Work Text:
It was not a secret that Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived and saviour of wizarding Britain, liked ice cream. Anyone who had been at Hogwarts with him had seen him devour bowls of ice cream at dessert. (He attributed this to the Dursleys giving Dudley extra heaping scoops while avoiding eye contact with the quarter-teaspoon amount left on Harry’s plate). Especially as summer proper swept over London, blanketing everything in oppressive sunshine and causing everyone in the office to roll up the sleeves of their robes, Harry liked nothing better than going out to Fortescue’s after a long day and commiserating with Ron about their troubles over the newest magical flavour.
All of which was to say, Harry was nearly all the way to the front of the queue when he noticed. He’d been distracted by listening to Ron’s tirade about the elderly witch whose house he’d been sent to, who had seemed perfectly pleasant until Ron happened to mention his wife Hermione was Muggleborn and the witch had turned instantly cold and begun lecturing him on blood purity. “Honestly, I’ve never had the urge to punch an old woman in my life,” Ron said, “but she might’ve set a new record.”
“Would’ve served her right,” Harry muttered, a little disquieted that the specters of blood purity could still loom now, three years after Voldemort had fallen. Maybe Harry had just been naive to think Voldemort’s death would mean the end of everything else with it. Things were never so easy. At least, not for him.
They came up near the counter, finally, and Ron left off on the tirade to peer at the menu. “Look, they’ve got Chinese Fireball Chocolate—what d’you reckon is in that?”
“Lights on fire in your mouth, I think,” said Harry, pointing at the counter, where he could see someone in a pastel blue-and-pink apron bent close to an excitedly bouncing five-year-old to show them a heaping cone of Chinese Fireball Chocolate ice cream.
The cone exploded in an impressive ball of fire that blew harmlessly around the child’s mouth. “It’s not hot!” the child squeaked in delight.
“Might have to get that one,” Ron said appreciatively. Then the Fortescue worker straightened up, still holding the cone, and all other thoughts dripped like melting ice cream right out of Harry’s head. The worker was wearing a small white hat shaped like a pirate's that sat jauntily on top of platinum blond hair, still every bit as irritatingly shiny as it had been during their Hogwarts days.
The worker, because of course it had to be, was Draco bloody Malfoy.
“Harry,” Ron said, in an awed tone. “Are you seeing this?”
“Unfortunately,” Harry said grimly.
“I thought he went back to France after the war,” Ron hissed. They both pressed themselves awkwardly next to the desserts display to make room for a frazzled-looking mother holding a baby splattered with vanilla ice cream.
“I thought so too,” Harry whispered back. They had to forego the rest of the conversation because they were stepping up to order, and Draco was reaching behind him to retie the strings of his apron. “I’ll be with you in a second,” he said, surprisingly civil. Harry’s hopes that anything at all might have changed in the intervening years fizzled out as soon as Draco looked up, with a polite smile Harry had never even imagined could exist on his face.
The smile disappeared, and was replaced by the flicker of one of his old, arrogant sneers before Draco wrested back neutrality with a clear effort. “Welcome to Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour,” he said, only barely sounding like he was speaking through gritted teeth. “What can I help you get today?”
“Blimey,” said Ron. “Malfoy money run out with the reparations, or do you just like selling ice cream?”
“I’ll have you know, Weasley,” said Draco, “that my great-grandfather was a renowned ice cream maker who quite revolutionized the field. I thought I might follow in his footsteps. Hardly my fault that not everyone can lay claim to such an illustrious pedigree.”
Ron shook his head. “Would the illustrious pedigree mind scooping some Chinese Fireball Chocolate?”
“Anything else?” said Draco. Both of them looked to Harry—Ron with badly hidden glee, Draco with the reluctance of someone who has spotted a spider out of the corner of their eye on their bedroom ceiling and really doesn’t want confirmation that it’s still there.
“Er,” said Harry. “Hippogriff Hazelnut for me, please.”
“Of course,” said Draco. The usual effect of his clipped aristocratic tones—it made Harry as unreasonably annoyed as it ever had during school, as if he’d last seen Draco yesterday and not three years ago—was somewhat dampened by the bright pink stripes on his uniform and the cheery angle of the hat.
