Chapter Text
“I’m cursed, Harry,” Ron moans, face buried in the broad expanse of his hands. “I’m going to be alone forever.”
“I dunno about all that,” Harry says, his encouragement drowned by Hermione tearing a croissant in half and proclaiming, “Sounds right to me.”
Harry kicks her under the rickety coffee shop table. She widens her eyes at him. “What?” She shoves a large bite of flaky pastry into her mouth. “Ith true.”
“You don’t understand us, Hermione. Men in love are a complex breed,” Harry says loyally, patting Ron on the back. He’s bent so low over his coffee that the ends of his red-gold hair are curling in the steam from his latte.
Hermione chokes.
She bangs her chest with her fist, eyes watering. Harry debates helping her, and decides she doesn’t need it. She’ll be fine in a moment. Probably.
The croissant goes down and Hermione gasps, her incredulity rough and ready at the tip of her tongue. “I don’t understand you? You two. The two of you, right here. You and–and him?” She gestures at Ron with the ragged half of croissant still in her hand.
“Here we go.” Harry rolls his eyes as he takes an unamused sip of mocha, still so hot it burns his tongue.
“First of all,” Hermione starts. “He”–she points at Ron–“wasn’t in love. He wasn’t in love with Lavender this time, and he wasn’t in love with her the first go around either. He can’t have been in love, because he has sausage roll for a heart and soup where his brain should be.”
“Is there soup?” Ron asks weakly, eyes hopeful.
“It’s half eight in the morning, Ronald,” Hermione scolds. “And second of all—men? The two of you?” She looks between them again and scoffs. “Biologically, I’ll grant it. But if you’re men then I’m the bloody Minister for Magic.”
“You will be, one day,” Harry says. There are only a few weeks left until exams for their spring term at University of London’s Peverell College for Advanced Magical Study; Hermione’s been on edge since Christmas. By now, her poor attitude rolls off Harry’s back as easy as the constant, steady March drizzle. He turns to face Ron. “So that’s good news for us, isn’t it?”
“Many cultures have soup at breakfast, Hermione,” Ron says. His shoulders lift, the life returning to his eyes as he regains vigour from the scent of a brewing argument. “Your derision is glaringly ethnocentric. Wouldn’t you agree, Harry?”
“No comment,” Harry says, dipping back into his mocha.
“I–” Hermione stutters.
“In Japan, miso is considered a breakfast food,” Ron points out.
Harry doesn’t explain that the only reason Ron knows this is because he’d tried to pull the waitress at the sushi spot near campus.
“You’re right, Ron,” Hermione says, looking chastened.
“Do you ever wonder why fancy coffees are always so hot?” Harry asks, no longer interested in the soup-for-breakfast debate. “What are they hiding, you know? Is it flavour? Like if they burn our tongues off, we won’t notice it’s absolute shit?”
“Lavender loved fancy coffee,” Ron says, wistful.
“She also loved howling at the moon and trying to kill you,” Hermione says.
Ron holds up a finger. “That happened once.”
“Did it, though?” Harry asks. Unlike Hermione, he had grown to rather like Lavender over time. But even his softer heart couldn’t muffle the screaming from the shared wall between his and Ron’s bedrooms.
“Alright, twice.”
Harry coughs.
“Three times!” Ron exclaims. “Over nine months! Statistically speaking, that’s a borderline anomaly.”
“Statistically speak—” Hermione’s voice rises to the level of squeak that can only be triggered by Ron being a berk. She cuts herself off and tries again. “Wasn’t the point of living in Muggle London to avoid attention? Do you really think our neighbours have gone completely unawares?”
“Our neighbours?” Ron says. “Our bloody neighbours are–” The cafe door slams open with a loud bang.
“Potter!”
“Here,” Harry says glumly, finishing Ron’s sentence.
“Potter!”
“Hide me.” Harry slides down his seat.
“POTTER!”
“We can’t ever come here again.” Harry’s nose-level with the table.
“We come here every day,” Hermione points out. “You get upset when we try other places.”
Ron opens his mouth to argue, but stops as a shadow looms over Harry’s head.
“Potter.”
“Malfoy.” Harry looks up. Malfoy’s face appears odd from this angle — from most angles, really — but gone is the easy hatred that once lined his face, the coldness in his eyes, a mask hiding fear.
“Potter, I need five hundred Galleons,” Draco says without ceremony. He pulls a chair from a nearby table, scraping it along the floor, and sits at the corner between Harry and Ron, his knobby knees knocking into both of their thighs.
