Chapter Text
"You go first, 'Mione," Harry said. They were opening their NEWTs results.
It was sure to be good news with her, unless Merlin forbid she had gotten an E on one of her subjects, then it depended on what her idea of good news was. He said just as much, and Ron grinned. Hermione huffed and pushed at Harry's shoulder with a hint of mirth.
After the war, Harry had been offered a job as an Auror, but he'd stayed behind to spend his final year with his friends. He had wanted to be a teenager, or something like it, just for a while longer. But by graduation, all the doubts had creeped in, in particular as he went through his Mind-Healing sessions throughout Eighth Year.
Hermione appeared to notice his suddenly dour mood, when it was his turn to see his scores. "What's wrong, Harry?"
All Harry felt was a strange pang of misery, seeing them, all the subjects he'd taken just for his Auror training. "I don't know, I've just—" He kept thinking of Voldemort, of the pounding of his own heart so fast that it felt like it would kill him, of the unsaved lives that weighed on him. "I don't know if being an Auror is what I want."
In the papers, that was what everybody seemed to expect of him — that he would go on and continue to be the saviour of the world in some form. Saying that now, he kept having the strange sense that he disappointed somebody ever since the words left him.
"Well," Ron said, after a long moment. "Then don't become an Auror."
Harry looked up at him, and thought of the two of them in First Year, talking to each other from their beds in the boys dormitory about their future, about how brilliant it would be to become a duo saving the world together, fighting crime.
Yeah, like — muggle superheroes, you know, Harry had said, smiling. He'd been happy and high on the feeling of having his very own friend. He'd been thinking of those shows on the Dursleys' television, those rare occasions he was alone and he got to watch them. Ron had, of course, not understood what that meant until Harry explained it to him. We could be Aurors, Ron had then said, grinning, pleased by the idea. Closest thing to it. Yeah, we could be partners, fighting evil together!
Harry swallowed. They'd been planning for this since First Year. There wasn't anything better he could have imagined for his future, once. Then he hadn't thought he'd have a future, and now he did. Now he had all this life, all this freedom to do with it what he willed, all this time that stretched endless ahead of him, with no aim or plan. It was terrifying.
"We've been wanting this for so long. Seems wrong to let it go now."
"Doesn't mean you have to put in any more effort into things you don't want to do, Harry," Ron said. "You know what Dad always says. Life's already too hard without you doing things that make you unhappy, and mate, I think you've done enough of that to last you a lifetime."
Nothing much was said after that. They drank from the same bottle of wine, passing it around between the three of them. Ron's arm was across the cushions of their new couch, long enough to run around Hermione, his fingers brushing over Harry's shoulder.
He'd been touchy ever since the war, with Hermione obviously, kissed her all the time and always seemed to have a hand on her waist or the small of her back, but also with Harry; a casual, tight hand to the nape of his neck, an arm around his shoulder blades, bicep against his when they brushed their teeth at the sink together, as if constantly trying to remind himself that they were all still here.
Harry didn't mind it much, liked it in fact, if it was him or Hermione or any of the Weasleys, even if it was hard to seem outwardly comfortable about it. He thought they understood anyway, the way he'd lean into it after a moment and try not to be too obvious about it, because they never stopped.
"Who's going to save your arse on that field when you'll have to face spiders though?" Harry said, a while after, a bit drunker.
Hermione laughed, the bridge of her nose wrinkling up with it, and Ron threw his NEWTs results at him and called him a tit, but it didn't reach Harry's face, instead floating down unimpressively to the floor. Hermione would have been annoyed by it, usually, but even she seemed to have enough alcohol in her system to be relaxed about mistreatment of results parchments. They all watched it go down, snorting into another small fit, warm and woozy from the wine.
They fell asleep on the bed, Harry between the two of them, Hermione's arm curled around his bicep and her head against his shoulder.
Ron began his Auror trials, eventually. Hermione went into her Unspeakable training around the same time.
Harry didn't know what he wanted, but he knew becoming an Auror wasn't it. Eventually he decided to open a book shop in the wizarding districts of London called Lilium Bookstore, named after his mother. He donated a good portion of his money to causes that would help better a post-war world, and spent much of his free time renovating 12 Grimmauld palace.
He took up art again, an old hobby revived. In Eighth Year, Hogwarts built a system of including muggle extracurricular activities. There'd been a lot of options, but Harry had remembered himself at five through ten, sitting in a small cupboard surrounded by crumpled paper and broken, used up colour pencils, wishing for paints and art sets like the ones Dudley had and never bothered to use, and he'd chosen painting without a second thought. He never stopped loving it after, found a corner of peace within it in the midst of his chaos and grief.
* * *
In Eighth Year, Harry had tried his best to steer clear of Draco Malfoy.
They would pass by each other on the grounds, in the corridors, in the Eighth Year commons on their way to their own dorms. Sometimes, he'd think he noticed Malfoy's steps falter right as they crossed each other, but then would chalk it down to imagination.
Still, there had been few moments that they mildly interacted, wordless and uneasy, such as that time Malfoy had picked up his shrivel figs for him — having rolled over to a black oxford after they'd slipped from Harry's hands. Malfoy had been seated in the adjacent row right beside him, handed them to him without looking at him.
There was that time Malfoy had hovered stiffly beside him some feet away, stood in front of a bookshelf. He'd been standing on the toes of his shoes, head tilted upward, eyes pointedly roving over the spines of the books as his fingers slid over them, the touch unbreaking. His lips had been moving, shaping around the title names as he read. Harry had moved aside to allow him to keep looking, leaning back slightly on the shelf behind him.
