Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The Pest Advisory Board had, Harry was certain, made some sort of dreadful mistake.

“You see, I’m a Trainee Auror,” he was explaining to the very unhelpful witch at reception in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. “Trainee, as in ‘in training’. To become an Auror. With the DMLE?”

“You don’t say,” the witch drawled, smacking loudly on a piece of Drooble’s Best.

“Yes, and so I don’t think it’s entirely appropriate—that is to say, I don’t believe I’m all that qualified to handle this matter.” He held up the interdepartmental memo that had jammed itself into his ear the moment he’d stepped into the lift this morning. It twitched pitifully, wrinkled and mussed after someone—certainly not Harry—had crumpled it up in a private moment of fury and frustration. “I’m sure one of the Board members should be managing this—not a Trainee Auror, fresh from Hogwarts.”

“Ain’t you supposed t’ve graduated a year ago?” She began blowing a bubble.

“Well, technically, but you see—those of us involved in the war”—He tapped his scar, not above hinting at his celebrity to get out of what was the stupidest, lowest, biggest waste of his time and mediocre talent—“were allowed to finish up our studies that had been interrupted by the whole ‘fleeing for our lives and fighting against Dark Wizards’ thing.”

“So you got held back.” Her Drooble’s Best bubble popped, releasing a spray of confetti that caked Harry’s hair, glasses, and face.

Swallowing enough oaths to fill fifteen swear jars, he Vanished the confetti and leaned over into the witch’s space. “…This is so far outside my wheelhouse I’ve changed time zones. Please.”

The witch began working on another bubble, plucking a file from a stack on her desk without looking and handing it to Harry. “Doxies. Wiltshire. Hope you brushed up on your Knockback Jinx in remedial whatever. Have a nice day.”

Never in Harry’s life had a day looked less likely to be nice. His heart had probably been lighter walking to his death.

But, he supposed, this was part and parcel of being stuck on the lowest rung of the ladder. Trainees weren’t even Junior Aurors, who themselves weren’t even Senior Aurors. Technically, he wasn’t even on the DMLE’s payroll right now—mostly because he wasn’t being paid at all. Instead, he was practically donating his very precious time to the Ministry by being a glorified gofer, on temporary loan to just about anyone who needed an extra wand to handle matters the people who were actually trained to handle those matters didn’t want to do.

Like, for instance, de-Doxying an infested manor owned by the ponciest twat this side of the Atlantic.

He took small comfort as he made his way down to the (Dis)Apparation Zone that Malfoy Manor had evidently gone far enough to pot that Doxies were moving in. Malfoy had once taken such pride in his high birth, and though Harry’s irritation with the git had tempered over the months since Voldemort’s fall and the meting out of justice amongst Death Eaters, there would likely always be a tiny part of him that took dark glee in seeing Malfoy miserable. And Harry was all right with that character flaw.

After all, Malfoy had gotten off pretty well once the dust had settled, all things considered, so Harry wasn’t concerned with doling out too much sympathy on his account. Sure, his dad had gotten chucked back into Azkaban—deservedly so, in Harry’s opinion—but his mum had been pardoned on all accounts thanks to Harry’s testimony, and last he’d seen in the Prophet, she’d skipped town for somewhere continental. The Malfoys probably had summer homes in five different countries, so she was likely living the high life in Wizarding Paris or Geneva or Rome or somewhere equally nobby.

Malfoy himself had received a light sentence on account of his age, with stipulations he finish his Hogwarts studies and remain under house arrest for a full year thereafter. Harry thought it was more than he deserved, but the fate of the Malfoys was no longer his concern, so he kept his mouth shut about the Room of Hidden Things and decided that, between this and the Sixth-year bathroom business, they were finally square.

Yes, Harry could have happily gone the rest of his life never hearing the name Malfoy again, let alone interacting with the knob, but fate, it seemed, had different plans in store for them.

So it was that Harry found himself standing on the front step of Malfoy Manor, wand tucked up his sleeve and bits of errant confetti still stuck in his hair, waiting patiently to be invited inside. The sooner he sorted out this Doxy situation—they bit, and it hurt; that was about the sum total of information he’d retained on them from his Care of Magical Creatures class, with apologies to Hagrid—the sooner he could get back to the Ministry and start on his next thrilling assignment. Maybe he’d be mucking Hippogriff pens. Maybe he’d have to chaperone the Japanese delegation (they always wanted to do karaoke). Maybe he’d get to sort items in the Vanishing Department. The possibilities were endless and all equally enticing!