While Draco was occupied scooping the ice cream, Ron shot Harry several significant glances that Harry studiously ignored. It was Harry’s turn to pay for the ice cream, so he handed over the requisite coins and took the cone with great care that his fingers didn’t brush Draco’s. “Thanks,” he muttered, and attempted to hightail it out of the shop (Ron hot on his heels) but only succeeded in painfully slowly maneuvering through the crowd of squealing children, parents, and loudly gossiping teenagers. “We can’t have been that loud when we were that age,” Harry said to Ron as soon as they’d stepped outside. The sun was beating down on Diagon Alley, and the streets were thronged with back-to-school shoppers and everyone else hoping to make the most of the end of summer.
“They get louder every year,” Ron agreed. “And smaller. But Draco Malfoy looks the same as he ever did. Draco Malfoy! Working at Florean Fortescue’s!” A beatific smile spread across his face, only to be immediately obscured by the roaring fireball that exploded from the ice cream as Ron brought it up to his mouth. “Oh, this is good,” Ron said in approval. “Almost worth having to see a slimy ferret.”
Harry automatically lifted his own ice cream…and then frowned. He was holding the same thing as Ron was. “I ordered the Hippogriff Hazelnut, didn’t I?”
“That bastard,” Ron said. “I reckon he didn’t want to go to the effort of using a different scoop for Harry Potter. He’s never worked an honest day in his life.” Grinning as they ambled down the street, Ron said, “I can’t wait to tell Hermione!”
“If you told me,” said Hermione, shading her face from the still-glaring afternoon sun as she and Harry walked up to Fortescue’s the next day, “that three years after the war we’d be going to an ice cream shop, where Draco Malfoy works, just to see if he’s working today—”
“I am not going just to see Draco Malfoy!” Harry said indignantly, holding the door open so they could both pass through. He had to hold the door for ten more seconds than he’d wanted to because a family as big as the Weasleys was streaming out through the door. “I just want to try the Hippogriff Hazelnut,” he muttered as soon as they were both inside.
Hermione cast him a distinctly pitying glance as they joined the line. This time, Harry’s eyes went straight to the counter. A jolt went through him: Draco wasn’t there. Then Hermione made a noise in the back of her throat and he looked where she was staring. Draco was standing at a little table stacked with lollipops and assorted other candies, ramrod-straight as he listened to a woman so elderly she was bent nearly double. He leaned in to listen and then shook his head apologetically. She shook a finger at him in annoyance.
“Malfoy!” called another voice, loud enough to be heard even above the general din of the store. A door behind the counter banged open, and a middle-aged woman with tendrils of brown hair escaping every which way from her hair net stepped through. “You’re wanted at the counter!”
Draco’s head snapped over to the counter, but just as he turned back to the elder witch, a small boy came up to him holding an empty ice cream cone and pouting visibly. The boy was tracking blue ice cream all over the floor from a large puddle a few feet away, which started puffing smoke even as Harry watched. Draco looked from the puddle to the witch to the counter in evident despair.
Harry and Hermione exchanged glances. “You were right about the uniform,” Hermione said, smothering a laugh. “I don’t think it really suits him.”
Harry coughed out a laugh of his own. To make it look less like they were both staring, even though they manifestly were and Draco was now trying to convince the elderly witch to let him go deal with the growing queue, he said, “What were you saying about Penhallow just now?”
“Oh, well, she was telling me her poor grandfather’s passed away from an allergic reaction to chestnuts,” said Hermione as they took a few steps forward. “Did you know magical people and Muggles have an equal likelihood of having a life-threatening allergy, but to different things? I read about it in a journal the other day, it’s really quite fascinating.”
“I don’t think the Dursleys ever got me tested for anything,” Harry said. “I reckon Aunt Petunia hoped I’d eat a nut wrong and keel over.”
“Oh, Harry,” Hermione said, and tactfully changed the subject. They whiled away the rest of the time talking—it was nice to chat properly with Hermione, because they both had busy enough jobs that they only really said hello in the hallways these days—and all too soon they had reached the front of the queue.
Draco had found his way back to the counter and gave them what might best be described as a haughty glare. Harry couldn’t help but notice that there was a spot of blue ice cream on his chin. “Welcome to Fortescue’s,” he said. There was also ice cream on his apron, but it blended well with the mint-coloured stripes. “What can I help you get today?”
“Espresso for me, please,” Hermione said.
“I’ll get the Hippogriff Hazelnut,” Harry said, enunciating perhaps a tad more clearly than he strictly needed to. “Please and thank you.”