“What for?” Hermione asks, at the same time as Ron says, “You’re giving Malfoy money?”
“An investment opportunity,” Draco says crisply, then turns to Harry. His hair is thick and wavy this morning — he must have been up early, head over a steaming cauldron, studying for his Potions Master Programme entrance exam. He’s wearing a black and white check shirt and blue and red striped trousers, which is more or less on par for his fluency in Muggle fashion. The effect taken together does not muster financial confidence.
“What happened to the first five hundred Galleons?” Harry asks, crossing his arms. His leg is hot where their knees touch.
“I’ve told you,” Draco says, picking up Harry’s cup and drinking from it. He makes a face and sets it back hard in the saucer. “This is dog shite, Potter. Why do you lot come here?”
“It’s convenient,” Harry says. Which is true. The coffee shop is directly across from their building, which has the added benefit of allowing Harry to watch for any annoying neighbours he doesn’t want to run into, like for example the one currently finishing his dog shite mocha.
“I don’t know why you won’t listen to me about the Armenian,” Draco says. “Best coffee in all of London. Don’t let him serving it out the back of a van deter you.” He swallows the dregs of Harry’s drink. “One sip of the Armenian’s coffee and you’ll fly, Potter! Straight to the moon!”
“I can fly to the moon any time I want,” Harry says, although he’s not certain that’s true. He turns to Ron. “Can wizards go to space?”
“I dunno,” Ron says, scratching his chin.
“Did you pay attention in History of Magic even once in seven years?” Draco asks Ron.
“Six, technically,” Harry says, then mentally stomps his own foot. They don’t talk about the war.
“So what’s the answer, then?” Ron asks. Harry notes the nudge of Ron’s leg against Draco’s knee, causing Draco’s other leg to slide against Harry’s thigh.
“I’m not telling,” Draco says, crossing his arms. “You chose ignorance, Weasley. Live in it.”
Ron rolls his eyes. Harry’s forgotten all about space wizards, and is struck instead by the circumstance of events that has led to him being right here (in a crap cafe), right now (age twenty-three), with the heat of Draco Malfoy’s thigh pressing into his jeans (no further comment).
Harry was so certain he’d go from Hogwarts straight to the Aurors, to marriage and kids — with Ginny, of course, although sometimes he imagined him and Cho would give it a second try. A life of adventure, swollen nappies, and Sunday roasts with his best friends, Mrs and Mr Granger-Weasley.
Him and Gin didn’t last that first summer. Hermione and Ron weren’t far behind, ending things officially over the Christmas hols in eighth-year. Unofficially, they’d stopped sleeping together much later; Harry always pretended not to notice as she left Ron’s room.
Meanwhile, Harry completed a single week of Auror training, felt ill every time he walked into the Ministry, and simultaneously realised that his confusion around sex — Was it always meant to feel like doing chores? Were breasts supposed to do something to him, and if so, what? — was in fact latent homosexuality.
With all his big plans scuppered, Harry was confronted with the terrifying blankness of opportunity. He stared into his future and his future stared back, unblinking, so Harry did what had always worked well for him in the past: he followed his friends.
Hermione had long been registered with Peverell College, had in fact delayed attending for a year to finish up at Hogwarts. Ron had been enrolled as well, potentially against his will. Harry joined them at the last minute, and was thrilled to discover “undeclared” was an allowed focus of study.
This left only one problem: Harry needed to live somewhere where he wasn’t a war hero, where he wouldn’t be constantly reminded of the lives he wasn’t quick enough to save. So he took a trip to his vault and found a flat far away from Diagon, with room enough for Ron and Hermione and only Muggles in sight.
It wasn’t quiet, or at all financially reasonable, but to Harry it was perfect. They could practise magic in the abandoned greenhouse on the roof, there was a perfectly serviceable takeaway on the corner, and three streets over was a gay bar and a shop that rented out adult videos catering to all preferences. Sometimes Harry would pop into the rooms in the back on his way home from a lecture, the shop’s full catalogue available to preview for a small fee.
They had three blissful months of relative peace, and then the neighbours in the flat across the hall moved out, and Draco Malfoy moved in.
Draco hadn’t been invited back to Hogwarts for eighth-year. That was a given, seeing as he was at least partially responsible for the castle’s destruction. McGonagall was fair, but she was protective, too.