That time Malfoy, sitting behind him, had softly mumbled the answer to the question Harry was asked in Transfigurations, more to himself than to Harry, surely. Harry had felt slightly guilty for repeating it back to Professor McGonagall, when she'd nodded, sharp, and smiled at him in approval.
That time Harry had found him curled alone against the side of the couch in the dead of night, his eyes red-rimmed and his expression hollow. He'd straightened slightly upon seeing him, a flush blooming up his neck to his jaw. Harry hadn't known what to do, faint visions of a bathroom stall full of water and blood slipping unbiddenly into his mind's eye, and so he'd turned around and walked away.
It would be the day after that Harry would know why he'd looked like that. Lucius Malfoy had been given the Dementor's Kiss. Malfoy hadn't been there in the Great Hall, or in their classes together for the rest of the day. He hadn't been anywhere for weeks after, showed up only for his NEWTS two weeks with grief sinking his eyes in. He hadn't bothered showing up for the graduation ceremony either.
Harry remembered not seeing him there, an empty chair at the Slytherin table, thinking that their final day of NEWTs would have been the last he'd ever see of him.
Almost a year later, Harry was sitting at his kitchen table, an invitation to Malfoy Manor loose between his hands. His heart had seized, inexplicably, at the name signed at the bottom. Cordially, Draco L. Malfoy, it said, and he blinked and blinked, wondering if it would change if he did so enough times.
The rest of the day, he drifted through reasons for why it could be, then discussed them with Ron and Hermione at dinner that night—that fancy silk-green envelope still held between two fingers—until he realised that they'd only been humming for the last couple of minutes, throwing in little interjections for responses, no longer saying much back.
Harry spent too long looking for something decent and casual to wear, trying his best to get his hair somewhat in control so that Malfoy wouldn't have anything to point out and mock, but his curls were still too wild and thick, and he was already minutes too late, which would certainly be something for Malfoy to point out and mock.
But Malfoy didn't say anything about his tardiness, when Harry did arrive in his drawing room. He sat with a wine glass in hand, facing the fire until he noticed Harry come in.
He seemed awfully surprised for a brief second, straightening upright with a hand on the arm of his sofa. It changed into a blandly polite squinch at the corners of his mouth, turning his face away as he put his drink on the side table.
"Potter," he said. The glass clinked right as he stood to his feet, seeming a little slow to it. He seemed a bit like he didn't quite know what to say, standing there like that. Then, slipping his hands into his trouser pockets, "I didn't think you'd accept."
"Neither did I," Harry said, only because he didn't quite know what to say either. They hadn't spoken much for about two years now, not through Eighth Year, meeting eyes in passing. Not through this year.
"Have a seat," Malfoy said, sounding as if he was going through the motions of social etiquette.
Malfoy waited a few seconds. When Harry didn't oblige, he turned and made his way over to the bar across the room. His hair was tucked behind his ears, only just reached the wrap of his black, woollen rollneck. "What do you like to drink?"
"Why am I here, Malfoy?" Harry asked, instead of answering.
Malfoy faltered in his movements, pausing for only a moment, and then began to clink and clunk through glasses and bottles, a little more careful and pointed, as if too aware of himself. He found something, rotated the bottle to read the label, and then poured it out, his elbow flexed laterally as he measured the drink. Harry sat down, finally, hesitantly, waiting.
Malfoy only spoke again after he returned, handing him his glass. Harry did not plan to drink it. "Right. Let's get down to business then, shall we?" he said as he settled back down on the sofa, leaned back, legs crossed, ankle over knee. He picked up his drink again. "You see, Potter, Mother and I believe it is time for us to make our amends, and so—" He cleared his throat, a hint of a bob against the neck of his jumper. "We're hosting some charity events, the proceedings of which should go to renovations of Hogwarts and any other affected areas, as well as to war causes and organizations."
Harry raised an eyebrow. "Right. That's great and all, Malfoy, that you're — " Growing a conscience, Harry would have said. He held it back. "But what does that have to do with me?"
"You've got influence, don't you," Malfoy said, shrugging. "Hardly anybody would support our cause on its own, but donations from you, or even a civil standing with you clear to the public eye, would increase our chances of success."
Harry stared at him. So Malfoy called him all the way here to have him publicly endorse his family name. His eyes narrowed, smiling thinly. "You can't be serious."
Malfoy's eyes were steady, cool, a shift of his head. "Alright. So I should admit, part of it is to get back into society's good graces, indeed."
Harry's lips tightened, hummed, biting his upper lip. He glanced down at his untouched drink.
"But that is mostly for the sake of my mother. When I'm—" Malfoy halted, suddenly, his jaw working slightly. Harry finally looked up at him. "I would only like for people to be kinder to her if I'm ever not present, that is all." His head lifted, turning, meeting Harry's eyes again. "In return for your favours, I'm willing to offer whatever you ask of me. Whatever."
"Right," Harry said.
Harry had spoken for him at his trial, had believed him better than his father . Better, however, did not necessarily mean good, and certainly not enough for Harry to believe that the Malfoy name should ever regain any sort of status or power ever again. Status and power changed people, and Malfoy was not someone Harry had enough faith in to assume he would use it well.
And so, with a face stone-still, he said, "I don't think so, Malfoy."
Malfoy's face was unwavering and cryptic, his gaze flicking the slightest over Harry's face.
"I see," Malfoy said, finally, softly. He put his drink away, lips flicking to taste the drink on them, and then he rose from his seat. "Well then, that is that. I shall see you out."
