Chapter Text
One month later
Draco didn’t seem to want to touch the watch at first, just stared at it when Harry awkwardly handed it over in its box. He still thought it was a weird present, even though it was something Draco had specifically asked for: the watch that had nearly been the death of him, catch fixed and smashed dial mended. The old dent, though, that had been there when Molly had given it to Harry for his seventeenth, was still there. Draco had insisted it wasn’t polished out.
Draco eventually took the watch out of the box and held it in his fingers, looking down at it. He ran his fingertips over it, over the dent. Then he smiled and put it back in the box. “Thank you,” he said, turning towards Harry.
“Er, you’re welcome?” Harry said. “You don’t want to wear it tonight?”
Draco snorted. “This piece of Weasley junk? No, thank you,” he said, and then his lips quirked. “I’m not nuts.” He got up and slid the box into the bottom drawer of his bedside table. “I don’t really want a constant reminder of how I broke myself in a million places. I just . . .” He looked a little awkward, fingers knotting into the edge of his short robe. “It was an important thing to you. And so it’s an important thing to me too, I suppose. You shouldn’t throw something meaningful away just because thinking about it makes you feel uncomfortable.”
This rang an odd chord in Harry. “I . . . meant to ask,” he said, fiddling with the ring on his finger. “The protection spells on this ring . . .”
“Were definitely, one hundred per cent all designed for Astoria,” Draco said gravely, and then yelped as Harry rose up to wreak a terrible, jealous revenge, pinning him to the bed. “May I distract you from your righteous anger with a shag?” Draco offered, lips quirking.
“We don’t have time, you git,” Harry said, rolling off him and simultaneously rolling his eyes.
“If we can’t be late for our own party, when can we be late?” Draco said, rolling with him and pinning him to the bed in turn. “Evanesco!” he said, and his and Harry’s clothes disappeared.
“You’ve been practising,” Harry said sternly. At least, as sternly as he could whilst naked under Draco, which wasn’t all that stern in the grand scheme of things. “And thanks for Vanishing my best robes. We’re definitely going to be late now.”
“Whoops,” Draco said, not sounding very sorry. Then: “Oh, hang on,” he said, and swished his wand, turning the white-furred teddy bear on the bedside table to face the wall. “I don’t think Sir Thuban Etamin needs to see this.”
Harry started laughing – Draco was such a weirdo – but the laugh broke off in his throat. Draco was already reaching for the lube and slicking up his fingers, before pressing one gently but insistently into Harry’s arse. They’d had sex several times that day so far, and Harry was still loose and relaxed from their last round.
“Your mother’ll be mad at you if you’re not there to welcome the guests,” Harry said, still trying for stern, despite Draco’s wicked fingers.
“If you can think about my mother right now, I’m clearly not trying hard enough,” Draco said, and withdrew his fingers. He tugged at Harry until Harry was on his hands and knees, and then slicked up his cock, sheathing himself in Harry with one long, firm press that had Harry groaning.
“And I was meant to—” Harry started. But what he was meant to do at the party no longer seemed important when Draco reached round to jerk him off, pounding into him simultaneously. Draco knew exactly how and where to rub him to get him off in an embarrassingly record speed, and now he was grinding against the sensitive nerves inside him too.
Harry came in just a few minutes, and Draco continued to fuck all the breath out of him, dropping his cock to grip so hard at his hips as he fucked that it stung. It was unbelievably hot. Draco didn’t last much longer, emptying himself into Harry and then collapsing on top of him, a delicious but heavy weight.
“You really need to eat fewer sweets,” Harry said from beneath him.
“Fuck you,” Draco said cheerfully, and dropped a kiss on Harry’s neck, before heaving himself off and reaching for his wand, to swish a quick cleaning charm over them both.
They tugged on their clothes, Harry reaching for jeans and a T-shirt rather than the formal robes he’d planned – and didn’t like – and then rushed downstairs. Harry thought that despite Draco’s big words, he was a bit nervous of his mother’s wrath, after all. As they passed the dining room, Draco paused and looked in. “Are you ever going to open any of that mail?” he asked. “I only want to be prepared for the point when we have to move house because we’ve lost the fight.”
Harry peered round Draco’s shoulder. He supposed it had got a bit out of hand. He reached for his wand, and Draco grabbed his wrist. “Don’t be an idiot,” he said. “There might be something important in there. Like . . .”
Harry shrugged. “Evanesco,” he said, and just like that, a couple of years’ worth of mail vanished, as if it had never existed, leaving only dust behind and a few alarmed spiders, which scuttled to the safety of the walls. “What?” he said, at Draco’s look of shock. “If anyone sent me something important, they can always send it again.”
“Didn’t you at least want to see what Pansy had written to you?” Draco asked awkwardly. “You know – back then. Before. She did get away with what she did.”