What was surprising was that Draco didn’t go to Azkaban. Not even for show during the trials. Instead, the Wizengamot sentenced him to a year’s house arrest and a core restriction, the magic in him snuffed down to a smoking ember.
“Absolutely not,” Harry said, upon opening the door to investigate the racket across the hall and coming face-to-face with Draco and Theodore Nott.
“Potter,” Nott said, voice nasal and aggravating as always.
“Nott,” Harry returned, narrowing his eyes. Of course Nott would be involved with this. He’d spent the war hiding out here with his Squib uncle, and after the uncle died — hit by a lorry, supposedly — Nott had taken over the family flat, much to Harry’s chagrin. Harry didn’t have any justifiable reason to dislike Nott, except for the way his face looked and how his voice sounded and everything else about who he was and how he chose to live.
Harry and Ron suggested moving once they’d realised Nott was tied up in their Muggle adventure. Hermione told them they were overreacting, that they would never fully heal from their trauma if they didn’t let these things go. Nott’s only actual crimes, after all, were being sorted into Slytherin and having a steaming tip for a father, neither of which were technically his fault. But Hermione was wrong, for once, because Harry knew that eventually the shoe would drop, and Nott would prove himself worthy of their loathing.
And now here was the shoe, with a great big smear of muck all over it. And here it was dropping, a metre from his front door.
“Oh, vile,” Draco said, pulling a face as he looked Harry up and down. Harry, who realised very suddenly that he was wearing wrinkled pyjamas at three in the afternoon. “Nott, this building is infested. Why have you done this to me?”
“Bored,” was all Nott said before turning on them both, off to ruin someone else’s life with his mere presence.
“You can’t be moving in here. You just can’t be,” Harry insisted, watching Draco drag a cardboard box down the carpeted hall. From what he could see where the box was tearing open, it contained a cauldron and several large glass jars. Potions ingredients.
“You can’t do magic,” Harry pointed out, not caring if it was mean. He peered over the box. “Why do you have these?”
“There are ways around magic,” Draco said, not rising to the bait. “And besides, Potions doesn’t need much of it. Intelligence is more important.” He shoved the box into his flat and then stood, removing an old-fashioned handkerchief from his pocket and wiping it across his brow. It was embroidered with a large, silver M. “Is that why you never made it as an Auror? Potions requirement catch you up?”
“Eh?” Harry asked, a beat too late. Last night’s drinks were still pounding through his head.
“Exactly,” Draco replied. He walked to the other side of what Harry was struggling to believe was now his door, then peered around and tossed Harry the bird. “Do be a stranger, neighbour.”
Harry told Ron the moment he came home, and then had to physically lay on top of him to stop him from breaking the Statute by sending a Wheeze’s portable bog through Draco’s keyhole. When Hermione returned they had the “we need to move” argument at her once again. And again she talked them down, reminding them that moving would require time and effort from both of them, moving in Central London even moreso. And did they really want to be seen running away?
Nothing of interest happened to close the gap between that fateful day and the present. Time simply passed, and with it came exposure, each day a wave wearing down the sharp edges between them.
Which isn’t to say it came easy. Accepting Draco’s proximity felt, for a long while, like training one’s palate to enjoy certain vegetables. But eventually Ron realised Draco was even more fun to wind up than Hermione, and Harry realised Draco — defanged as he now was — was the weirdest person he’d ever met.
While Harry, Ron, and Hermione spent their days going to lectures and studying, dating and seeing films — all the trappings of blessedly uneventful lives — Draco spent his days toiling through situations of his own concoction. Harry’d always found Draco worth watching, but now his curiosity was officially piqued.
Harry no longer had to crouch under the Invisibility Cloak, because Draco always needed an extra pair of hands, or money, or some other way for Harry to get himself involved, whether he wanted to be or not.
He kept insisting he didn’t want to be involved.
And yet.
“Going for your doctorate in Malfology, I see,” Ron said into a container of kung pao chicken, the third or so time Harry came home from running an errand that should’ve taken less than an hour, but because Draco was involved took the better part of a day.
Harry had poured himself a bowl of cereal and shrugged, swallowing the cold milk in his mouth. “It’s something to do.”
“So are we going to Gringotts or not?” Draco asks, flicking the side of Harry’s head.
“Gringotts?” Harry blinks. “Why?”