Harry was surprised at the lack of argument, at the ease and lack of concern he'd accepted this with. Then, he thought that perhaps he shouldn't have been so surprised. There wasn't a lot Malfoy could do when he wasn't the one with the upper hand in this situation, not anything that would prove why he did not want any associations with the Malfoys.
"Yeah. No. I'll be fine." Harry stood to his feet. He was moving to make for the door, suddenly questioning why he came in the first place.
Except Malfoy called for him with a quiet, "Potter." And something in his voice made Harry stop before he could move beyond a swift turn of his body, made him look back at Malfoy, who had just stepped up to him, one hand in the pocket of his pressed dark trousers.
The firelights played up shadows across Malfoy's face, on the unfathomable sort of look he had fixated on Harry. It felt heavy with something, somehow. "This should be the last we see of each other, then, I believe," Malfoy said, with that strange sort of weight again, a vague finality. Up this close, he looked almost a bit too pale. He held out his hand for Harry.
Harry stepped back from it, flicking down a quick glance at the hand, and then back up at Malfoy.
His face was guarded. Something brimmed behind the calm facade, the transfixed gaze meeting Harry's. His jaw was firmly locked, a knot of muscle jumping there.
"Er, right. Yeah." Harry lifted his hand, somewhat bemused. It hovered for a second. Two. Then, hesitantly, he slipped it over Malfoy's. He was cold. "Goodbye, Malfoy."
Malfoy's expression shifted slightly, something nearly of a softening, but not quite. He smirked, long, nimble fingers curling around his hand. "Goodbye, Potter."
There was a jolt up Harry's arm when Malfoy touched him back, a swift rush of energy flooding into his body, laced with a strange mixture of malaise and warmth. Harry jerked his hand out of his grip abruptly, like he'd been burned. Malfoy blinked, turning his own hand over in front of him, looking at the back of it.
"What the hell was that?" Harry asked, eyes widened slightly.
Malfoy raised his gaze, meeting his. He shook his head, lips parted in his bewilderment. "I—I'm not sure."
Harry's hand itched to reach for his wand, staring at the man in front of him, but Malfoy's face had twitched into a frown, and he was looking back at his hand again. He appeared just as confused as him, like he didn't know what had happened either. He blinked hard again, found Harry's gaze once more, his expression thoroughly perplexed and slightly apprehensive.
"Potter, I don't—" He stopped, mouth working. "This—this wasn't my— "
Harry spun around, before he could throw a hex his way, and headed for the door.
* * *
He found himself Apparating into Ron and Hermione's apartment. They were bustling around their kitchen, Ron stirring the fry-pan, Hermione slicing vegetables on the chopping board.
"Harry!" Hermione said, upon seeing him, grinning. She shook a loose strand of curly hair out of her face, escaped from a messy, slightly damp bun on the back of her head. Ron saw him and smiled too, tossing a cheerful morning Harry! over his towel-clad shoulder. "Joining us for breakfast, then?"
Harry made his way to the counters. "Yeah. Anything I can do?"
"Nah, mate," Ron said, throwing him a glance, slightly concerned. "Sit down. We're almost done here anyway, and I'm guessing after whatever happened with Malfoy, you need a breather."
Harry made his way to one of the cabinets to get the plates out anyway, telling him and Hermione about his visit to Malfoy from the start.
At the table, he leaned his arm against Hermione's, hand brushing against the side of hers, strangely craving her warmth. He could still feel the cold press of Malfoy's hand against his own, and suddenly all he wanted was to scrub it clean. He felt fine, he told himself. He was fine. Maybe Malfoy had performed some sort of accidental magic, something inconsequential.
Harry pressed his temple against her shoulder as they waited for Ron to bring over the last of the food to the table. She pressed her cheek back to his head, a soft, amused laugh against his hair. "Are you alright, Harry?"
He huffed, and then nodded, raising his head again. Ron was settling down on her other side. He paused, brows furrowing. "Mate, you don't look very good."
He puffed a breath. "Yeah, I don't know. Just been feeling a bit off ever since ... " The malaise had begun to lay thick over him, a sickening feeling in his throat. Something had begun to cloy around his heart, or maybe somewhere deeper. "I don't know what he did..."
"Don't know what…?" Ron straightened, his eyes narrowing. "Did Malfoy do something?"
He was interrupted by a loud sound, a roar of fire from the other room. Molly came rushing inside as Ron and Hermione stood up, and was onto them by the next second, touching Hermione's shoulder, Harry's face with both hands, her eyes looking Ron up and down, frantically asking, "What's happening? Merlin, what's happening!— will someone explain what in the world is —"
"Woah, Mum." Ron's grabbing her by the shoulders. "Mum. Hey. Nothing's happening here. Think you're the one that might need to explain what in the world is happening — "
The whereabout-clock was showing all of them in danger. They'd flooed over to the Burrows, made a quick way for it in the living room. Harry had been moving so slowly that he was three steps behind everybody else. He leaned against the wall, trying to focus on the blurry form of the clock, the little golden hands quivering wildly just on the line of mortal peril.
"Maybe it finally broke or something," Ron said, with a confused, nervous huff. "It's been in the family for ages, hasn't it?"
Later on, sitting beside him on the couch, Hermione casted a diagnostic spell over Harry, and a black cloud rose up into the air. "It's—" She swallowed, inspecting the smoke that dissipated a few seconds after. "It's a curse. From the looks of it, it's a dark one. Oh, Harry, why didn't you say you haven't been feeling well?"
"S'not like I knew," Harry said, sitting back with his head over the back of the couch. He breathed through the nausea.