After several long, silent minutes passed with no response to his staccato rapping on the door, he palmed his wand and pressed the tip to his throat, prepared to announce his arrival the old-fashioned way—when there came the soft clicking of several locks being disengaged, and with a worrisome creak, the front door eased open—

But there was no one there. At least, this was Harry’s initial reaction until he dropped his eyeline a couple of feet and met the watery, sunken eyes of a very, very old house-elf. He might have been two feet tall standing straight up, but hunched forward into a stoop as he was, he barely reached Harry’s knee. He glared up at Harry from under an overgrown, bushy brow with that same pinch-faced expression all the Malfoys wore, as if they’d just smelled something rancid.

Right. Of course Malfoy would send his most ancient house-elf to answer the damn door instead of getting off his pimpled arse to do it himself. Harry felt a swell of pity for the poor creature, prompted by the fact that Kreacher was a right treat to be around these days. Wizards didn’t deserve the loyalty of these old elves—Malfoy more than any.

Harry put on his best face—it wasn’t the elf’s fault Harry’d gotten stuck with such a rotten job, and if Malfoy Manor could turn out a gentle soul like Dobby, then surely this fellow couldn’t be too—

“‘Bout time you showed up,” the elf grunted, sneering at Harry in a fair rendition of Malfoy himself, and Harry panicked for a moment, convinced that this was not an elf but Draco-fucking-Malfoy, the happenstance victim of a horrific magical mishap. “The Master is being kept waiting many days, he is. The Ministry is not being worth the bricks it’s built out of, he is thinking.”

“Er, well, that’s not really my department…” Harry hedged, wondering if this was Malfoy upbraiding him through the elf, or the elf himself. “I only just got the notice about the job today, so—”

“Too much talking, not enough de-Doxying…” the elf grumbled, shuffling around and impatiently waving Harry inside. “The Minister for Magic will be expecting a strongly worded Owl from the Master.”

“…Right, yeah. I’ll…I’ll let him know.” That swell of pity from before was dissipating rapidly, and Harry wondered if Dobby had been the exception rather than the rule.

Thoughts of Dobby, though, immediately drew him back to the moment—and Harry recollected now that the last time he’d been here had been one of the darkest moments of the war. Hermione, tortured at the end of Bellatrix’s wand, Ollivander on his last legs in the dungeon, and brave, brave Dobby…

There were far worse things lurking behind the walls of this place than Malfoy or magical pests, so Harry resolved to get these Doxies sorted promptly and be on his way. Let Malfoy have his rotting, decrepit manor full of dark memories and half-dead house-elves—Harry had a life to get back to living, and tarrying too long here couldn’t be good for him.

Still, his eye did roam as he allowed himself to be led through the long, dark hallways, past room after empty room, and it struck Harry here that the place seemed awfully…well, dead. It looked more like a show piece—signs of recent renovation and restoration everywhere he looked, but no one there to live in it. He strained his ear to catch the sounds of Malfoy or any other occupants puttering about elsewhere as the elf led him deeper and deeper in, but there was nothing. Just the sound of Harry’s trainers scuffing softly against the old hardwood floors and the occasional creaking groan of a board that needed mending.

It looked somehow leagues better and so much worse than it had at the height of the war, a curious paradox in shades of mahogany and silver and emerald.

“The Doxy nest is being below. The Master is requesting a prompt resolution and then for leave to be taken.” The elf gave only the curtest of bows before Disapparating with a sharp CRACK before Harry could ask where below was—because surely, surely he couldn’t be meant to go down into the fucking dungeon, right?

But there was nowhere else ‘below’ could mean but the bottom of the staircase that lay before him, leading into the yawning darkness and, Harry recalled, a fine, sturdy set of cells. That had been nearly two years ago, though, and he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted from the job by encroaching memories, so he set his shoulders, nodded to himself, and marched downward, a Lumos to guide his way.

The first thing he noticed was not the cells. Nor was it the dank, musty smell of decay and disuse.

The first thing he noticed was the portal.

It wasn’t terribly large, as portals went. Granted, Harry hadn’t really seen many portals in his time (all right, any portals in his time), so it was a difficult thing to rightly judge. Still, the word ‘portal’ did leave one with some expectation of a bit of grandeur, and at roughly the size of a dinner plate, this one was less than impressive.