“I need five hundred Galleons, I told you,” Draco says. Ron gives Draco a curious look. “You never said why.”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’ve been invited to participate in an extremely lucrative investment opportunity.” Draco sits up straighter. “I only need to send five hundred Galleons to a prince in Rhodesia, so that he can charter a dragon to save his kingdom, and then I’ll be repaid handsomely. He sent an Owl to me and fifty of his other closest friends to ask for our assistance.”
“What?” Harry says. “You told me you were investing in a school for crup literacy.”
“Why is that any better?” Hermione asks.
“I was,” Draco says with a heavy, put-upon air. “But did you know, Potter, that I’m allergic to crups? Apparently my sneezing was distracting them.”
“Why would I know that about you?” Harry asks. Now that he’s thinking about it, he’s not sure he’s ever seen Draco sneeze. “Why didn’t you know that about you?”
“I was raised with peacocks, obviously.” Draco rolls his eyes. “Catch up.”
Behind him, Ron snorts into his drink.
“You catch up,” Harry says. “That Owl was a scam. No Galleons for you.”
Draco’s eyes widen. Harry’s not certain Draco understands the concept of being refused, as evidenced by the splotches of red growing high across his cheekbones.
“You’re just jealous you don’t know any princes,” Draco says.
“Rather skint for a bloke who hobnobs with royalty, aren’t you?” Ron asks, relishing the moment as he digs his elbow into Draco’s side.
“Hardly,” Draco sniffs.
Harry is certain that’s not true. Draco seems to have enough to live without needing a job, but then he’s always asking Harry for loans he never pays back, eating Harry’s food, inviting himself out and passing Harry the bill.
Harry doesn’t mind. He has more than enough. And anyway, it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement: Draco gets bankrolled, and Harry gets to feel warm with the knowledge that he’s useful to someone, still. Ron enjoys the way Draco appears to be beholden to them. When he’s feeling petty, Harry enjoys that part, too.
“I have an idea,” Hermione says, placing her hands flat on the table and leaning forward. “How about I pay all three of you to shut the fuck up?”
They freeze.
“Hot barista is here,” Hermione says, looking over Harry’s head at the counter as she finger-combs her hair. “Merlin, the things I’d do to that man.”
Ron opens his mouth, but Hermione shushes him with a finger.
“Don’t say a word, any of you,” she says. “Hot barista has his sleeves rolled up and is shaking a tumbler. I need to remember this moment without your stupid voices ruining it.”
Harry glances at Ron, whose eyebrows are at his hairline.
“For what reason?” Draco asks.
Harry elbows Draco in his other side, motioning beneath the table. Draco frowns, looks down, takes in the not-so-subtle jerk-jerk-splooge movement Harry’s making onto Draco’s thigh.
“Girls wank?” Draco asks, loudly.
“Let the record show I did not ask that question,” Ron says, looking at all of them in turn, practically vibrating with glee.
“Of course we do,” Hermione says, and it doesn’t escape Harry that she doesn’t look nearly as annoyed as she would have if he or Ron had been the ones asking.
“But not the same way, surely,” Draco says, frowning.
“Well, no,” Hermione says. She crosses her arms, tearing her eyes wistfully from the barista and his tumbler shaking. Harry turns to look, agreeing silently with Hermione’s appraisal, until she kicks him beneath the table. Stop. Staring. she mouths.
“Different equipment, innit,” Ron supplies. He has, at some point, acquired a too-large piece of chewing gum and is smacking it loudly.
“I know that,” Draco says, rolling his eyes. “I’m a homosexual, not an idiot.”
“Beg to differ,” Harry mutters under his breath, still rubbing at his kicked leg. Hermione has the lower body strength of a small horse.
“I know what a vagina looks like,” Draco states proudly.
“Congratulations, I think?” Ron offers, looking as though he might genuinely mean it.
“Anyway, that’s not what I meant,” Draco continues. “It’s my understanding that women don’t have the same, you know… sexual et cetera…” He twirls his hand, drifting off for propriety.
Hermione’s eyebrows raise. “Care to finish that sentence, Malfoy?”
“Not particularly.” Draco reaches for Harry’s coffee, then, remembering it’s empty, crosses his legs and folds his hands on top of his knee. “It’s not a topic for the breakfast table.”
“Are you implying women don’t have as many needs as men?” Hermione asks.
“Well,” Ron cuts in. “That’s sort of true, isn’t it?”
“Sexual appetite is entirely unrelated to gender!” Hermione scoffs. “Didn’t you pay attention in our gender studies lecture?”
