into light. Harry had been holding Cressilda’s gaze as best he could across the table, willing her not to cry, but the wand, it looked like—
The maître d' had already turned and left when Harry looked up though—the famed service at Le Crapaud Romain was one of the reasons Harry booked it for Cressilda and his three-month anniversary. “Book somewhere nice,” Cressilda had said, and fluttered her eyelashes. No one to spy on them, a discreet wait staff, a very strict no-paparazzi policy, Roman columns dripping with fairy gold and ambergris and emerald velvet, cut crystal coupes, blushing chrysanthemums sighing and crooning when Harry took Cressilda’s hand—it all led to the perfect ambiance for Cressilda to ask Harry if he loved her.
From behind, the maître d' did have a distinctive platinum swoop of hair. And the supple hawthorn wood wand. Still, it couldn’t be Malfoy. It couldn’t. Tons of people had hawthorn wands. But still—Harry almost pushed himself out of his chair, his eyes tracking the crimson vest through the glittering tables.
Cressilda squeezed his hand sharply and hissed, “Harry.”
Harry resisted the urge to stand up and follow the Malfoy look-alike. But he couldn’t fight off the urge to crane his head—subtly!—around the highly-perfumed wizard in the stuffy rose velveteen robe gossiping away at the table next to theirs. That’s who it had to be—just a look-alike. The maître d' was slim—too slim, knobbly wrists and jutting shoulders. The hair was all wrong: dirty dishwater, lank and limp. And there was no way Malfoy had grown taller in Azkaban or under house arrest at his rank Manor—where he was the last time Harry had thought of him.
“Are you even paying attention to me?” Cressilda finally wailed. Harry whipped back around and found Cressilda’s huge brown eyes filled with tears. The velveteen wizard in the table next to theirs abruptly stopped talking, and tilted his head, like a dog hearing its name called. The candle on Harry’s table sputtered out again with a whoosh and a sneeze. A blush pink chrysanthemum petal gracefully detached from the stem and floated onto the table.
Harry couldn’t fuck this up. Cressilda was normal. Things were better when he was with her—really, when he was with someone at all, and he had failed spectacularly with Brunhilde (probably his best chance, the only one Hermione had actually set him up with: smart as a whip, but she didn’t take any of Harry’s shit and left him once she realised, kindly, how fucked up Harry was) and Romilda (really, she had improved since she tried to dose Harry with a love potion in sixth-year and Harry had been desperate at that point, barely able to sleep and frost trailing his every footstep).
Really, Cressilda was Harry’s last chance. The Hogwarts dating pool was quite slim pickings to start with: what were you supposed to do with only forty wixen your age in all of the UK? Harry might have to go for Muggles next.
Harry had been so good, feeling almost like his old self for the past several months. Nothing strange was happening to him, nothing unexpected, nothing unexplained. He hadn’t had an episode in six weeks, at least. The dreams were fading into the background. He had been feeling normal.
A whole flower’s worth of petals dropped like an anvil on the table. Its stem twisted up, withered and gnarled as if it had been sitting on the table for a thousand years. Fuck.
“Right. If you’re not going to say anything at all,” Cressilda muttered and stood up, began shoving her glittery shawl into her bag. Another chrysanthemum drooped, a sickly sweet bouquet of rottenness. The fairy light floating above them burst in a shower of glass, and the entrapped fairy darted off with a buzz. The murmurs around them rose in pitch, an awful crescendo raising right up Harry’s pine.
“Wait!” Harry briefly considered lying. He could love Cressilda, right? He had to be able to love Cressilda.
Cressilda paused. Her diaphanous shawl lay half-sprawled on the table like a dead Demiguise, littered with withered petals.
Harry wracked his mind for what to say. I need you to be normal was frankly awful, and please don’t go, I’m not sure who else is left was worse. All the candles in the Le Crapaud Romain guttered out. The platinum blond head turned officiously to the table in the corner and relit them. Harry caught a glimpse of the maître d's profile. Sharp nose, sharp chin, but the cheekbones were all wrong, gaunt and hollow and sad. It wasn’t Malfoy. It can’t have been Malfoy. He looked absolutely awful.
And then a camera went off, the smash-bang, poisonous mercury flash smoke snaking across the room. The rest of the chrysanthemums on the table shrieked, embarrassed to be caught en décolletage. Cressilda sniffed and stuffed the rest of her shawl into her pearl-encrusted bag, dead petals and all.
As she stormed out of the door, the whole of Le Crapaud Romain’s eyes eagerly eating up her stomping heels, Harry felt acid rise up his trachea, fill his mouth. As if on perfect cue, all the lighting charms guttered out in a last gasp. Guests shrieked, eerie emergency lighting charms fired up and cast an absinthe-green penumbra, plates smashed, a tablecloth lit on fire, the blond maître d’s hair shone like a ghost light. The toads commenced on a melancholy dirge of a sea shanty: fire in the galley, fire in the house, fire, fire, fire down below. Harry just sat, going down with the ship.
Harry was walking through the forest again. Sirius and James, Lily and Remus paced silently beside him: Harry’s army of ghosts that he couldn’t seem to shake. Maybe he didn’t want to shake them; maybe that was the whole problem.
His mum’s eyes were silvery and distant, almost as if she were already drifting away. She said, “This isn’t what we wanted for you.”
Harry couldn’t remember if she said that before, when this all actually happened, or if he’d just been making it up in his persistent nightmares. The forest seemed especially malevolent tonight, death dogging him at every step. He was grateful the shades had no footsteps. They just glided in and out of the moonlight, slipping into the sylvan shadows. He could almost hear the crackle of Voldemort’s fire ahead, the deep pulsations of light reaching towards him, tugging him onwards. It was as though he was being compelled forward—after years of these dreams, he no longer possessed the will or the bravery he once had, walking into the forest to face his certain death. It had been leached out of him slowly, as if every dream of death, every flower wilting under his touch, every step away from the future he had dreamed for himself took just a little bit more from him.
When they almost reached the clearing, Harry clenched the stone tighter. The rough-hewn facets bit into his palm, the sharp stink of its magic worming, cadaverous and putrescent, towards his heart. Every ounce of magic in Harry’s body resisted the pull of the clearing, which had only grown stronger as he had been compelled deeper and deeper into the forest. The clearing glowed blinding before him; as always, Harry couldn’t see into it, even when he shielded his eyes and squinted. He heard only whispering, louder and louder, urging him in, telling him to meet his destiny.