Draco nodded stiffly at them and turned away to get a scoop. Harry’s eyes were caught by, of all things, the movement of his legs and buttocks under the apron, and then averted his eyes quickly so he wouldn’t be caught staring. He didn’t dare sneak a glance at Hermione, who was definitely looking at him with disapproval.
Draco came back with two cones heaped full of brown ice cream. Hermione insisted on paying, so Harry hung back and tried not to look at Draco. Their eyes met only once, while Draco was turning to the next customer, and Harry glanced away as quickly as if he’d been stung.
“Come on, Harry,” said Hermione, and they nudged and elbowed and apologised their way out of the shop.
When they were outside, Harry took a careful lick of his ice cream. And frowned. He was experiencing the perfectly delectable and pleasant taste of coffee, which was…not what he had ordered. “He did it again,” Harry said.
“Did what?” Hermione said, licking her ice cream contentedly. From the golden rim on both of their cones, she’d paid extra for the charmed ones that stopped ice cream from running down the sides.
“Got my order wrong,” Harry grumbled. “This is espresso.”
“They’re the same colour,” Hermione said dubiously. “Maybe he just made a mistake? He did seem a bit…” She gestured meaningfully at the sounds of shrieking and chatter that drifted through the opening door. “Busy?”
“It’s not that,” Harry said. “He’s got something against me, ‘Mione. He hasn’t changed at all.”
Hermione occupied herself with her ice cream for a significant moment before responding. Harry ate his own, barely tasting the (admittedly delicious) espresso as they made their way back to the Ministry. “You know as well as I do that he must have changed, Harry,” said Hermione. “Isn’t that why we came? To see how much? The Draco we knew in school would rather have died than work a retail job. He’d have thought it was beneath him.”
“I wish I knew why he’s doing this,” said Harry. “Remember when we had the Marauder’s Map?”
“I am not letting you spend all your free time following Draco Malfoy around everywhere he goes as if we’re sixteen years old again,” Hermione snapped. Harry knew she was taking this seriously because they walked by a bookshop and she didn’t even glance at the titles in the window. “If you’re that interested in knowing about his life, why don’t you just talk to him? Properly, this time, and not for two seconds while he’s serving you ice cream?”
“I don’t have anything to talk to him about,” Harry said. “‘S’not like we have anything in common, unless you count jobs where we have to talk to people.”
“That’s something in common,” said Hermione judiciously. “Go again tomorrow and see if he’ll come with you somewhere after his shift.”
The thought of spending any time alone with Draco Malfoy sent weird tingles down Harry’s spine. “I don’t know,” he hedged.
“Well, don’t bring me to the shop tomorrow,” Hermione said as they headed out of Diagon Alley. “I would do anything for you, Harry, except seeing Draco Malfoy look miserable at his job two days in a row.”
Harry put off having any sort of real conversation with Draco by testing a hypothesis. He skipped the next day because he’d been sent out on a raid of a purported Dark wizard safehouse, which was booby-trapped inside and out and thus required Ron, Harry, and the rest of their team to spend the entire day sweating under a burning sun as they dismantled the traps one by one, only to enter the house and find that it had been empty the whole time. Harry hadn’t even had the energy to go looking for Draco after that. But the day after was Saturday, so he offered to stand Henry Pigeonsworth an ice cream to celebrate surviving their mission. Pigeonsworth got a cone of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans (“limited time partnership!” squealed a poster of a smiling woman on the counter), and Harry decided to try his luck.
Draco was working, because of course he was, even though it was a completely different day of the week and even a different time than usual (just after lunch). And, of course, when Harry was handed his cone and gingerly took a lick, nutty goodness flooded his tongue as a light breeze like the wings of a Hippogriff blew over his face.
“‘Course he does this,” Harry muttered to himself as they left the shop. “The one time I don’t order it.”
“What was that?” Pigeonsworth asked, taking a hearty bite out of his ice cream. “Ooh, blackberry!”
“Nothing,” Harry sighed.
