Chapter Text
Draco’s Thirtieth Birthday began like any other day in his life—he woke up to his wand shrieking like a fucking mandrake, his bollocks freezing off in fucking June because the temperature regulation charms on his flat malfunctioned again, and a raging erection stuck out the fly of his boxers as if his cock just popped out to say ‘Good morning, Happy Fucking Birthday, stop neglecting me you fucking prude!’
With a few angry flicks of his wand from beneath a mountain of blankets—because of course the cooling charms weren’t working the night before, which meant going to bed in nothing but his pants—he got the temperature somewhat level. At least he could leave his bed without getting frostbite.
By the time he’d made it into the shower, he was sweating and cursing his landlord and his shoddy, ancient charmwork. The wank his cock had been begging for was just as weak as his water pressure.
Draco ate toast with the last scrapings of raspberry jam from the bottom of the jar then went downstairs to open the shop beneath his rented flat.
The Secret Ingredient Apothecary was open six days a week, whether the owner showed up or not. More often not, since Draco’s boss and landlord was probably over a hundred years old despite claiming to be seventy-five, and half of the time couldn’t even remember what year it was let alone the day of the week. It was fine, Merv probably shouldn’t be left alone around open fires and cauldrons full of boiling fluids anyway. He was a walking hazard.
Saturday was usually a fairly busy day for the shop. Draco spent the first few minutes after arriving checking to make sure the shop was as he left it the night before—tidy, everything in its place, inventory up to date, register open, pick-up orders for the day prepared in the cabinet.
On Draco’s Thirtieth Birthday, Draco opened The Secret Ingredient Apothecary at 8 o’clock sharp.
Margery Puckeridge arrived at precisely one minute after 8, as was customary on Saturdays, to pick up her weekly prescription of Think Drink and half a kilo of catnip for her many cats. Draco straightened his back and pasted on his customer service smile—one he didn’t feel but was necessary for his job. “Good morning, Miss Puckeridge, how has your week been?”
She tottered around the shop, either ignoring him or—more likely—not having heard him, poked her nose into a jar of dried shrivelfigs and took a deep whiff, then scrutinised some iridescent scarab beetle wings, holding them to the thick glass of her spectacles and blinking her magnified eyes at them. When she finally made it to the counter where Draco waited, she grinned up at him, three teeth shy of being toothless. “Oh! Young man! Would you mind helping me?”
“Of course, Miss Puckeridge. I have your usual order right here.” He ducked down and retrieved her potion and catnip, tucked neatly in a labelled paper bag, from the order pick-up cabinet. “A week’s supply of Think Drink, to be taken twice a day to aide in memory loss reduction, and half a kilo of our finest dried catnip.”
“Goodness! Such a helpful young man you are. I must let Merv know how diligent you are. Are you new? Just graduated from Hogwarts?” Margery dug her crooked fingers around in her coin purse and fished out a Galleon and six knuts, which had been the cost of her order about seven years before. Draco didn’t correct her and slipped another Galleon from his own pocket into his hand before he reached out to collect her coins.
The moment her fingers brushed his palm, a shiver went through him—Margery’s voice filled his head, only briefly, but it was undoubtedly her voice:
‘Yo, check it, I'm a grandma, gettin' old and grey, but my mind's a mess, memories fadin' away, got nineteen cats, fluffy, sleek, and mean—’
Draco stood behind the counter, hand still extended and full of coins, and stared down at the ninety year old woman. She snapped her coin purse shut—her mouth was definitely not moving, let alone slinging out a rap about her cats. Convinced he’d been hearing things due to lack of sleep—he’d been up late doing inventory the night before—he dropped the coins into the register, then picked up the paper bag to hand over to Margery.
Clearly, Margery wasn’t actually rapping about her nineteen—nineteen? Merlin’s hairy arse—cats. That would be absurd.
Her fingers again brushed his as she clutched the bag he held out to her. In those few milliseconds they touched, he heard her voice again:
‘There's this pretty young man at the potion store, he’s always smilin' at me, stockin' up the floor, got a nice pert tush that's a sight to behold, I’d give it a pinch if I wasn’t ninety years old—’
Draco yanked his hand away and flashed his teeth in an awkward grimace. “Have a lovely day,” he said, his voice was only a little bit high and tight.