"We have to take you to St. Mungos," Hermione said, tugging at his hand. Molly came around his other side, taking his other arm, saying, come on, dear. They stood. Harry gently pulled away, insisting he could walk on his own.
"Ever since you came back from the Malfoys', right?" Ron asked, in a low voice. He was flushed up to his ears, his jaw clenched. "There's no way he didn't have something to do with this! You go on ahead. I'll be there in a bit."
He turned on his heel, making for the fireplace. Hermione quickly skirted around the table and caught his arm, put her hands on his face, murmuring something to him that made him loosen slightly after a restless and agitated moment, with an acquiescing nod, even though his face was still ablaze.
At the hospital, after all the spells and diagnostics, Harry's head had begun to throb so much that he could barely pay attention to what was being said.
The next thing he knew, he was waking up, unable to decipher the amount of time passed. He must have been given something that brought a good part of his awareness back. There was Hermione beside him, Ron at her shoulder, and a Healer, who was introducing herself, relaying to him what had happened.
"It was dark magic, likely casted or caught from an infected object, and usually passed on through physical contact. The person that passes it on is the primary source — "
The Healer's knowledge regarding curses was limited, however. Now that the curse-breakers were here, they would be giving further explanations once they were all at Malfoy Manor, which was where they would all be heading tomorrow, because Draco Malfoy was an "affected party" and "primary source" — therefore an important component of the curse. The assigned cursebreaker would go to the Malfoy Manor and, if all went well and with full cooperation, would extract a thread of magic from Malfoy's magical core. They would do the same with Harry. Results were promised sometime later in the day.
Then Hermione asked him questions about his meeting with Malfoy, but now with a different context, did Malfoy seem aware of the curse? Did he insist on any sort of physical contact? Do you remember any way he might have been acting suspiciously?
"I don't know," Harry answered her, low and hoarse. "I don't know if he was aware he was cursed. He looked strange, a bit sick, I think, but I— " "Not really. Didn't insist, but he did seem like—like he didn't want me to—refuse?" "Honestly, he was the most civil he's ever been during that whole thing."
"That is suspicious," Ron said.
Harry huffed, raspy. "Yeah. I don't know if he — he didn't put up much of a fight when I refused his proposal."
"Yeah. Like he already knew he wouldn't have to. And the whole civil act was just a part of that. Harry, this can't be a coincidence, you know that. Him inviting you over, and then this happening right after? "
Silence came over them, long and uneasy, fear and uncertainty coiled up in a corner of the room, and they were all looking away, trying not to acknowledge it.
"He didn't look like..." Harry said, after a while. "He didn't look like he knew what had happened either."
"Just another act, mate," Ron told him. "It was all an act."
Harry thought of Malfoy's face again, ashen in the firelight. "Yeah. Yeah, maybe."
* * *
Malfoy looked just as sickly as Harry felt, sitting upright with a forceful dignity.
The details of the curse were still mostly unclear, besides that it was passed on from the primary source, Malfoy, and would likely demand some sort of contact, that it deteriorated the magical cores, and as it did, it emitted unstable dark magic in an open flow, spreading its sickness.
"The solution," Ezekiel, the cursebreaker, said, "lies in redirecting this unstable magic into a closed circuit. In other words, in order to stabilise the erratic and perpetual flow of the dark magic, it must be so that it remains only between the two main parties, constantly circling between their magical cores."
"And how will this be achieved?" Narcissa was the one to question.
"By a marital bond, of course," Ezekiel said, as if it was very easy.
A long, heavy hush fell over the room. All he could hear was the pounding of his own heart, the cold gush of fear seizing his gut. Ron's hand was heavy on his shoulder, Hermione's warm and tight in his.
Harry's eyes flicked to Malfoy, a nauseated feeling in his throat that wasn't entirely to do with illness. Malfoy's widened gaze was rooted to nothing in front of him, boring a hole into the carpet.
And then the protests rose, all at once, one above the other.
"I demand an alternative solution," Molly said, clearer and louder than the rest. "This is absurd! Surely there is another way for the curse to break."
"Oh there is another way," Ezekiel said, a satirical cheer to his tone. "Though I'm sure not everybody would be on board with this. Shall I—shall I say it? Yes. Alright." He cleared his throat. "The only other way to break the curse—is death. And oh, I don't mean only one, Mrs. Weasley. I mean both. There will be no emission of unstable dark magic if there is no living magical core for the curse to act on. Now only one may die, but the other still remains, and now the curse is no longer split into two parties, but doubled in one, taking many more with him that much faster, until he, too, eventually passes away."
"Is there no cure at all, Ezekiel?" Bill was asking. He sounded irritated, but like he was trying to keep himself controlled. "What of the previous records of such a curse?"
"As far as my research goes, none of them were curable. A tentative one was attempted in one of the cases, but that had not ended well — an explosion of dark magic that had killed both parties as well as the rest of those in the room. Surely we will not be trying this?" The room was silent. Narcissa stroked back the side of Draco's hair, soothingly. Hermione gripped Harry's hand tighter. "I understand that this is not... favourable , but as of now, I believe the priority should be on saving lives rather than weeping over lost love lives."
Theoretically, a marital bond created a connection between magical cores, a sort of channel that allowed for magic to be shared, even if, outwardly, this showed no visible change or effect. There was support and evidence for this theory, but there were loose ends to it, objections that had no concrete explanations. Even so, this had been the only solution for the last several cases.
"It would be so in this one as well," Ezekiel finished the explanation with, pulling his coat on over his shoulders. He nodded his head in general to the room. "Good day to all." And then was gone a moment later with a tip of his hat, a farewell.