He turned to Lily. James and Sirius and Remus faded into darkness, whispering away, even though Harry still held tight to the stone. Lily reached out, the tips of her fingers turning translucent—the infernal light of the clearing burning her away. She said again, “This isn’t what we wanted for you.”
Then she was gone. They all were gone. Harry took a deep breath, turned to the clearing, the brilliant light searing his face, the whispers reaching a crescendo, the dark shadow that had dogged him at every step almost at his back, pushing him forward—
Harry jolted awake. His breath caught in his chest; his heart raced. He had been so close to the clearing this time, but he had resisted it. Thank god he had resisted it.
It was pouring rain in his bedroom, anyways; the sodden sheets clung sticky to his sweat-chilled shoulders and pulled as he struggled out of them. Thunder boomed and rumbled somewhere in the vicinity of Sirius’ moth-eaten canopy, its crepey holes flapping in the wind.
It had never been so bad before: not when he dated Romilda, Brunhilde, or Cressilda. He needed someone, something normal in his life to anchor him here. Otherwise, he might just float away, disappear into death. That was the whole point of dealing with Auror training, dating around, even living in Grimmauld. He had to be normal. He had to be okay. Otherwise, what was the point of coming back at all?
In his darkest moments, like when his bedroom poured rain on him at two in the morning and the brilliant, honeyed light of the Forbidden Forest called to him like a drug, Harry wondered if he was actually supposed to have boarded the train back from King’s Cross, if he hadn’t violated some fundamental law of the universe. Perhaps this was his punishment—being wrong. Being wrong until he died again and restored everything back to order, the strings of fate he had plucked out of tune to suit him twanging disconsolately, disconsonantly.
“I didn’t want this either, Mum,” Harry muttered as he slammed his bedroom door. The staircase was gnarled and burnt, eerie in the moonlight, just as it was in the forest. The once-lush carpet squelched under his feet as Harry made his way to the kitchen.
The dream had spread beyond his bedroom this time—it was getting worse. Harry felt like a fish hooked on a line, death wriggling in his mouth, an inexorable tug up, up, up towards the light. Harry would be an Auror. He would find someone. He would be normal again.
Harry was still sodden as he trudged into the Department of Magical Law Enforcement around five in the morning. The Grimmauld shower hadn’t cooperated, the creaky old pipes groaning in protest every time he tried to raise the temperature, his Warming Charms whispering out in a gust of petrol stench, skittering away from his goose-pimpled skin.
He had walked out of the bathroom to Kreacher grumbling at the state of the runner on the stairs. Kreacher and Harry normally had a good relationship—if ‘good’ meant Kreacher countering Harry at every opportunity including refusing the offer to leave Grimmauld and be free, even though Harry knew he stealthily spent the coins Harry slipped into his expanded closet-bedroom on an arsenal of medieval weaponry—so it never felt more dire here than when Kreacher was concerned. About Harry or the house, Harry didn’t know. Neither was good.
“Magic cannot be fixing this, Master,” Kreacher warned him ominously.
“I know.” Harry couldn’t stand to be in this cursed house for a second longer: Kreacher’s disappointed face, mould dripping down the walls, phosphorescent blue and neon green and ghostly white that Harry’s magic couldn’t budge, the ghastly grimaces of the house elf heads on the wall. He hated it here so much that it felt like the walls were closing in on him, looming large in his peripheral vision, a bubble of panic expanding to fill his lungs, and so Harry Apparated right then and there, freezing cold and soaking wet, still in his towel, to the loo entry to the Ministry.
He regretted it the second his bare feet touched the dank bathroom tile, the grout aged dark, coated by an unknown slime, but he couldn’t bear to return to Grimmauld, so he dutifully flushed himself down the toilet. He knew, technically, the toilet water wasn’t actually touching him, but the combination of his bare chest, the damp towel, and the chill from his frigid shower made him feel even wetter as he burst out of the pipe to plop unceremoniously in the Ministry Atrium.
Thankfully, no one was there to see him, besides a very disgruntled watchman who scanned Harry’s wand to let him in. When Harry’s name curled out the tip in a spark of gold and green sparks, the watchman perked up, but Harry snatched his wand back and walked as fast as he dared, without exposing himself, towards the lift. Goose pimples dotted his chest in the morning chill, the sodden towel dripping with every step.
This would absolutely make the Prophet. ‘Potter Provacatively Prances through Ministry Atrium: Is He Finally Off His Rocker?’, or ‘Is Harry Hairy? Find Out on Page 2!’, or ‘He Menaced Me In Just a Towel!: Ministry Night Watchman Tells All’ flash through Harry’s mind. Honestly, the Prophet should hire him to write their headlines on him. He’d probably be a right sight better at it than as an Auror trainee.
Harry stopped unceremoniously in front of the lift. Fuck, he was probably already on the front page of today’s Prophet. He eyed the rush of the newspapers flooding in from the furthest fireplace, flapping and squawking and squabbling for the top spot of the pile by Accio Snackio. Two particularly tenacious issues got into a vicious altercation: one ripped the front page off another, which immediately flushed pink all over, at what Harry presumed was embarrassment for being…naked?
Trying to avoid spotting his speccy self on the front page, Harry hastily jabbed the button for Level Two.
He finally made it, miraculously sight unseen, to the DMLE locker rooms. The dim yellow evening lighting charms flickered ominously over the benches and the wrought-iron cabinetry, casting much of the room in a gloamy shadow. A tinny Christmas Carol charm—Baby, it’s cold outside—echoed across the damp tile. Harry distantly heard the sound of another shower going, steam billowing out from behind one of the dark curtains, making the locker room foggy and ominous like the walk to the clearing in the forest. Harry’s skin prickled, and he rushed to pull on his Auror trainee uniform, the material catching on his damp skin.
The shower turned off. Harry pulled his crimson jacket on, chilled fingers slipping on the buttons—he certainly didn’t want to encounter the only other person cursed to the DMLE locker room at five in the morning. Given Harry’s luck, it probably was a ghost, haunting the showers and ogling impressionable Auror trainees and singing Christmas carols.
Managing to exit before the Christmas ghost, Harry stopped short as soon as he saw the light on in Proudfoot’s office. He absolutely did not want to deal with Proudfoot, not after the morning—night—he’d been having. But he could hear shuffling in the locker room behind him, whatever Ministry ghoul banging lockers open and shut.