Harry tried it again and again over the next few weeks, as summer stretched out languorously to drape its warm arms over London. He went with Neville and Luna to catch up with them (“I think Draco Malfoy’s trying to get your attention, Harry,” said Luna, which was silly because Draco had taken to completely ignoring Harry even while he was ordering). That time he ordered the hazelnut and got minty mermaid, which just tasted like toothpaste and salt. He tried going with Ron and Hermione, listening fondly to them bickering the whole time, and got a plain vanilla ice cream instead of the chocolate he’d actually ordered. He went with Ginny, who found the whole thing hilarious and suggested he come the next time with Blaise (“I’ll make him come with you,” Ginny said with a glint in her eye, to which Harry laughed and said, “Spare me the details of how you’ll do that, thanks”). A few days later, Harry came up to the by-now-very-familiar door of Fortescue’s and found Blaise lounging against the wall waiting for him. They’d never hung out one-on-one, only in groups when Ginny brought him, but Blaise made snarky comments about everyone else in line that made Harry laugh despite himself. He could see what Ginny saw in him and was really happy for them.
(And only a teeny, tiny bit jealous that he didn’t have a handsome Slytherin of his own to make cutting jokes meant only for his ears when they were out together. Not that there were any of those conveniently lying around.)
When they got to the counter, Draco’s left eyebrow raised infinitesimally to see the company Harry was keeping. “Welcome to Fortescue’s,” was all he said. “I didn’t know you liked ice cream, Blaise.”
“I didn’t know you liked it enough to work here,” Blaise said, leaning insouciantly against the counter. “You’ve been ignoring my dinner invites. Mother’s been quite put out.”
“I’ll come to the next one,” Draco said stiffly. “What can I get for you?”
“I’ll take a Hippogriff Hazelnut,” Blaise said. (This was the plan he and Harry had agreed on ahead of time.) “And Harry will get the same.”
Draco’s eyes did flicker to Harry at that, but he only nodded and turned away to get the scoops. “This is interesting,” Blaise whispered to Harry. “I’m rather grateful I took Ginny up on her invitation.”
“I still don’t want any details,” Harry whispered back.
Draco handed Blaise the two cones. “You’re not going to pay?” Harry said under his breath as they turned to leave the store.
“My family has a tab in all the stores in Diagon Alley,” Blaise said, waving a hand dismissively. “Don’t think too much of it.” He called over his shoulder at Draco, “And accept the next dinner invitation!”
Harry looked down at his ice cream cone with a fair amount of resignation. It looked the same as Blaise’s, but as recent experiences had shown, that didn’t mean very much. He took a hesitant lick…and blinked. This wasn’t Hippogriff Hazelnut. It tasted something like chocolate fudge, with an orangey aftertaste that had a bit of a mouth-tingling kick. Harry ate appreciatively as they made their way to the door, only to frown and pull back when his throat started feeling oddly scratchy. He wasn’t coming down with something, was he? Maybe all this ice cream wasn’t good for his immune system.
Blaise was saying something, but Harry had to stop walking as his throat closed up even further. “You alright, Potter?” Blaise said.
“I…” Harry said. Fluttery panic filled him, and it didn’t help that his throat was closing up even further. He felt like he suddenly couldn’t breathe.
“What did he put in your ice cream?” Blaise demanded. He peered at Harry’s exposed forearm, oddly red under the window sunlight. “Merlin, are you really having an allergic reaction right now? If you die this will be incredibly inconvenient. Draco Abraxas Malfoy!”
Harry put a hand to his throat to try to alleviate the pressure and found that he couldn’t. He swallowed, painfully, and tried to just breathe. He was vaguely aware that people around him were murmuring and clearing a loose ring of space around him.
“Come on,” said Blaise grimly, materializing out of the crowd and steering Harry forcefully towards the back of the shop. “We’re Flooing to St Mungo’s.”
Looking back on it later, Harry wouldn’t fully be able to remember the events of the next hour or two. The wizard at the front desk took one look at his scar and sent him straight up to a room with wide eyes, completely bypassing the queue (which Harry would’ve normally hated but couldn’t quite bring himself to care about in the moment); he was seated on a bed while a no-nonsense Healer cast a diagnostics spell and asked why he’d eaten something he was clearly allergic to. He’d taken a healthy dose of Allergy Ambrosia, which went down like warm honey, and then Ron and Hermione had burst into his room.
“I could kill him,” Hermione said, embracing him tightly. “And you! Risking your life to chase after Draco Malfoy, again!”
“Some things never change,” Ron said. As soon as Hermione had disentangled herself, he clapped Harry on the back with worried eyes. “Don’t scare us like that, mate, the Healer only said we were your emergency contacts and that you were in hospital.”