Harry considered this. “We should probably have invited her tonight,” he said, and Draco snorted.
“What? Pansy?”
Harry nudged him. “You think we would have ever got together without her?” The thought was strange, unpleasant. That he could have continued on with his life without Draco in it. That he and Draco could have bumped into each other on the street, possibly acknowledging each other with a chilly nod, and then just walked on by.
It was a different world, a different universe. A lesser one, Harry thought. Duller. Flatter.
Draco shuddered. “She’s still a massive bitch, but OK, I take your point,” he said. And turned to press Harry against the wall, kissing him over and over, as if he’d seen a picture of a future he couldn’t bear and Harry’s body against his own was the only way to scrub it away again.
^^^^^^
They were very, very late for the party, as expected. And, as expected, Draco’s mother was very, very cross. She took out her irritation on them both by hugging Harry for far too long and whispering pointed insults in his ear. He bore it like a man. After all, she’d taken the fact that Lucius wasn’t invited with surprising equanimity – as had Draco, to be fair.
“I don’t like your father,” Harry had said. “Sorry.”
Draco had shrugged. “It’s fair to say he doesn’t like you either.” And that had been that, pretty much. It wasn’t entirely comfortable, but it wasn’t entirely uncomfortable either. At least they knew where they stood, he and Lucius: as far apart as possible, while both loving Draco very much indeed.
They couldn’t have had the party in the Burrow if they’d wanted to invite Lucius, anyway, and Harry had wanted to have the party there. The real party, to celebrate his and Draco’s marriage, rather than the fake one at the Ministry that had been cold and awkward and horrible. Molly had offered, and Harry had turned to look at Draco, and Draco had rolled his eyes and agreed. The Weasleys weren’t Harry’s blood, but he loved them like family. They were family, he thought. Even though he hadn’t married Ginny, after all.
Harry looked around the room in pleasure, to see all the people he loved gathered together in one place. All mixing, all drinking, all talking. The music was too loud, and the room was too full, and he was almost too happy to bear it.
“Did I mention that if I find out you’re on call tonight, I’ll disembowel you?” Draco said lovingly in his ear, passing him a drink.
“I’m . . . sort of always on call now?” Harry said.
“Dis. Em. BOWEL,” Draco said.
“I’m not on call!” Harry said quickly, hoping very much that no one from the office would call on him. He’d only been back at work for five minutes when Kingsley had pulled him into his office and said that he was now Head Auror, like it or lump it, and if he wanted to lump it then he’d need to hand in his resignation personally to the new Head of Magical Law Enforcement, Robards, and Robards was not in a good mood today.
Harry had decided to like it, after all. Lumping it had hardly seemed worth the risk.
“Want to dance?” he said now to Draco, who looked at him as if he’d grown a second head.
“With you? Stamping on my feet like an enraged Hippogriff?”
“Hey! I might not stamp on your feet,” Harry said. “I might just stamp on one,” he amended, at Draco’s raised eyebrow, and gave him a winning smile.
“Oh God. Fine,” Draco said, but he didn’t seem too unhappy about the idea.
As soon as they took to the dancefloor, the music changed from something upbeat to something slow and romantic. “I’m going to kill Molly,” Draco said sweetly, but he tugged Harry in closer, their heads tucking neatly together.
They swayed together as the music swelled and soared. When Harry pulled back to look at Draco, he had a very thoughtful look in his eye. Harry asked, knowing it was stupid but doing it anyway, “What are you thinking about?”
Draco started. “Oh!” he said fondly, and then his lips quirked. “I was just thinking that if we used the magic cocks, technically I could fuck you, suck you and wank you off at the same.”
“Gryffindor’s balls,” Harry spluttered, trying to picture it and coming up short.
“Don’t worry, I’m not that selfless,” Draco murmured sweetly. “The beauty of this scenario is that you could suck me off at the same time too.”
“Draco!” Harry protested.
Draco shot him a look shining with innocence. “What?”
Harry tried again for stern. He seemed to have been trying and failing all day. “Stop it.”
“You don’t want to?” Draco asked, mock-hurt. “This is not the enthusiasm I expect from my beloved husband.” Love shone out of his annoying, ridiculous pointy face. God, Harry loved him, so so much.
“It’s more that I’d rather you didn’t give me a hard-on in front of all our friends, bane of my life,” Harry said.
Draco snickered. “Light of your life, Harry. Light. Don’t you ever forget it.”
Harry smiled at him, enjoying the way that Draco’s expression slipped into something warmer and somehow more vulnerable as he smiled back. “I promise I never will.”
Was it enough to build a life on, Harry wondered again. Love. Was it enough?
And concluded: yes.
Yes.
Yes.