By the time the discussion came onto details of what would happen afterwards, the potion that had kept Harry aware had worn off again. His head was, once again, pounding and fuzzy, his vision blurry. There was noise, fragmented words again, several voices speaking at once in argument, dying down eventually before starting back up again—
Hermione held Harry's hand tighter, grounding in the midst of all the chaos and outrage, the battle for things to tide over in one side's own favour, in Harry's or Draco's, until an arrangement had been accepted, grudgingly so by the compromised. The drawing room was emptied out of all Ministry members, then, leaving the two families alone. Immediately, voices rose again.
"— no proof that this entire thing was not some rotten orchestration—"
"We are in no need of stooping to such self-abasing schemes, Arthur," Narcissa responded, coldly.
"How about you consider what this looks like, Narcissa?" Molly snapped. "For Harry to have come back from a visit that your son perpetuated, and then for all of this to be happening, by his hands no less!" She pointed at Draco. " — you've got what you wanted now, didn't you?"
"And whyever would we put ourselves in such harm's way, Molly?" Narcissa snarled. "If we had such schemes in mind, surely we would not be so obvious about it, and surely we would not risk our own lives as well for it."
"There is no telling what your family is capable of when it comes to getting your hands on power," Bill piped up from the side, soft and clipped, arms crossed over his chest. He nodded at Draco, who was eying him from the corner of his eye, impassive. "And a boy like him?"
The rest, he left unsaid, his face saying it all.
"I'm sure you're aware of the legislation recently passed?" Narcissa said, a hollow smile on her lips. "That all service providers now reserve the right to refuse service to former Death-Eaters? Now whether that is fair or not is an argument for another day , but I would not call it fair when my son sought—"
"Mother," Draco tried to interrupt, but his voice was barely there.
"—medical help and was turned away, and we had to resort to seeking a diagnosis from some unreputable underworld Healer instead, which, as we discover now, turned out to be very wrong. He could not even differentiate between a curse and an illness, it seems." Narcissa paused, her face cold, only the slightest raw edge to her voice. "For weeks, I've watched my son live as if he were on numbered days. I have no interest in any sort of power and status if this is what I'd be required to watch for any amount of time."
Later, it was confirmed by the cursebreaker that there was no possibility for the curse to be deliberately passed on. It was transmitted via physical contact, but not necessarily to just anyone. The reasons were unclear, still, as to how it operated when choosing a secondary party, but it was made clear that the curse was what made its choice, not Malfoy, and that was that.
* * *
There was no ceremony, only the two of them sitting across from each other in Wizengamot. There were their families, and the wizard that would officiate their marriage, marriage license documents signed by a wand with their magical signature, and when Harry watched Malfoy sign them, and when he was trying to push the ring onto Harry's finger, careful not to touch him, he saw his hand shake just as his own did.
"Can't we just do this part ourselves?" Harry asked, quiet and rough.
"I'm afraid not," the solicitor said to that, and went on to explain how it would be a symbol for the formation of the marital bond, the channel between their magical cores that allowed the circulation of the curse's magic, that it signified an agreement to join them together.
After the ceremony, all of them flooed into Grimmauld's Palace, Malfoy with bags of his things. Whilst Molly made dinner, Ron and Hermione sat beside Harry. The three of them were in armchairs by the fireplace, Hermione's head pressed to Harry's shoulder. Ron and Hermione were alternating between silence and speaking in murmurs to each other.
When the haze of illness faded, so did the surrealism of it all, and Harry was left only with a deep, aching fatigue in his muscles, a terrible, bright clarity of what had happened. The way his life had changed all in the matter of two days.
"Is this really happening?" Harry asked, his voice barely there.
Hermione straightened at the sound of his voice, but she didn't seem to know what to say for a moment.
Draco was speaking to his mother quietly. He couldn't hear what they were saying, but the movement of his lips were different, a hint of dimples appearing, disappearing. He could only hear the low accents of another language. Harry had a faint memory of him speaking to Beauxbaton boys in Fourth Year. He'd been oddly shy with them, speaking in stuttering French, not quite able to meet their eyes.
"We'll work something out, Harry," Hermione said, softly. "This isn't a marriage. Not in any real sense. This is just… a temporary solution. We'll find something, okay?"
Harry shook his head, not able to look at her, just looking at the boy he sat across from some minutes ago, signing documents that bound them together in a way Harry couldn't bring himself to think of. Draco's eyes shifted absently, met his own, faltered as his lips slowed. Harry looked away, down at the ring around his finger. His anger was dulled by fatigue, by the way nothing was quite sinking in. "You have your own stuff, 'Mione. This is too much to take on—"
"Your stuff is our stuff," Hermione said, trying to meet his eyes from below, smiling in a wavering sort of way.
Ron had his arm around the back of Harry's chair, warm and reassuring against the nape of his neck. He kissed Hermione's head, and then paused. He had a feigned frown on his face, as if he were trying to remember something. "How did that muggle saying go again?" He smiled, looking at Harry. "Where there is Hermione, there's always a way."
Harry smiled slightly at that, and it only just soothed a little of something horrible and hollow in him.
Harry woke up nauseated and burning, like he was under the sun beating down over a desert. A feverish need was licking up beneath his skin, at the core of him, pooling hot, pulling for something with no sense of direction.
In the dark was a silhouette, leaning heavily against the doorframe for a moment. That sickly pull in his chest had a direction now, focusing in on it. It wasn't an urge, anything forceful, only a mere sense, there, towards the body — Malfoy, stumbling towards him, tripping over when he reached the bed.