“Thank you, dear! Stay out of trouble, give old Merv my best.” She shuffled back out the front door, chimes jingling happily behind her, as if she hadn’t just had lewd thoughts about Draco’s arse.
Draco twisted around and tried to look at his own arse. It looked as it always did—boring, arse-shaped, clothed in linen trousers. He tugged his wand out from his sleeve and cast Finite on himself. Nothing happened, no fizzles or snaps or cold shivers down his spine. He cast every curse detection spell he knew on himself and the shop—which of course revealed nothing—and then cast so many Finites on himself that his skin went dry and his fingertips buzzed.
Surely it was just his imagination, but one couldn’t be too careful.
Three customers later, Draco was half tempted to close for the day and call in the Ministry’s Curse Breakers. Maybe some Unspeakables, too, for good measure. Perhaps a mediwix from Janus Thickey. Something could be wrong with the magic of the shop, more than the temperature regulation charms. Perhaps something was wrong with him. Whatever it was, it needed to be fixed immediately.
Worst case scenario, he’d gone mad. Hearing what he assumed were thoughts from anyone he came into contact with was ludicrous—Margery couldn’t have been rapping about her cats and his bum that morning. Eternally grumpy Mr. Hubert hadn’t had “Cotton Eyed Joe” on loop in his head—though that was much more believable, and would explain his foul mood.
The one woman who’d come in for some Pepper Up had smiled at him, but the moment they touched when she handed him her Galleons, he’d heard her internal monologue hissing, ‘If I’d known death eater scum worked here, I’d have gone somewhere else. Disgusting.’ At least that one had made sense.
By noon, Draco had enough. For the first time in probably the entire length of his employment, he closed up the shop early. If Merv had been present—and wasn’t incredibly senile—he’d probably have had a fit about it, but Draco no longer gave a shit. His own sanity was suddenly in question and the shop couldn’t run with both of its keepers gone mad.
Draco scrambled up to his flat after closing up, hands shaking so badly he’d knocked the open/close sign off of the door when flipping it twice. He paced his sitting room floor and chewed on his thumbnail until it started to hurt, then moved to his next finger.
He was experienced with Legillimency and Occulmency—at least he had been during the war—but whatever insanity had started that morning felt completely different from the sensation of diving into someone’s mind maze and filing through their thoughts, feelings, and memories. It was as if he was hearing the exact inane thought that crossed the person’s mind at the precise moment of contact. A stream of consciousness.
Cat raps. Cotton-Eyed Joe.
He stopped pacing in the middle of the room and dropped his chewed-on fingers from his mouth as a memory from Hogwarts bubbled to the surface. Something about it made him instantly ill.
The Cherry Curse.
Pansy and the other pureblood girls whispered about it, the boys teased each other about it. It was just supposed to be a silly pureblood urban legend. A myth. A joke meant to tease each other, a rumour passed from generation to generation of teens meant to scare them into marrying early and producing heirs.
It wasn’t real.
Draco scrambled to his small writing desk and scratched out a hasty note to Pansy. His hand shook so violently he dropped the quill twice.
Pansy—
The Cherry Curse, the silly story about reading minds when you turn 30 if you’re unmarried—do you remember that?
—Draco
He opened his window and signalled for a public owl with his wand—a rather impatient horned owl swooped in moments later—and tied the note to its leg.
An hour and five more mangled bitten fingernails later her reply arrived, carried by Ginevra’s barn owl Gizmo, who stared at him with wide, thoughtless eyes. He took the letter from her leg and tore it open.
Draco—
What the fuck? Yes I remember it, it was some stupid urban legend. Why do you ask? Did Blaise tease you about it? Also, it wasn’t unmarried at 30, it was being a virgin at 30. You wouldn’t have anything to worry about anyway, you silly thing!
Please don’t be late to your birthday drinks tonight, or I will drag you out of your flat by your skinny little ankles. 7pm at Aguamenti, and don’t forget it’s karaoke night!
Happy birthday, darling!
—Pansy
“Fuck fuck fuck fuck,” Draco yelled into his empty apartment as dread slithered ice cold down his back. “The stupid fucking thing is real, what the fuck!?”
Draco wasn’t ashamed of being a virgin. It was an outdated, misogynistic concept anyway, and how did one even quantify virginity? Did hands and mouths count? Did it only count if genitals were touching? If a cock was thrusting into places? Where was the line?