“The only way forward is through,” Harry repeated to himself, and crept across the carpet. He placed one foot, toe first, heel raised, then the other. The ghoul continued to shuffle about in the locker room behind him. Harry inched past the sliver of light from the open door, sucking in his stomach and pressing himself against the wall, shoulder blades digging into the plaster. He stepped once, twice—almost free—and then the dastardly, aged Ministry floorboards creaked, a loud groan of centuries of Auror trainees trying to escape the notice of their boss all coming out under the heel of Harry’s foot.
Proudfoot poked his head around the doorjamb, his jolly face Father Christmas-like. Harry grimaced.
“Harry!” he boomed. “Just the man I was hoping to see!”
Harry wasn’t sure how Proudfoot expected him at five in the morning, but he dutifully followed Proudfoot into his office. A fire crackled in the hearth, and a Christmas tree twinkled merrily in the corner.
“Sit, sit!” Proudfoot said, gesturing at the squashy armchair in front of his desk. Harry sat and promptly sank into it with a fwump, as the chair attempted to suck him into its crevices. His feet even rose up off the floor.
“I always knew you were a go-getter, Potter,” Proudfoot chuckled. “Just can’t wait to catch the bad guys, can you?”
“Er,” Harry said.
“You remind me of someone, you know?” Proudfoot’s eyes twinkled at him. He paused. Harry just stared at him. And then Proudfoot laughed and said, “Why, me, of course!” as if in response to Harry asking “Who?”, which Harry most certainly did not.
Proudfoot paused again, and Harry, realising he couldn’t screw up his Auror training too much, said, “Thank you, sir.”
“Of course, Potter, of course,” Proudfoot said and then cleared his throat. He reached to his side, and then Harry saw it in horror: today’s Daily Prophet. Harry’s face was staring out from the front page, aghast and agoggle. “You know, I also was unlucky in love in my youth—another way I see my younger self in you.”
Harry struggled to escape the cavernous chair—he could not, would not, have this conversation with his boss. Proudfoot puffed the paper open and read out loud, “Potter was left bereft and heartbroken at the table, as Mourningwood stormed off, the third such paramour to cruelly dump Potter in a year.”
Harry, who still could not leave this damn chair no matter how much he struggled, was horrified to see a stray tear in Proudfoot’s eye as he lowered the newspaper. Proudfoot continued, “You know, Potter, there are still plenty of plimpies in the pond. You’ll find love yet. In fact, my daughter—”
“Sir,” Harry interjected. “I’m not—I’m not really in the place to…see someone new yet. You know, on account of my heart being broken and all.”
Proudfoot reached across the desk and clapped Harry over the shoulder. He cleared his throat. “Just know, Potter, you are more than welcome at my house—always. Perhaps you’d even like to come over for Christmas? I know Christmas must be hard for you, with no family.”
Harry, who had been looking to the Burrow Christmas as the shining hope on the horizon of a terrible fall, couldn’t imagine anything worse than spending it with Proudfoot trying to set him up with his daughter. “I have a family…sir. I’ll be at the Weasleys’ for Christmas.”
Proudfoot chortled. “Of course, of course. Just don’t let that Weasley girl pull you back in again! Just remember, you have my Gilda eager to meet you! And I”—and Proudfoot’s voice broke at this—“would be honoured to be your father-in-law.”
Harry twisted his body violently, trying to eject himself from the chair, which only seemed to pull him tighter into the crack as he struggled. When nothing worked, he finally said, “Er, thank you, sir?”
“Alright, you’re dismissed,” Proudfoot said and finally Harry jumped up from the chair, almost if by magic—had the chair been keeping him there? Or was the gravitational orbit of Proudfoot’s cheer and well-meaning just too strong to escape naturally?
“Have a good day in training, son,” Proudfoot said genially
Harry raised a hand in thanks and exited Proudfoot’s office, shaky and stressed and sleep-deprived. So when Harry thought he saw someone in a ratty black robe with lank dishwater blond hair scurrying towards the back of Level Two like a mouse, his first thought was of course Malfoy.
Harry shook it off as an apparition brought on by the Malfoy-lookalike maître d' from last night. There was no way Malfoy would be on Level Two at six in the morning.
Any thought of asking Hermione and Ron about Malfoy was pushed out of Harry’s mind as he confronted the zoo of the Ministry canteen. It buzzed with gossip; the whispers started when Harry entered and intensified as he made his way through the lunch counter line. He swatted away the Christmas baubles, and jumped when a poltergeist in a jolly Father Christmas costume flew right through Harry, ho-ho-hoing all the while.
Luckily, Hermione and Ron had commanded a table with a wide berth, one without a miniature singing Christmas tree on it. They had glared at anyone who dared to approach, and Harry was left in relative privacy. Harry only saw a couple copies of the Prophet floating about, lazily swooping and drifting between the Ministry busy bees and the bobbing ornaments.
One flapped its way past their table, sneezing drolly and honking, “Potter’s latest love lapse—read all about it!” Hermione shot an Incendio at it and grimaced when the paper shrieked as it went up in flames. The witch from the next table over glowered at them over her feathered pince-nez and then flushed furiously when she noticed it was Harry. She clutched the Prophet she was holding closer to her chest, shoving her nose between the folds. Harry’s miserable face, glass raining down on him as Cressilda stormed away from the table, played on repeat. Grimace-protest-dejected sigh over and over and over again.
“It’s getting worse,” Harry said, as he poked at his burnt meatloaf and unidentifiable porridge. “Last night, I woke up and it was raining in the house. And not just in my bedroom—the runner on the stairs was properly soaked too. It was absolutely disgusting squelching down the steps at four in the morning. Kreacher was fuming.”
Ron wrinkled his nose in sympathy. Hermione bit her nail, even though there really wasn’t much there left to bite. She said, “Harry, are you sure it’s because Cressilda broke up with you?”
“Had to be, innit?” Ron said. “Didn’t something like this happen when…what’s her name, Brunhilde?”
Harry nodded glumly, and Ron gamely continued, “Yeah, okay, when Brunhilde chucked you?”
“Ron,” Hermione hissed.
“He’s right.” Harry put his head on his hand, and then realised he had put his elbow in the suspect meatloaf in the process. Gravy squished out from beneath the red of his Auror robes. A mildly warm and rosemary-savoury damp seemed to eat at his elbow through the fabric. Seemed about right for the day he was having. Week. Month. Ever since he came back, really. Harry left his elbow right where it was.
“Didn’t all your food in the pantry go mouldy then? Even stuff that was under Everlasting Stasis charms?” Ron said.
The stench had been particularly horrifying. “Yeah.”
“And then that second girl, the one from Magical Services and Specialties, what happened then?”
“The bed fell through the floor because the floorboards had rotted through.”