"What—"
"We need to," Malfoy's voice was strained, rough, between heavy breaths. He was grabbing his arm, and there came the cooling relief, but it was dissatisfactory, not enough. "I think we need—"
Harry could hardly see him in the dark. Malfoy was still trembling, his hand tightening around Harry's arm, quivering and frustrated. A sharp jolt of pain had him clench his eyes shut, grit out in a tremor of a breath, "It's not working. It's not— "
Malfoy was trying to fumble the sheets off of him, out of the way, pushing his shirt up in frantic, quick movements to get his hands under it, and Harry swallowed, and only followed where the muddle of discontentment and need for relief took him.
It was only after the pain and malaise had soothed to a phantom that the pull in his chest relaxed, that clarity shone through, breaking them out of their haze.
That was when the bewilderment and panic began to set in as well.
Harry quickly scrambled up, Malfoy off of him, leaning on his palms and feet. Malfoy seemed just as confused and wild-eyed about it all, his chest still heaving like Harry's, blinking hard up at the ceiling.
"What was that?" Harry whispered, unable to believe the strangeness of what they'd done.
"The answer is rather clear, wouldn't you say," Malfoy said, dryly.
A flush still lingered over Malfoy's neck. Harry looked away at the sight of it, quieting, still breathing a bit erratically. Harry hung his head between his knees, elbows on them as he gripped his head, closed his eyes.
"So what? This is how it's going to be from here on?"
"Around every ten hours, give or take."
That was for how long they'd been — how long it had been since —
Harry looked away, ahead, wide and fixated at nothing. He wiped his hand down his face, hard. "Ten hours," he repeated in a mutter. "Merlin."
"Yes," Malfoy said, much too blandly for a situation like this. He snapped his fingers and the lights went out.
Harry watched him for a minute, the silhouette of him as he shifted around on the bed, mentally willing for him to get up and leave at the last second, and then realized that Malfoy fully intended to stay. "You're not staying here."
"Ah, but I am, Potter. You see, the curse is still unpredictable, and just because it acted up after ten hours now doesn't mean it will only act up again in another ten hours. I'm exhausted and in recovery, so. I'd like to sleep as well as I can, and I do not fancy a repeat of stumbling across half the floor to your room whilst feeling like I'm about to die the next time I awaken, as I'm sure you do not either? Hm?" Harry could not see his face, but he could hear the thin and satirical smile in his voice, before he turned over onto his other side, his back to him.
Harry's shoulders were tensed up to his neck, his anger a sickening burn in his chest. He transfigured a misplaced quill on the nightstand into another pillow and shoved it between himself and Malfoy as a barrier. It startled Malfoy, to Harry's fractional satisfaction.
He laid down on the bed, still breathing unsteadily, but fatigue had begun to set into his muscles, overpowering the turmoil of his emotions, and soon, sleep came over him, fading him away.
* * *
The next morning, when Harry woke up, Malfoy was gone. Downstairs, Ron and Hermione were making breakfast together.
"Bill's on it," Hermione told him. "He demanded that he be put on the case. I think we just need to learn what kind of bond this is, and then work our way from there, you know?"
Bill was to study the effects of the curse from a thread of both their magic and, "he might come by sometime in the near future for questions," Hermione warned. "Which, I know it will be difficult to talk about because it's so personal and strange , so I just thought you should know beforehand."
Malfoy turned out to be correct in his presumption that the bond acted up sporadically. What they hadn't been able to feel the first time, the two of them asleep when it came in, was how it came in — in slow, erratic ebbs throughout them, deepening into malaise, and then outright nausea.
They also did not know that, though it showed up at around the same time, it did so at different rates for the two of them.
The first time the bond had begun to act up for Harry alone, he'd thought Draco must have been experiencing it as well in the exact same way. He had stumbled into the kitchen whilst Draco was in the midst of his private classes, both he and his tutor staring at him for a confused, blank moment.
Harry had stood upright in the midst of his malaise, tangled up in a need for relief still somewhat bearable as of yet, but was steadily overtaking his mind. Malfoy had stood up from his chair, apparently having noticed the state of him, had grabbed him by the arm the next second with a quick glance and a polite, excuse me one moment, please sir to his tutor and then careened him off. Harry did, slow and uneven, almost entirely focused on the heat of Malfoy's hand.
"You're not—not feeling it?" Harry had asked, breathless, his voice sounding distant. He'd felt hot, and then cold and shivery, and like he wanted something he didn't have a name for.
"I do feel strange," Malfoy said, threw him a quick glance, a brow raised. He was leading him up the stairs, to the left of the first floor, towards the bedroom. "But not quite like you yet, I suppose."
Malfoy pushed the door open, dragged him inside, shut the door and then crowded him up against the back of it. He'd pushed his hands up the opening of his hem, under his shirt and flat over his ribcage.
"I'm sorry," Harry said after, breathing heavy and slow, his brain feeling heavy and slow too. He swallowed hard, watching Malfoy step back, avert his head away just so. "Sorry. You had to—"
"Don't talk, Potter," was what Malfoy responded with. He looked flustered, sort of annoyed, not looking at him. "Don't think about it either."
And they didn't talk about it, or think about it much, on Harry's part. That was a pitfall of mortification and fear and confusion that Harry did not want to fall into, once he'd fallen enough times. It was the curse, Harry reminded himself often, and Malfoy never spoke of it either. Neither of them were in a position to use this shameful vulnerability against the other.
They learned to identify the beginnings, the smallest of signs. They learned that, if they managed to take care of it right from the start, before reaching the breaking point, it was better that way.