“Sorry,” Harry said sincerely. “I’m fine now, really, I swear. I just—”
The door swung open, and all three of them looked up, expecting a Healer. It wasn’t a Healer. It was Draco Malfoy, changed out of the apron but still wearing (incongruously with his expensive-looking black robe) the pointed white hat. “I’m here to apologise,” he said, holding himself like a condemned man awaiting the executioner’s blow.
Ron and Hermione both took a threatening step towards him, and Draco’s already-pale face went a shade whiter. “Don’t go anywhere near him,” Ron said.
“As if you haven’t done enough!” Hermione added tartly.
“No, nothing like that,” Draco said. “Could I…speak with Harry? Alone? I want to apologise.”
They both glanced at Harry. For his part, Harry could not believe that it took having his first-ever allergic reaction for Draco to finally, actually speak to him. He nodded shortly. “We’ll be right outside,” Hermione promised, tapping her ear significantly and glancing at her purse. Harry, who knew she had an Extendable Ear on her at all times, just nodded again, feeling a rush of fondness for his best friends.
As soon as the door had shut behind them, Draco cleared his throat. “I’m sorry,” he said, gingerly taking a seat on one of the hard-backed visitors’ chairs. “I never meant you harm, not really.”
“Then why’ve you been giving me the wrong ice cream all this time?” Harry said. “Just wanted to ruin my life a little?”
It was problematic that Draco had nearly killed him with ice cream, was wearing an adorable white pirate’s hat, and still looked as beautiful as he did. The sunlight filtering through the hospital curtains filled his grey eyes with an expression so unfamiliar that it took a moment for Harry to identify it as remorse. “It was petty,” Draco acknowledged. “But you’ve always been the golden boy. The perfect saviour, turned the perfect Auror.” A mild note of bitterness entered his voice, and he shifted almost imperceptibly in the chair. “At the trial, they said I could either move to France permanently or…make myself useful in the community. Fortescue’s was the only place willing to even give me an interview.” Somehow, he made interview sound like a dirty word.
“So you gave me the wrong ice cream,” Harry said.
Draco jerked a nod. “So I…retaliated.”
“Well, you may have noticed that it takes a bit more than an ice cream cone to kill me,” Harry said dryly.
“More than a Dark Lord, even?"
“More than Voldemort,” Harry agreed.
They just looked at each other for a moment, the empty hospital room between them populated by the shades of wartime ghosts. “You didn’t want to be friends, when we were eleven.”
“You didn’t exactly make me want to,” Harry said.
Draco looked away, inhaled. The sun was setting, so the light was no longer in his eyes. “Then why do you keep coming back? There’s more than one ice cream place in Diagon Alley, you know.”
Harry thought of, and discarded, multiple untrue answers. “I wanted to see you,” he said truthfully. “It’s an enigma. Draco Malfoy, twenty-millionth of his line, working at Florean Fortescue’s.”
“You wanted to poke fun at the enigma?” Draco suggested. The edges of his mouth were tight. "It's been an enlightening experience, I can tell you that much. You'd be surprised how often people look at me like the scum under their shoe. It does feel rather like my just deserts.'
“I didn't want to make fun of you,” said Harry, slowly. “I wanted to know what had changed.”
The pause between them now was less heavy, almost companionable. “I work again tomorrow,” Draco said finally. “After my shift, I could bring you an ice cream, if you’d like. They’re spelling the construction charms for a new area of the Alley—the head workman is a friend of the family, I could show you what they’re going to build.”
Harry tried to imagine strolling off to a worksite with Draco Malfoy, ducking behind a ward as Draco made a snarky comment about the new building, and suddenly wanted it so badly it was a physical pressure in his chest. “To compensate me for almost dying?” he said.
“Not just as compensation,” Draco said. “You can see, if you want. What I’m like these days.”
Harry took in the sight of him, as he hadn’t been permitting himself to do during all those ice cream visits: the curve of Draco’s neck under his high collar, the immaculate fall of his white-blond hair, the glint of sincerity in his eyes. “I’m seeing it now,” Harry said.
“I can’t believe it,” Hermione said, as soon as she and Ron had swept back into the room and all but physically ushered Draco back out. “You’re going on a date with a former Death Eater who tried to kill you, and almost did kill you, with ice cream, three years after the war!”
“I can believe it,” Ron said glumly.
Harry just grinned with the lightheaded relief of feeling better and having a date with Draco Malfoy. “Anyone want some ice cream?”