Not that any of that mattered, because Draco had done none of it at all.
He’d kissed Pansy once at the Yule Ball in fourth year (it was terrible) and Blaise later on during fifth year (marginally better), but since the war the only action he’d gotten was swift shower wanks in the morning, sometimes before bed. Occasionally, he’d even get a little wild and shove a finger up his arse and think about certain men with dark, messy curls and green eyes doing things more exciting than shoving a finger up his arse.
By all definitions, he was a virgin.
Not necessarily by choice, as he’d tried through most of his early adulthood to get shagged by random men at the muggle clubs Pansy would drag him to. On every occasion, he’d ended up obliviating the men. Their hands felt wrong, or his stomach would turn, or their breath smelled too much like cheap beer, or their eyes weren’t green. He’d never gotten further than a snog and over-the-clothes groping, which was entirely one-sided.
Something about touching strange men in dirty club loos didn’t appeal to him, no matter how many drinks he’d had. Pansy was, obviously, still under the impression that he’d gotten off with all of them.
At five minutes to 7 that night, he stood in his room, hyperventilating and casting cooling and freshening charms on himself, and trying not to have a full-blown panic attack.
He just had to go to a crowded bar, sit with his few friends—one of whom was the man most frequently in his wank fantasies, of course, because fuck his life—and have some drinks. It would be fine. He’d just have to completely avoid touching any of them so he could keep the illusion of having friends who didn’t secretly think he was a sad, pathetic loser.
It would be fine.
It was not fine.
Aguamenti was packed full of younger, hipper people than Draco and his seven friends, all of whom were either thirty or almost there. He squeezed between Pansy and Blaise—he figured since they were his oldest friends in attendance, they’d have less reason to dislike him and he could handle it if they did. He certainly couldn’t sit next to Ronald or Hermione, they definitely still resented him. Luna might be alright, but it could be hard to tell with her. Ginevra definitely hated him. Potter was to be avoided at all costs—Draco knew he couldn’t handle knowing how much Potter and his hero complex pitied him. Until he figured out how to get rid of this bullshit mind reading curse, he’d have to stay as far from Potter as possible.
Which turned out to be fairly difficult—every time he turned around, there he was, grinning at him, with his stupid face and his stupid eyes and his stupid dimples.
The thing about Potter was that he touched people. He put his hands on their shoulders, gave one-armed back pats to his mates, leaned on shoulders. He was comfortable, and at some times, almost desperate for human contact. Draco had only just started getting used to it. It gave him a flutter in his chest when Potter would bestow him with a pat on the shoulder or a nudge with his elbow when he thought he’d been funny.
It was almost worse rebuffing him than it would inevitably be if he let Potter touch him in any way.
He watched Potter make his rounds again, probably asking if anyone wanted anything while he was up because he was a chivalrous bastard, smiling his stupid crooked smile with those fucking dimples and his full lips. Draco curled in on himself. No, he couldn’t let his birthday be the day he found out that the man he’d been in love with for over a decade found him pitiable and repulsive.
Draco finished his third drink. Listening to everyone talk about their lives, all much less pathetic than his, was his least favourite part of coming to these outings, even when they were for his birthday. He stood up.
“Where are you going, darling?” asked Pansy, and then her hand was on his arm. ‘Please don’t say you’re leaving yet,’ her voice continued in his head, paired to the accusatory squint she directed at him.
“Just going to the loo and stopping by the bar. I’ll be back,” he promises, patting her hand on his bicep.
‘Little shit, you’d better come back. Potter and I worked hard to make sure everyone would be here for this.’
He wanted to respond. He nearly did—“What do you mean, Potter and I? He planned this?”—but he smiled tightly at her, teeth clenched, and left. Wouldn’t do to start replying to the thoughts.
Loo business handled, he pushed his way through the young crowd—Occulmency does not work, apparently, and young drunk people are loud even int heir heads apparently—and squeezed in at the bar. He touched no less than four people while sitting there.
If he was going to have this ability, he needed to learn how to control it, at least enough to keep himself sane. The four voices overlapped so it was hard to understand what they were saying—thinking—at first, but he managed to separate them into distinct voices while he waited for the barman to notice him.
‘Where’s the bloody barman?’
‘Did that guy just touch me? Gross.’