Ron guffawed. “Right, and you ended up in the downstairs loo.”
That one had been alright—the bed giving out had let Harry wake up earlier in the dream than normal. No need to worry about accidentally stepping foot into the clearing, though waking up to the sensation of falling had been particularly disconcerting.
“What Ron is trying to say is…stay the course,” Hermione said. “You know when it gets worse and better. Do you need me to set you up on a date? Maybe Matilda, the legal counsel at the Creatures’ office?”
When the very public evidence of his recent failure flapped about the room, eagerly devoured by everyone in the canteen, and rattled around Proudfoot’s brain, the thought of another date with another girl filled Harry with dread. Maybe even more dread than the clearing in his dream, of the whispering urging him on.
“No,” Ron said, mouth full of mash. “That’s not what I’m saying, actually.”
Hermione tore off another hangnail, a tiny spout of blood forming on her thumb. “What are you proposing, Ronald?”
“Well, it’s not like it ever really gets better, even if he is dating someone,” Ron pointed out. “Obviously, whatever Harry’s doing isn’t actually working.”
“Thanks, mate,” Harry said drily.
“No, I mean”—and Ron gestured wildly with his hands, knocking down the brass ear bugle that had snuck around the newspaper the witch one table down buried her face in—“maybe it’s just been like…a salve on the wound? But it’s not actually fixing the underlying problem. Even when you were dating Cressilda, you were still having the dreams, right?”
“Right,” Harry said. The dreams were somewhat better with her, the siren call of the clearing a little weaker. Still, he had woken up in a cold sweat and a colder bed far more often than not—enough that he had never spent the night with Cressilda.
“Just—what if you tried something different?” Ron asked.
“Different how?” Hermione asked.
“I dunno,” Ron shrugged. “Just, what’s the use of beating a dead horse? Er, sorry, Harry. Bad analogy.”
Harry couldn’t really think what else he could try. He felt like he’d tried almost everything. But still—he didn’t want to date around anymore. It wasn’t working—Ron was right—and it just made Harry miserable, like he was so far from where he was supposed to be, where he wanted to be, where he thought he was going to be. “I’ll think about it.”
Hermione blew a bit of curly fringe out of her face, and that’s how Harry knew he really should give it a go, if Hermione couldn’t think of something else. “I wish there was more research on this.”
“There’s no research because it’s never happened before. There’s nothing more you—we—could learn researching,” Harry said, his current mantra to Hermione.
He’d seen guilt eating Hermione alive the first year he came back, the late nights scouring every book in the Ministry archives and the Hogwarts’ library and consulting experts all over the world—discreetly, of course. Things were at least more manageable then, the call of the clearing easier to resist, and Harry had eventually called off the search when he started dating Brunhilde. Even if it was getting worse, he wasn’t going to let Hermione almost kill herself again for him. If death really was waiting for him in that clearing and Harry couldn’t resist it forever, he’d rather die than ruin Hermione’s life. He knew that much.
At least he had Christmas with the Weasleys next week. He knew nothing bad could happen, no call of the clearing too strong, when he’d be surrounded by the warmth and glow of the Burrow.
Harry crunched up the frosty path behind Ron and Hermione as they finally, finally, approached the Burrow. He’d put up with an interminable week: invitations spewing forth from Proudfoot, Ministry paper aeroplanes buzzing around him with propositions, and the other Auror trainees gossiping up a storm. Now he was here, for a lovely couple days off, out of the fucking Ministry, with the Weasleys. He was elated.
Ron pushed open the door, warm golden light spilling out onto the snow and beckoning Harry in from the cold. Then Ron took one look inside, and immediately slammed the door shut. Harry almost tripped on the back of Ron’s heel in his haste to get inside as Ron took a shocked step back.
Ron looked temporarily nonplussed and reached out for the handle again, hesitated, and then said, “I think I just saw Draco Malfoy in the kitchen. In our kitchen with Mum.”
“Ron, don’t be ridiculous. It was probably just Fleur.” Hermione shoved his hand aside and opened the door. In an abundance of caution, though, she peered around the corner.
She immediately slammed the door. “Oh. Definitely Draco Malfoy.”
“Draco Malfoy?” Harry asked. There was absolutely no way that Draco Malfoy was sitting in the Burrow’s kitchen—not after the week Harry had been having and especially not after Harry had imagined him out of thin air multiple times after not thinking about him for at least a year.
“Draco Malfoy! I can’t believe it!” Ron whined. “I thought we were done with that tosspot.”
“No way,” Harry protested as he opened the door for a third time. He quickly realised his tactical error, as the opening and closing of the door had attracted attention. Molly Weasley and, yes, Draco sodding Malfoy stared at him.
George rushed down the stairs in a swirl of red hair and irritation, and barrelled past Harry out the door, slamming it behind him.
“Thank Merlin, you lot are here. Mum’s gone mental and invited Draco Malfoy for Christmas! That wankstain’s in our kitchen right now!” George hissed.
“Draco Malfoy!” Ron whimpered.
“Yes, we’ve seen that, George. Thank you.” Hermione blinked once, eyes focused on nothing.
“George, you’re the wankstain.” Ron pulled his cheeks down. “Couldn’t you have warned us?”
A thump came from the door, which George held shut behind him, fingers clasped tight over the doorknob. A very ominous thump.
Ron continued, inconsolable, “Maybe we could’ve had Christmas at Grimmauld. Mum can handle Malfoy just fine on her own. The mould on the walls isn’t that bad, is it, Harry? Should we go now?”
George even looked like he was considering it, his face thoughtful as he held the door shut against the ever-stronger thumps, as if someone were attempting to open it from the inside. But, no—Harry wasn’t going back to Grimmauld. Not on Christmas. Not on the one bright spot of his whole dismal year. Draco Malfoy—if he really was there and Harry was beginning to doubt even himself—wasn’t going to take that from him.
“Shove aside, George,” Harry said, and reached over George’s hand towards the door handle.
George let go with a, “Your funeral, mate.”
Harry’s hand closed over the handle, the well-worn brass warm with that particular brand of Burrow house magic. It shot through Harry’s core like a sip of brandy on a cold winter’s day and then, without Harry even turn the handle, the door swung open. The smell of roast and pie and spiced candles wafted out the door, and the golden light fell around the unexpected, glorious frame of—
“Oi, Charlie, didn’t know you were home yet,” Ron said, and shouldered Harry aside, all trepidation apparently chased out his head by the scent of Molly’s Christmas supper.