They'd thought, at first, that they could just grip each other's arms as a minor form of their necessitated contact, the tangle of it laid out on a surface. It was still awkward, but much less awkward. It was unsatisfactory in comparison, and even though they'd remained like that for an hour, Harry was left with a discontented sort of feeling, wondering if it was just him, but insisted to himself that it was far better this way.
A week of doing this, the discontentment fed into itself until it became a sort of hunger, like being starved to somewhere beyond reach or comprehension.
It kept Harry half-awake at night, kept him floating back to the surface of lucidity every hour or two, and eventually every half an hour. By the time morning would come, he was left feeling as if he hadn't slept at all.
Malfoy's eyes had sunken into his sockets as well. He was particularly irritable and moody, all satirical quips and expressions, and they'd snap at each other left and right, or complain and fight over everything they were initially trying to force a lot more composure and patience for, like Harry tussling around too much at night, like how long Malfoy took in the bathroom, didn't clean his hair out of the drain, left all his things over the kitchen table, over something seemingly trivial.
"Make me a cup too, would you?" Malfoy didn't look up from where he was scribbling down at a parchment, fingers and eyes moving in intense concentration.
"Why would I?" Harry asked, waiting for the kettle to boil with his hip against the edge of the counter, arms crossed over his chest. He was groggy and tired, which made him just on the edge of irritated at everything and nothing.
Malfoy seemed to be in a hurry, perhaps doing last-minute homework. He had a blotch of ink at his jaw, his temple. "Because you're already there and I don't want to lose my flow."
Harry rolled his eyes. He turned the stove off and grabbed one cup from the cabinets. "I'm not your servant, Malfoy."
Malfoy raised his brows, a curl at his mouth, as he lifted his head at him. "For Merlin's sake, Potter, how hard is it really to pour one more cup ?"
"Not that hard," Harry said, shrugging as he made himself tea, well-aware that he might be acting somewhat childish about it but not able to stop himself. It wasn't as if Malfoy wasn't being an entitled prat. "Not that hard to get off your arse and do it yourself."
Then eventually it would escalate into a whole argument until one of them marched off, not to be seen until the curse reared its head once more.
This all came to an end when Malfoy one day pushed his arm away with a frustrated noise, grabbed his wrist and pulled them both up to the wall beside the fridge, stepping back into it. He'd slid Harry's hands under his own shirt, put them to himself.
It was horribly awkward, for the next however many minutes they had to stand like that. Harry was so awkward that he could hardly move, like his body was locked and shut down, though he would shift minutely on his feet every now and then. His gaze was firmly fixed to a spot on the wall, over Malfoy's head, and he kept clearing his throat. Malfoy, on the other hand, was pink all the way from his neck to his cheeks, and he was very still. Harry had tried not to pay much attention to Malfoy's body, to the jut of his throat, the hint of a sharp collarbone.
Malfoy hadn't been looking at him, though, and Harry found his eyes straying, quick to glance away whenever they caught sight of anything of him. When the curse settled, Malfoy pushed him back and quickly shouldered past him, out the door.
Harry's gaze remained away, stilled, long after Malfoy had gone. In the kitchen, there was only the sound of his own breaths, unsteady and shallow. There was something hot bubbling low in his stomach, and his hands, still left craving in another way.
On a Sunday afternoon, Bill dropped by, as Hermione had forewarned, but he dropped by without a firecall and at an extremely inopportune moment. They quickly jumped away from each other when they saw him there. Malfoy, standing a considerable distance away with his palms on his hips, burning his own mortified hole pointedly through the ground.
Bill, to his credit, hardly reacted, and Harry only understood a while later that he wasn't even surprised, and he learned that, apparently, this sort of thing was there in nearly every kind of bond. He took another thread of their magic, asked all his questions, and then took his leave with a reassuring hand tapping down on Harry's shoulder.
They'd been trying to avoid the bedroom. There was something far too intimate about that, but it was on the first floor and the last place anyone would come looking for them, and if they would, it would be only after scouring the entire ground floor, which was enough time for the announcement—or rather, warning—of a visit.
Eventually, when Harry's boredom became greater than his lassitude, he returned to the shop and worked late hours to avoid as much as he could of his headache at home, minus the times it had to follow him to the shop in the middle of the day.
Aside from these encounters with Malfoy, the nights and mornings, they opted to stay out of each other's way, and Harry was able to ignore Malfoy's presence in his house for a good while. He didn't know what Malfoy got up to when he wasn't here at Grimmauld Place, and he didn't entirely care to know either.
Then Harry's bathroom was full of Malfoy's hair and skin products. Then, on the kitchen table, were his parchments and his quills and his ink bottles, the ink stains that were left forgotten and uncleaned, and his books and notes strewn about, and Harry would have to pull up his chair to the counter in order to have a place to sit. Then, there began a daily reminder in the evenings when he would play his violins in the drawing room. In the living room was his ancient record player, sitting on a side table brought specifically for it.
"It's the 21st century, for Merlin's sake," Harry muttered to that.
* * *
In January, Harry met a man named Elias.
Elias came into his shop sometime the first week of January, seeking mastery-level books on Herbology. He had a thing for leather jackets, and leaning his elbows on the counter. He was waiting for Harry to bring him his requested books, and when Harry, in trying to take out one book out of a shelf, accidentally knocked over several other books all over his toes, Elias ran over quickly to help him with an exclaimed, oh Jesus! in a small laugh. "Are you alright?" he asked, as he gathered the books up in his arms.
"Thanks," Harry said, and then laughed a bit at himself, rubbing the back of his neck.
Elias grinned at him. He had a charming sort of grin. "Yeah, no trouble. Did you get what you were looking for?" Harry nodded, holding up the book still in his hand, showing it to him.