‘Gotta get laid tonight–’
‘Rah, rah-ah-ah-ah roma, roma-ma gaga, ooh-la-la–’
‘Titstitstits… such a strange word. Did i remember to turn my oven off? Did I feed the cat? Wonder what time it is.’
So basically a whole load of complaining, tits, rambling, and—was that Lady Gaga?
He ordered two fingers of house firewhiskey, neat, and was thankful that the barman hadn't been touching the glass when he took it from the counter. Somehow, even if not actually touching, thoughts seemed to be able to travel through some objects if someone touched it at the same time as Draco. Made sense, since he could hear them even if clothed parts of him touched another person. He'd have to test the limits of it at some point. Perhaps he could hear thoughts through walls, wouldn’t that be something?
Distantly, he registered that someone was singing Frank Sinatra. In the young, hip wix pub, filled with young twenty-somethings who’d probably never even heard of Frank Sinatra. And whoever it was singing sounded really decent, which was always a surprise at Aguamenti’s Karaoke Nights. The crowd seemed pleased, at least. He glanced over his shoulder at the karaoke stage and nearly choked on his drink.
Potter?
Since when could Potter croon? And since when did he sing love songs?
Who was he singing it for?
“ For nobody else gave me a thrill—With all your faults, I love you still—”
Draco finished the drink in a gulp and rushed his way back to the table. Pansy was in Ginevra’s lap and a pretty young girl—couldn’t be more than 22—had taken his seat and batted her definitely-false eyelashes at Blaise. Potter’s seat was vacant, though. Because he was busy crooning. Draco figured he could at least sit there long enough for Blaise to wander off with his flavour of the night and reclaim his own seat.
“ It had to be you—Wonderful you—It had to be you—”
As soon as he sat, Luna leaned into his side and placed her head on his shoulder. “You aren’t supposed to buy your own drinks on your birthday, silly,” she said. ‘Draco looks so lonely tonight,’ her inner voice goes on, ‘He smells like vanilla. I wonder if they sell vanilla bean bugatsa at the bakery—’
“Malfoy!”
Draco stiffened as Potter approached the table. When had his song ended? Draco braced himself, leaning further into Luna, whose thoughts were benign enough and were spiralling quickly into her thoughts on the fair trade of Madagascar vanilla beans.
‘Oh it’s Harry! They’d make such a sweet couple, he and Draco. Vanilla and cinnamon.’
“What?!” Draco’s knee hit the table as he startled away from Luna.
"You aren't supposed to buy your own drinks," said Potter as he stopped at the end of the table beside Draco—all sad puppy dog dejected green eyes and adorable full-lipped pout, the wanker.
Draco thought about throwing Luna’s hideous neon yellow drink at him and running away. "I'm capable of getting them myself," he snapped back. The three—four—drinks he'd had prior made his words feel thick on his tongue.
"But it's your birthday." Potter pulled a spare chair from a neighbouring table and straddled it beside Draco, close enough that he could feel the movement of air and heat where their knees nearly touched.
He was too close. Draco pressed his knees together and angled away from him to keep from brushing against Potter.
"Let me get your next one? Or we can go get, like, food or something. There should be some food stands open this late, right? Or wait! Fortesque's is open, do you want to go get some ice cream? For your birthday!"
Draco's eyes darted around the room for an escape. Pansy was still in Ginevra’s lap and not even looking their way, Blaise looked bored and very drunk, unfocused eyes gazing at the witch who’d been sitting with him earlier howling Celestina Warbeck on the karaoke stage. Ron and Hermione watched him and Potter, but Draco could tell from their poor attempts at hiding their glee that they wouldn't be of any help.
Draco’s Thirtieth Birthday could not be the night that he found out that his hard-won friendship with Potter was a farce. He couldn’t stomach learning that Harry fucking hated him, or worse, had only befriended him out of pity—not when he felt so very much for Potter, a feeling he'd never admit to out loud because the object of his affection was undeniably out of his league, undoubtedly had the pick of any partner he could ever want, and was absolutely, one-hundred percent straight.
"So what do you say, Malfoy? Ice cream?"
It happened so fast—someone nudged past Draco’s chair (’I want your love, and I want your revenge—’) hard enough to jostle him out of his seat and into Potter, and suddenly Potter’s voice flooded his mind.