Charlie reached up to ruffle Ron’s hair as he tried to swoop past him and laughed. “Could hardly miss your first Christmas in Auror training and all your whinging about how Proudfoot is torturing you, could I?”
Hermione ducked in and then George, reluctantly, and then it was just Harry standing out there, in the misting cold, like an absolute idiot, because Charlie was…Harry felt a swoop low in his stomach, a zip straight through his bones. Charlie was broad-shouldered and barefoot, his short hair mussed. There was a little gap in between his two front teeth and freckles were coming up off his shoulders, peeking out from under his collar and crawling up the column of his neck. Charlie was infinitely more attractive than Matilda and Brunhilda and Cressilda and every girl Harry had been set up with the past six months, and the smoulder of attraction Harry felt was infinitely stronger than anything he had experienced since—really, since he came back. Had Charlie always looked like this? Had Harry always felt this?
Harry thought back to Ron saying ‘maybe just try something different.’ Fuck.
Charlie’s brow creased in concern. “Alright there, Harry? Need a hand up the stairs? They’re a bit icy.”
“Er, right.” Harry stood there like a wally. Staring at Ron’s brother. At Ginny’s brother. Charlie Weasley was perhaps the fittest person Harry had ever seen. Harry hurried up the step, embarrassed as all else, and promptly slipped. He windmilled his arms, falling forward, and then Charlie was there. He reached out and Harry ended up somehow clinging to his neck, with Charlie’s arm wrapped firmly around Harry’s back, holding him up. Charlie’s bicep was pressed into Harry’s side and Harry’s nose was squashed awkwardly against Charlie’s ear, his face full of Charlie’s hair. He smelled like ginger and loam and fir. Harry resisted taking a big breath in and wrenched his head back with difficulty.
“Easy there,” Charlie said, looking up at Harry, his big brown eyes crinkling as he smiled, the gap between his teeth even more alluring than before. Harry’s eyes dipped down to Charlie’s mouth before he could help it. Charlie just raised his eyebrows and coughed a laugh into his fist, but his hand—his huge hand—didn’t leave from where it was wrapped around Harry’s waist.
The moment stretched on a bit too long, elastic. Then it snapped—Molly poked her head round the door and Harry sprang back. Harry was sure he was red as a lobster, and Charlie was flushing too, a stain spreading attractively across the bridge of his nose, broken up by the constellation of freckles.
Molly looked between Charlie and Harry once, eagle eyes sharp and considering, and then a huge smile spread across her face. She bustled forward and pulled Harry into her arms and her hug felt like the essence of the Burrow house magic, nestled right there: warmth and happiness and rightness.
Harry smiled at Charlie over her shoulder, leant against the doorframe now with his arms crossed over his chest, watching Molly fussing over Harry. Charlie winked back.
After Molly had worried Harry’s hair to her liking and pushed at the bags under his eyes and patted his cheek not once, but three times, she ushered him into the kitchen, where a distinct pall had been cast, despite the crackling hearth and playful cleaning charms flicking suds everywhere. One had landed right on the top of Hermione’s enormous bun, and Harry would have laughed and pointed it out, except the mood was as far from Charlie catching him around the waist and Molly fussing over him on the porch as possible. George had already made himself scarce, and Hermione and Ron were both clinging to the counter for dear life, as if Malfoy’s presence could blow them right back out the front door at any moment.
“Welcome home, dears,” Molly said as Harry bent down to edge his way through the low kitchen doorway. “As you’ve probably noticed, we have a guest this Christmas. You all remember Draco, I presume?”
Ron barked a laugh, almost a scoff and just a bit bitter for Christmas. “Remember Malfoy—“ he muttered, looking anywhere but the kitchen table, where Malfoy sat, his hands clenching the edge.
Harry was immediately taken aback when he really looked at Malfoy. He looked awful.
It was truly terrible to discover that Malfoy, old-Malfoy, when he was mean and prejudiced and sneering, was actually attractive in a poncy and princelike manner. Now, Harry thought he was ghastly, his eyes sunken and the skin stretched tight across his face waxy and yellow. Harry had barely even admitted he found boys attractive—though Charlie Weasley was enough of a wake-up call for anyone, really, anyone with eyes—but now Harry was having the sinking realisation that he maybe even found Malfoy attractive. In school.
It was absolutely horrid, first, to think Harry had maybe been having these feelings for years and had pushed them down. Worse, to realise maybe he had found Malfoy attractive then, instead of say, Justin Finch-Fletchley or Michael Corner or someone nice. Instead, he realised it when confronted with the wraith of post-trials Malfoy, whom Harry had banished to the far corner of his mind, never to be thought of again. The last fucking thing Harry wanted to be mourning this Christmas was the loss of Draco Malfoy’s looks, instead of Fred or Sirius or Tonks.
“Hello, Granger, Weasley, Potter,” Malfoy said tightly. “I would say it’s nice to see you, but it’s clearly not.”
“Kids! Welcome home,” Arthur swept into the room, giving hugs all around, clearly oblivious to the tension coating the room like ash. He turned to Malfoy, whose eyes immediately snapped to Arthur. “Draco, are you ready to see my plugs collection?”
Malfoy swallowed, briefly met Harry’s eyes, and looked quickly away. He pasted on his most smarmy smile. On his ashen face, this had the unfortunate effect of making him look like the ghoul in the Burrow attic. He said, far too solicitously, “Of course, Arthur. Please lead the way,” and then he couldn’t have skulked out of the kitchen faster if it were on fire.
“Close your mouth, Ronald, or you’ll catch a doxy in there,” Molly snapped. “Draco is here as our guest. He’s been working under Arthur since he was released from house arrest, and he had nowhere else to go for Christmas. Now, please, help me with the potatoes.”
“Hermione,” Harry whispered out of the side of his mouth. “When exactly did Malfoy get released?”
“I’m—I’m not quite sure, but I think he was sentenced to a year of house arrest, including time served, so that would have been…June?”
Even more incredulous, Harry whispered, perhaps a bit too loud given Molly’s thrown-back glare, “Malfoy—Draco Malfoy!—has been working with Arthur since June? In the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts office?”
Harry thought back to that hazy month of trials, paparazzi flashes wherever he went, clutching a paper tight in his sweaty fists, wondering, sure, unsure if he was doing the right thing, the wrong thing, bile rising in his throat as he took the stand, and then—nothing. Absolutely not one thought of Draco Malfoy after that. The dreams had just started then and Harry had no time for anything besides wondering if it meant he should be dead.