“Of course not,” Ron says.
“I once went six months without wanking,” Draco announces.
“You did not,” Ron says.
“Did so.”
“I could do that,” Harry lies. “No problem.”
“No you couldn’t,” Ron says, the traitor. He drums his fingers on the table. “Bet you couldn’t do it again, Malfoy.”
Harry grins, catching on. “You want money.” Harry focuses his attention on Draco. “Let’s find out if you can earn it.”
“I want in on this,” Hermione says. Harry isn’t looking at her, but he can hear her narrowed eyes.
“A contest,” Ron suggests. “To see who can go the longest without wanking.” He looks around the table. “We each put in ten Galleons, and whoever lasts longest gets the pot.”
Draco smirks and raises a single eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware people of your holy calibre contained such depths of multitude.”
“Oh we contain multitudes, Malfoy.” Harry grins. “We’re infected with multitudes.”
Draco raises the other eyebrow.
Harry frowns. Infected isn’t the right word, is it? Sometimes, he finds it hard to think when Draco’s giving him his undivided attention. His tongue goes claggy. A symptom of age, it must be. This was never an issue at Hogwarts.
“Didn’t think we had it in us, did you, Slyther-prick?” Ron laughs, elbowing Draco in the ribs again.
“Since you’re so concerned with my feminine desires,” Hermione says, digging into the canvas bag she uses as a handbag. “I’ll put in double. Twenty Galleons.” She slaps the coins down on the table.
“Go on,” Ron says, putting his money down with a large grin. Harry doesn’t know what he’s so happy about. Ron wanks every day. Harry knows this because he can hear it through the wall. Ron’ll be out before tea.
“Potter, can I borrow ten Galleons?” Draco asks.
Harry rolls his eyes and digs two ten Galleon coins from the hidden compartment in his wallet where he keeps Wizarding money.
He smacks a coin into the pale meat of Draco’s palm.
“There.”
“I’m in, also.” Draco pushes the coin to the middle of the table with one long, bony finger. “I’ll pay you back when I win, Potter.”
“No you won’t,” Harry says, “But yeah, I’m in. Obviously.”
“Shall we set rules?” Hermione asks, a greedy glint in her eye.
“Don’t wank,” Ron supplies.
“Thank you, Ronald. So helpful, as always.”
“You’re very welcome, Ms Granger. Do let me know if I can be of any other assistance,” Ron says, returning her wide, sarcastic smile. Harry hates when they get like this, if for no other reason than their flirtatious vitriol reminds him that they used to fuck.
“How will we be kept accountable?” Draco asks. “This one strikes me as both a pervert and a liar,” he says, thumb pointing in Harry’s direction.
“Exactly my point, thank you,” Hermione says over Harry’s offended huffing. “I happen to know a spell. It’s quite antiquated—Victorian mothers used to use it to ensure their daughters remained ‘pure’ until marriage.” She pulls a face. “But it would work nicely, and since we’d all be consenting to it… I suppose I’m fine with using it.”
“It won’t… do anything to us, will it?” Draco asks, mouth thin. Harry has a flashback to fifth-year, to Marietta Edgecomb sobbing in Umbridge’s office, the word SNEAK leaking out of her face.
“Not at all,” Hermione says. “It’s a simple alarm spell. If one of us—oh, shall we set the terms of the contest as actual completion?”
Now it’s Ron’s turn to make a face.
“Don’t talk about completing, Hermione. It’s crass,” he says.
“This time last year you were completing on my face.”
“Death,” Harry says. “One order of death, please. Extra hot.”
“I agree to these terms,” Draco says valiantly, neither disturbed nor disgusted by the mental grotesqueries on display.
“I’ll presume you two agree, as well,” Hermione says, barely affording a glance in Harry and Ron’s direction. They both nod anyway. “Excellent. It’s settled.” She places her hands on the table, preparing to stand. “I’m off to my lecture, but this evening we’ll gather at ours for the spell. From that point on, if any of us achieves a successful orgasm — by anyone or anything’s hand, but especially our own — then an alarm will sound, alerting us someone is out. We’ll keep going until only one person is left, and that person will win fifty Galleons. We’re agreed?”
“Agreed,” Draco says, sticking his hand out.
“Easiest money ever,” Ron says, putting his hand in as well.
Harry swallows, placing his hand on top of Ron’s in the pile, forcing himself to ignore the heat radiating from Ron’s freckled skin.
“Here goes nothing.”