‘Oh my god, oh my god, we’re so close, he smells like heaven—’
Draco flung himself away from Potter and his thoughts cut off abruptly. He’d overshot his retreat, though, and nearly slid off his displaced chair into Luna’s side when Potter’s hands latched onto his arms.
“Are you alright? Maybe you don’t need another drink, yeah?” said Potter, but Draco could hardly hear him because Potter’s inner voice was deafening: ‘I love him so much, I wish I could just kiss him, fuck, look at how beautiful he is, I’m so in love with him. Maybe I could kiss him and if he hated it I could brush it off, like I’m drunk, but no that would be creepy, wouldn’t it? Consent is sexy. And Draco is sexy. Stop thinking sexy things. Fuck, I’m being weird, say something, you idiot—’ Potter let him go once he’d righted himself in his seat and tucked his hands into the large pocket of the worn-out green pullover hoodie he always seemed to be wearing. “So uh… d’you want to get some food? With me?”
Where was the hatred? The barely concealed distaste? The pity?
Draco gaped at him long enough for Potter to ask “Are you feeling alright? Should I walk you ho—”
Draco flinched away before Potter’s hand made contact with his forehead. “I’m fine, Potter. I just haven’t been sleeping well. My flat is… well. You know. Awful.”
Potter nodded, his hand retreating back into his hoodie pocket. “Temp charms still acting up, huh? Merv never fixed them?”
How had he never seen it? Was this some kind of cosmic joke? “Oh, uh, no. And last time I tried, I think I just made them worse.”
“They’re probably still attuned to his signature. I could come take a look, I keep telling you I might be able to help. Or, you know, my offer still stands from before.”
Potter was straight—wasn’t he? “Offer?”
“Grimmauld, remember? My house? I have loads of rooms, like so many extra rooms. It’s much too big for just me. I wouldn’t mind. At all.”
Right, the thing Potter had been offering him since he found out about the fucked up temperature regulation charms in his blasted flat. Had it really been two years since he’d started offering? How many times had Draco laughed it off thinking he was joking, or gotten angry at him because he wasn’t a charity case?
Potter’s hand was on his shoulder steadying him, and Draco really had to stop disassociating every time Potter touched him. “Malfoy, you’re like, super pale. More than normal. Do you need to go home and lie down?” and ‘is he okay? he looks like he might be sick, should I walk him home? Apparition or the Floo might make it worse, I could walk him home, make sure he’s okay, check those damned charms, maybe bring him some soup tomorrow—’
“I’m fine. Stop touching—leave me—I—” Draco stumbled away, leaving Harry’s hand hanging midair where he’d been holding on to him. “I think I will go home, actually. Feeling a bit lightheaded.” He flapped a hand toward the man on stage, who was in the process of butchering Another One Bites the Dust. “The caterwauling is bringing on a headache.”
He stood up and pushed his chair back to the other table. “Oh. Did you hear me earlier? I sang Frank Sinatra! I didn’t do too bad, I think?”
Of course not, you were amazing, Draco would have said if he wasn’t kind of an arsehole. “I must have missed it. Shame.”
Potter’s grin faltered. “Oh.”
Luna, who’d been quietly sipping her absurdly yellow drink while Draco had nearly broken his tailbone on the floor, put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “I’d really love to get tea with you sometime and catch up.” She smiled at him, and ‘He works so often that I hardly ever get to see him anymore.’
How he had ever thought Luna would think poorly of him was beyond him—she didn’t have a deceptive bone in her body. Draco found himself returning her smile, unbidden. “Of course. I’ll send you an owl soon, I promise.”
Potter no longer blocked his exit. He turned to make his goodbyes to the table and Potter’s hand appeared on his bicep, gentle and sweet. His thumb rubbed a small circle against his shirt—he knew better now that it wasn’t just an absent gesture from Potter. There was longing there. ‘I know he doesn’t feel the same. He can barely stand to be around me most of the time. I wish he’d let me closer to him. I’d settle for being closer friends. I’d settle for anything with him.’ “Malfoy, I—”
Draco backed away, grimacing and his shoulders raised to his ears. He addressed the whole table, “Thank you all for coming, I’ll be going now, goodnight!”
Potter’s hand fell from Draco’s shoulder and he was immediately bereft. He pretended he didn’t see the way Potter’s brows knit together in concern, the way his hand lifted in an aborted reach for his, the way his eyes burned into Draco’s retreating back as he hurried out of the pub into the warm night.