“Harry, I’m really not sure!” Hermione whispered back, distressed. “I assume it was in the terms of his parole? Otherwise, I can’t possibly believe he would choose to work there, nor that Arthur would hire him.”
Charlie strode into the room and Harry caught his breath. Now, there was an attractive, nice boy, nothing like Draco Malfoy. Charlie Weasley, with his bulging biceps, warm brown eyes, and scruffy red hair, was a far better man to fixate on, and Harry decided to right then and there. He plucked an apple out of the fruit bowl and tossed it between his hands. “So what’s with the baby Death Eater around for Christmas, Mum?”
“Not just any Death Eater—Draco Malfoy!” Ron protested from his position chopping at the counter, waving his knife wildly in Charlie’s direction.
Charlie took a big bite out of the apple. “Can’t say I ever knew him at Hogwarts, but, if that’s him out in the yard, he looks like he needs some of Mum’s roast.”
Molly humphed in approval, her knife swipes through the onions becoming a bit less violent. Her shoulders came down just a fraction from where they were residing around her ears. Her voice was bit strangled as she said, “Exactly!”
That was that. Draco Malfoy was staying for Christmas.
With Malfoy and Arthur off in the shed, Harry could almost pretend this was a normal Weasley Christmas. Molly was bustling around the kitchen, directing Ron and Percy to peel potatoes or knead the dough. Hermione was seated by the fire, reading a dense tome, probably some law text in preparation for her latest project at the Department for Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. George and Charlie were off in the corner, huddled over something that looked suspiciously like a WWW prank.
This was the life Harry had dreamt of in the Forest of Dean, while on the run. Despite everything that came after that, in the moment, he was incredibly satisfied as he kicked his feet up on the ottoman. Even with a weird Malfoy spectre haunting his consciousness and Arthur’s shed, this Christmas was already so much better than last year’s, six months after the war. Molly wasn’t forcing cheer and George appeared to be up to new pranks. Gin and him weren’t straining a relationship that wasn’t working, even if Harry missed her off in Australia for her Christmas training camp.
Charlie plopped himself in the chair next to Harry by the fire. “So, Harry, how is Auror training coming along? Off kicking dark wizard arse yet?”
“I guess it’s not exactly been what I expected,” Harry said, rubbing his hand across the back of his neck.
Ron shouted from the kitchen, “It’s been dead boring so far. You wouldn’t believe how many rules and regulations the DMLE has!”
Charlie chuckled. “I’m not surprised. When we graduated, Dora tried to get me to join up with her, but the only rules on the dragon reserve are the ones that keep you alive, and the dragons themselves are a bit more lovable than small-time potions dealers. Mind you, this was before we knew a war was coming. If I’d known, I might’ve chosen differently.” His mouth twisted down at the end and he rolled the crystal glass of Firewhisky in his hand.
Harry knew the feeling that everyone carried with them since the war—if only they had been more prepared. In a fit of boldness, Harry reached over and put his hand on Charlie’s scarred forearm. It seemed like the right thing to do. If Ron had done it, it would’ve comforted Harry, but then Harry couldn’t figure out when to pull his hand away and it became weird, intimate. Charlie glanced down briefly.
Clearing his throat, Harry swiftly moved his offending hand to scrub through his hair. Charlie quirked a grin at him and Harry was saved by George zooming down the stairs, cackling, followed by a cascade of floating pink and purple watermelon-sized bubbles.
“George Weasley, what have you gotten up to up there?” Molly yelled.
“Nothing, Mum! Just maybe you shouldn’t use the bathroom on the third floor for about thirty minutes. Won’t be a thing!”
Harry chuckled, and caught Charlie still grinning at him. He called out, “Hey George, come over here and tell us what’s new in the shop!”
Harry had almost forgotten about Malfoy’s presence when Molly called them all over to the dinner table.
“Charlie, would you mind getting Arthur and Draco from the shed? We wouldn’t want the mince pies to get cold, and you know how Arthur can be around his toys.”
Around a mouth stuffed full of said mince pies, Ron muttered, “If Malfoy only gets a cold mince pie, that’s not even half a punishment enough for that tosser,” and winced as Hermione elbowed him in the ribs and Molly whirled around to glare.
“Hear, hear!” George cheered out, looking back from stirring the onions.
“Now, all, remember that Draco is here as our guest and it’s Christmas, so please”—Molly stopped and pasted on a smile—“Charlie, thank you for grabbing them.”
Charlie was ducking back into the door, clinging droplets of water wetting his shirt to his broad shoulders, followed closely by Arthur, and then appeared the dread apparition Malfoy, who really was here, at the Burrow, for Christmas dinner. With the arrival of Arthur and Malfoy, all conversation stopped. It was almost as if everyone had lost their object permanence: as soon as Malfoy was out of the Burrow, they all pretended he no longer existed. Now, they all had to acknowledge it.
“Plates are here, Arthur, Draco!” Molly shot a Warming Charm at the plates and handed them over. Ron blanched behind her back and George scrunched his nose as Molly said, “Dish up, please!”
Malfoy spooned some potatoes on his plate, red crawling up the back of his neck. It looked far too little and Molly tutted when he moved on to the roast. “Draco, dear, take more!”
“Draco, dear,” Ron muttered under his breath. Malfoy’s hand stilled over the roast and Molly shot Ron a glare.
Arthur, with a jovial smile, slopped more potatoes on Malfoy’s dish and said above the silence, “Now, have I told everyone about Draco and my latest case at the Misuse office?”
Hermione put in, “No, but we’d love to hear!” She glared at Ron as he dug an elbow into her side. Malfoy dished up half a slice of roast, the knife sawing loudly into the porcelain. Harry winced.
“Well!” Arthur smiled, and put the other half of the roast slice on Malfoy’s dish anyways. “It’s quite funny, really, but awful for the poor Muggles, so I shouldn’t laugh. Someone’s been bewitching toilets to function as Portkeys!”
“Eurgh,” Ron said. “What do you call it, then? A poonami?”
“That’s awful,” Hermione said. “I can’t imagine sitting down on the toilet with a good book and then—”
“A good book,” George guffawed. “What, you mean like Marvelous Mazel’s Magical Loo?”
Harry looked at Malfoy, solemnly chewing and not at all engaging in any sort of toilet humour. Over half his roast was already gone, put away so quickly Harry hadn’t even seen it between Arthur dishing it up and it disappearing down Malfoy’s gullet. Harry looked down at his full plate, roast potatoes and parsnips dripping in fat jostling the cantankerous Brussel sprouts, slices of glistening roast chicken piled high. The potato Harry was chewing slowly turned to ash on his tongue as he saw Malfoy glance around and quickly bring another forkful to his mouth.