The next few days, Elias was coming in every day, looking for one book or the other, until he finally dropped the pretense and asked Harry out for dinner, and Harry said yes.
Harry liked Elias. He liked how they meshed together, how comfortable it was, how effortless it was to talk to him and laugh with him, and when he kissed Harry against the wall beside his apartment room, it was as easy as everything else was with him.
"Do you want to come inside?" Elias murmured, breaths warm against his lips. His hands were on Harry's hips, stroking a thumb at the jut of his hipbone. "Have a drink with me?"
"Yeah," Harry said, just as low, and then smiled. He still felt dizzy and warm from the kiss. He laughed, and then Elias laughed. "Yeah. Let's go inside."
They had drinks together, leaning sideways on the couch, arms sprawled across the back of it. Elias' temple was supported on the curl of his fingers, and their legs touched as they talked in front of the burning fireplace, chasing away the January cold, talking about a lot of things. Elias pointed out the ring on his middle finger, asking, "what's it for?"
Harry spun it around his finger and thought of Malfoy sitting across from him over a table with a marriage document, impassive and sickly. He thought of the haze of his own mind, the illness that had coated his body, and how trapped and heartsick he'd felt in a vague and distant corner of his mind about it all. How he still felt it, now no longer so vague and distant.
"Nothing," Harry said, quietly, turning it around his finger. It was small, a simple band of metal around the knuckle of his finger. A noose on his neck, keeping his life at a halt. "It's just an accessory."
Elias nodded, and then huffed a smile. "Alright," he said, just as quietly, sounding relieved. He reached across, put his drink down on the table. Then he lifted up, leaned forward on his knee and whispered, "God, I was so hoping you'd say that."
Harry pulled away slightly from his mouth. "Wait, you thought…?"
Elias was still hovering over his lips. "I don't… really know what I thought." He smiled, bit it back, huffed again. Harry followed the movement of his mouth, fixated. "Part of me didn't really want to know."
"I'm not like that," Harry said, but his voice had faded a little at the end, somewhat confused over whether that was a lie or not. It shouldn't count , he thought to himself, but then forgot about it completely when Elias grinned, crossed the inch of distance between their mouths and caught his, hot and open and devouring.
It was good. So good. It was great .
It was great only until Elias' hands slipped up under his shirt, splayed over his ribs and palmed into the arch of his body, and then something at the deepest core of Harry lurched , twisted and ugly.
By the next second, Elias was on the floor, bewildered and blinking at him. Harry had sat upright, hands pushed back into the couch, panting heavy and hard as he stared down at him. For a good minute, he was muddled as to what had exactly happened. Then slowly, it followed, one understanding pulling along into another, clicking together — the curse, and the violent lurch in his chest that had led his body to react of its own accord, a sense of wrong, wrong, wrong washing him in shame.
It started only a couple of seconds after, the queasy ebb low and deep in his chest, the thread of it that connected to his core, moving all through him.
"I'm sorry," Harry said, thick and low. "Fuck, I'm so sorry."
Elias shook his head, only some of the perturbation and confusion clearing from his gaze. "I don't understand. I thought you were interested…?"
"I was!" Harry said, quickly, wide-eyed. "I am! I just — "
It was growing, deeper and clearer and faster than he was familiar with.
"I have to go. I'm sorry. I just — I really have to — I'm so sorry, Elias — "
He left out the door without waiting for Elias' reaction, without even a goodbye, hardly able to think. He was overwhelmed by the malaise, the suffocating shame and guilt thickening over his sternum. He found the closest Apparition point and went home.
Malfoy was drinking in the living room when Harry appeared, hapless and unsteady in the doorway.
Some old French song was playing from his vinyl record. Malfoy hadn't noticed Harry immediately. When he did, he straightened slightly, his brows twitching upward in an unfathomable expression, but then he'd taken one look at Harry and paused, abrupt and wide-eyed, before his face closed off.
Malfoy hummed, glancing away. He made a small, close-mouthed scoff in his chest, and then looked back at him again, grey eyes almost icy in its colour. "My, my, Potter." A corner of his mouth curled, something of a hollow smile, an almost-sneer. "To be a married man and to engage in such — " His eyes twitched down, over the rumpled state of him, and then with a flick, back up to Harry's face. "cavortings."
"Malfoy," Harry warned. He closed his eyes. "You don't actually care, do you?"
Malfoy's face was very still. He turned his head away, made a sort of apathetic noise. He leaned forward, reaching for the bottle on the table. There was a pause, one that felt longer than it was. He poured himself another finger, not looking at him, and then said, "No, Potter. Frankly, I don't give much of a damn about anything when it comes to you."
Just as well, Harry thought. "Right. But are you going to — " He stopped, puffed out a hard breath as the nausea roiled in his gut. "to help me or not?"
"Upstairs," Malfoy said curtly.
As he ascended the stairs, grip tight on the railing, he had the odd and terrifying sense, going by Malfoy's demeanour, that he might just deliberately take forever before he came upstairs.
He didn't, however. It was right as Harry had opened the door of the bedroom that he heard Malfoy's footsteps on the stairs behind him. He leaned beside the door frame on his shoulder, waited until Malfoy had slipped in, closed it shut with a soft click.
Harry turned the lights off, nonverbally, because it was weirder to have to look at each other when they did this. His magic was erratic and everywhere though, so all the items rattled, and then settled. There was a scuff as Malfoy stepped forward in the dark. He smelled strongly of alcohol, seemed drunker than he was when Harry had seen him in the drawing room.