A candle sputtered out. A gust of cold wind rattled through the room—the window in the kitchen banged open. Everyone stopped eating. Hermione and Ron looked at Harry. Molly and Arthur exchanged a glance; Arthur grimaced and Molly rose to quickly shut the window.
A wave of panic rose inside Harry—not here, not now, not Christmas. It was Malfoy; it had to be that Malfoy was here, the wordless stain of it spreading across the room.
Arthur let out a strained laugh, and then said, “Don’t mind me.”
Another candle guttered out. Hermione reached under the table to grip Harry’s hand.
Finally, a bit weakly, Arthur asked, “Molly, could you?”
“Oh!” Molly said, and then hurried out her wand to relight the candles, the cinnamon swirl of her charm chasing away the chill.
George asked, resuming chewing slowly, “Dad, why didn’t you light the candle yourself?”
“Oh,” Arthur said. Molly’s mouth creased, and she put her hand on Arthur’s shoulder. “Just a minor magic anomaly—my magic is a bit out of my control right now. That’s why”—and he waved around, the newly-lit candles dancing wildly—“the candles and everything. The Healers assure me it’ll be all fixed up in a couple weeks.”
Hermione’s hand slackened in Harry’s, no longer clenching so tight that Harry could feel the stubs of her nails biting into his palm. But Harry knew—no matter what was going on with Arthur’s magic, the candles were Harry’s fault. The window opening. All of it was Harry’s fault. It just happened to be lucky that Arthur had wild magic at the same time, so everyone here didn’t find out about how Harry came back wrong. Hermione and Ron were the only ones who knew, and Harry wanted to keep it that way. Especially Malfoy—he had no right to know anything about Harry. Especially not this.
“Out of control, why?” Ron asked.
“Just a minor…altercation with a suspect—an ex-plumber who said he was tired of all the crap.” Arthur laughed weakly.
“Does Malfoy still have his magic?” George asked suddenly.
Malfoy swallowed—his plate almost done, Harry noticed, as if he expected to get thrown out on his arse at any moment and wanted to eat everything he could before. Another candle went out, and Malfoy pulled out his wand, not even looking at George, and defiantly re-lit it. A minty swirl of magic ruffled Harry’s hair, but did nothing to quell his rising panic at the rapidly-descending mood at the kitchen table.
George shot a glare at Malfoy and then turned to Arthur. “If you’re working with Malfoy, why does he still have his magic and you don’t?”
“We-ell,” Arthur prevaricated. “The ex-plumber—he really was an ex-plumber, that wasn’t a joke—he may have had, let’s say…Death Eater sympathies.”
A clamour broke out over the table. Charlie said, “I thought the Misuse office was supposed to be safe—why didn’t you have an Auror accompaniment?” and Percy said, “I’ll be taking this up with the Minister,” and Hermione said, “Who was it, Arthur?”
George added a poisonous, “Have you lot forgotten about Fred?”
Arthur put his arm on Malfoy’s arm, who had turned white, looking at George with curious intensity. He said lowly, “Draco did not kill Fred. You know that, George.”
“Yeah, only because he was trying to kill us in the Room of Requirement instead!” Ron protested. Malfoy swallowed, looking at Ron now. Harry’s head fuzzed.
“I wouldn’t have invited Draco here if I didn’t believe his apology, and I expect you all to behave respectfully towards our guest.” Arthur looked seriously at each of them in turn.
Molly added, “Draco here has been nothing but respectful towards your father and me since he began in the office—”
“Because he’s a spineless little suck-up,” George muttered mutinously.
“George, you may know Draco from school, but don’t think for one second that your father and I don’t remember full-well how Lucius Malfoy was able to escape consequences after the first war—sorry, Draco dear—and shame on you for thinking we would fall for it if Draco were attempting to do the same. He has made his apologies to Arthur and me, and we have accepted them, so that’s the last I will hear about the subject tonight!” Molly trembled as she finished, her lip wobbling and her eyes bright.
“But Mum, you don’t understand what Malfoy was like. Just a year and a half ago, he was a Death Eater! Just imagine if the war went the other way and the Malfoys were making this decision about us!” George interjected. Malfoy had turned his eyes on the plate in front of him, lips pressed into a thin bloodless line.
Charlie calmly replied from over by the fireplace, “Well, I never knew Draco in Hogwarts, but it’s Christmas and Draco clearly has nowhere else to go—sorry again, Draco—and Mum has always been generous with our home and family. I think we should be better than Lucius Malfoy would have been if, Merlin forbid, they had won the war. If Mum and Dad forgive him and want him here, he should stay.”
George turned to Harry. “Wait—what about Harry! What do you think?”
Harry had been watching this almost as if from a distance. This was Christmas, the only bright spot on Harry’s bleak horizon. The roast chicken, originally glistening and warm in the centre of the table, was slowly decomposing, meat wrinkling and falling off the bone as everyone argued and, even though Arthur kept casting worried glances at it, probably thinking it was his fault, Harry knew it was his own. Malfoy being here was ruining everything. Harry was ruining everything.
Molly trained her warm gaze on Harry. “Yes, Harry dear, we know you have the most history with Draco. Obviously, I’ve said what I want, but, of all of us, you’ve had to endure…” and she trailed off, eyes glistening. And that, of everything, made Harry curl up inside—this was the one place he shouldn’t have to think about how he died. But Molly surely was and now everyone on the table, maybe even Malfoy, that tosser, now staring daggers into the table in front of him, was feeling sorry for him.
Harry thought about how fucking unfair it was that Malfoy—Malfoy, who stomped on his nose while he was petrified; Malfoy, who called Hermione a Mudblood and the Weasleys poor blood-traitors; Malfoy, who averted his gaze from Lucius and said, “I can’t be sure”—could get to have the warmth of Molly and Arthur.
Traitorously, Harry’s brain also interjected how awful Malfoy looked, how he didn’t have anyone else in the world right now. How awful Harry must have looked to Molly and Arthur and the rest of the Weasleys when they met him on Platform Nine and Three Quarters, or rescued him from his barred bedroom at the Dursleys. How fucking awful it would have been if Harry had been welcomed into their warmth, only to be thrown out again, back to starving, back to no one.
Almost against his own wishes, Harry distantly heard himself say, “He should stay.” Hermione squeezed his hand under the table—Harry wasn’t sure if it was in support or consternation—and Ron flashed a hollow smile. Harry knew he’d made the right choice by the red colour staining down Malfoy’s neck and Molly’s warm brown eyes, twinkling at him.
“Thank you for resolving that, Harry dear. Now, back to the roast!” Arthur declared.
Conversation resumed awkwardly and slowly. Arthur tried to jovially gave them a rundown of their case, with Molly clucking at appropriate intervals and Ron weakly trying to inject humour into the room with bathroom puns, but Harry barely noticed. He kept sneaking glances at Charlie and, horrifyingly, Malfoy. Harry fumbled his fork when Charlie shot him a grin, roguish and bright. Malfoy just gripped his fork tighter.
Harry sat on the front porch of the Burrow, under a failing Warming Charm, the cold creeping in around the edges and tickling Harry’s ribs, the tips of his fingers. Almost everyone had gone to bed, and Harry was grateful that they were all staying here, even though they could just Floo home. Harry certainly didn’t want to face his bedroom tonight, not after a relatively good day—it almost felt like the warmth of the Burrow drove off the skulking shadow of death. And there was something about waking up at the Burrow on Boxing Day that felt like the only good parts of his childhood. Malfoy had been missing for several hours and Harry was quite certain that he had slunk off ignominiously to his cold, dank Manor.
The door clicked open, and warm light illuminated Charlie before he shut it. He flopped down next to Harry with a groan. “I always dream about Mum’s cooking when I’m noshing on beans warmed over a fire outdoors on the reserve, but I forget how awful I feel when I’m as stuffed as I am now.” He grinned toothily at Harry and stretched out on his back. A toned, freckled sliver of his belly was revealed when Charlie put his arms behind his head.
Harry flushed and guiltily pulled his eyes up to Charlie’s face, where he was watching him curiously. Charlie huffed a laugh and propped himself up on his elbows. “Harry, are you—?”
Harry quickly turned his face back towards the yard, sure that Charlie could now see his blush in the moonlight. “Am I what?”
Charlie reached out and put a hand on the small of Harry’s back, slowly circling. Harry thought his body temperature had never been so high. Charlie must be able to feel him burning through his jumper.
“I would never tell anyone if you were, Harry. You know that.”
Harry couldn’t help it. He leaned back just a bit into Charlie’s touch. Was he really so transparent? He could feel his awkwardness bubbling up inside him. Here was an attractive man—one of the most attractive Harry had seen!—who tamed dragons and was touching Harry’s back and had maybe been sending him looks all night and Harry didn’t know what to do with his stupid hands or stupid body.
Charlie slipped his hand around Harry’s waist. “Harry, this alright?”
Screwing up his eyes and reaching for his stupid Gryffindor courage, Harry turned back towards Charlie, still lying there looking ridiculously fit, and swung a leg over Charlie’s hips, straddling him. Charlie slowly started to smile and brought both of his hands to rest on Harry’s hips, big and steady and hot, his thumbs on Harry’s hip creases and fingers curving towards Harry’s arse cheeks.
“So what if I am?” Harry challenged, a little breathlessly. “Interested, I mean.”
“Well, what do you want, Harry?” Charlie shifted Harry a little in his lap and Harry’s breath caught.
“I guess—just to know for sure?” But looking down, Harry already did know for sure. His legs bracketed Charlie’s strong thighs, the swell of something nestled against his arse, Charlie’s broad shoulders, his shirt straining across his pecs, his hands on Harry’s hips.
“Well, if you’re looking to just try it on, ‘course. As long as you know I’m heading back to Romania come New Year’s Eve. And … does Ginny know? I’m not putting it on her ex while she’s off in Australia, that’s just not on.”
“She…suspected, yeah,” Harry replied, cheeks burning. “Not that I ever acted on it.”
“Never acted on it?” Charlie raised an eyebrow and tightened his hands on Harry’s hips. “Well, come on then. Give us a kiss.”
Charlie grinned. Harry smiled tentatively back and then leant forward to brace his forearms on either side of Charlie’s head. He could feel Charlie’s warm breath against his lips, could count Charlie’s amber eyelashes, saw the crinkles at the edges of Charlie’s eyes from smiling. Harry ducked his head a fraction more. Charlie’s breath caught, and then Harry’s did, and he was so close—
Suddenly, a sliver of warm light fell over Charlie’s face and Harry heard, in a posh, clipped tone, “Potter, I just needed—”
Harry panicked, immediately rolled off Charlie, and banged his head against the porch railing in the process.
Eyes watering, Harry choked out, “Malfoy?”
Even backlit, Harry could tell Malfoy’s cheeks were pink. His eyes darted between Harry and Charlie, who was still lounging on the porch, grinning, the wanker. Harry was horrified that of all the people to witness his first almost-kiss with a bloke, it had to be Draco Malfoy, who sold fake stories about Harry’s love life when he was fourteen. And now Harry was trapped in the most awkward stand-off of his life, both of them flushed bright red and Harry’s head hurting as all hell.
Malfoy cleared his throat and Harry steeled himself for whatever horrible thing that was about to come out of his mouth. Instead, Malfoy said, “I do terribly apologise for interrupting. I’ll just be on my way then. Good night, Charles. Potter.” He gave a stiff nod and turned on his heel, back through the open door.
Harry gaped until he heard the whoosh of the Floo and then his headache and what had just happened both hit him with full force. “Bloody buggering fuck!”
“Now, let’s get you inside, Harry. That wasn’t too bad, was it? Just imagine if it had been Mum.”
“I’d take Molly over Malfoy any time,” Harry muttered. “What if he tells everyone?”
Charlie levelled a stare at Harry. “Well, given that Draco is spending Christmas with a family who mostly hates him, it doesn’t really seem like he has anyone to tell.”
There it was again: that uncomforting and uncomfortable feeling of pity.
“And anyways,” Charlie continued with a wink, “I’m quite the catch. Anyone would be proud to be seen with me. Now, let’s get that head seen to. Mum always said that a cold compress and some tea were better than any magic at dealing with a bump on the head.”
Harry told himself Charlie was right—who gave a toss what Malfoy saw or not?—and pushed his anxiety deep down. He could worry after Christmas.
And Malfoy didn’t get to know that, at the end of the night, after they finished their tea and Harry’s headache subsided, Charlie crowded Harry against the kitchen wall and kissed him. After several breathless minutes, Charlie’s knee nudging Harry’s legs open and Harry’s arms threading around Charlie’s neck, Charlie pulled back and asked, “Yeah?”
Harry grinned back, dazed and a bit goofy. “Yeah.”