What was impressive were the tiny creatures Harry could spot, now buzzing around the mouth of the portal. The eerie green light from the portal cast dancing shadows against the walls of the dungeons as the creatures flitted about, merrily chittering in a guttural language Harry couldn’t hope to parse. He’d seen signs of mischief-makers on the long walk through the manor—a chandelier missing a few crystals, a moustache scrawled upon a painting of some distant Malfoy ancestor, curtains scorched with burn marks and no candles about—and he’d assumed, well, Doxies. Or maybe Pixies. At worst, a poltergeist that would need exorcising.

These? No. These weren’t even magical creatures—not by the standard definition, at least.

These were fucking demons. Minor ones, probably, seeing as they looked about the size of your standard faerie, but those were not Doxies or Pixies, and that was a goddamn portal to a plane no sane person had any business contacting. Bloody hell, indeed.

Oh Malfoy was in for it now. Harry was already numbering off statutes that had been violated in his head—he was getting into the double digits—because portals like this didn’t generally just pop up out of nowhere. They had to be scribed—purposefully. Malfoy might’ve slept through most of his Care of Magical Creatures classes, but there was no way he’d mistake an Imp for a Doxy. Which meant he’d either scribed the circle to create this portal himself—or knew who had.

Either way, this was well outside the purview of the Pest Advisory Board, and that meant it was no longer Harry’s problem. Time to kick it up the chain.

He stomped back up the stairs, tromping down the hallway and bellowing at the top of his lungs, “OI, MALFOY! GET YOUR PASTY ARSE DOWN HERE AND EXPLAIN WHAT THE FUCK’S GOING ON IN YOUR DUNGEON.”

The old house-elf Apparated into being nearly right on top of his toes, and though Harry did not go sprawling arse over tea kettle, it was a near thing. “The Ministry oaf is to be keeping his voice down while the Master is abed—”

“The ‘Ministry oaf’ is gonna Hex the Master six ways to Sunday if he doesn’t present himself by the count of ten. Go and fetch him. Now. He’s in a world of trouble, and I’m sure he’ll just be tripping over himself to explain what he’s been up to.” The elf’s glower only darkened, and he seemed thoroughly disinclined to do anything Harry asked of him. Well, that suited Harry just fine. With a huff, he slipped around the elf and started for the grand staircase in the entryway, leading up to the east and west wings of the manor. He’d start with the West Wing and work his way across until he found where Malfoy was holing himself up these days. Would it be his old bedroom? Or would he have taken over the master suite, evidently being the ‘Master’ of the estate these days? Probably the latter, the pompous ar—

“Ngh!”

Every muscle in Harry’s body tensed up—and froze. He could blink, and that was about it, so it was a good thirty seconds before the house-elf managed to mount the stairs and enter his field of view, climbing a few steps up from Harry so that they were at eye level with one another. “The Ministry oaf will be remembering that he was tasked with de-Doxying the dungeon and is not allowed elsewhere in the Manor.”

Fucking house-elf magic.

“Let—me—go—or—I’ll—report—the—both—of—you—”

“The Ministry oaf will be released once he gives his word to complete his task and then remove himself from the Master’s property.”

Harry’s jaw clenched. “Those—aren’t—Doxies—they’re—Imps—and—probably—worse—so—I—need—to—speak—with—Malfoy—”

“Old Bern is not hearing a ‘yes’.”

“‘Bout—to—hear—a—whole—lot—of—something—” Harry inhaled deeply, then roared with all his might. “MALFOY—COME—CALL—OFF—YOUR—BLOODY—ELF—OR—SO—HELP—ME!” Old Bern then twitched his nose, and Harry’s lips sealed shut, further protests locked inside. He continued to struggle against the Body Bind, but he no more understood house-elf magic now than he had back during the war, so he could but squirm and rail against Old Bern impotently.

His shouting, though, seemed to have done the trick, for only a few moments later, suddenly there was Malfoy, stood at the top of the staircase, rubbing his eyes sleepily and looking quite the sight.

Harry realised, of course, that they hadn’t seen one another in nearly two years, but he hadn’t expected quite so shocking a transformation as appeared before him now. He was somehow taller, and leaner, like he hadn’t had a decent meal in the whole time since his hearing, and his hair hung lank and dull, past his bum—far longer than it really ought to have been, even for two years’ growth. The silk robe he wore, tied haphazardly at the waist and threatening to come undone at any given moment, suggested he’d just crawled out of bed (at half-past-noon!), but there were dark circles under his eyes that spoke of a prolonged lack of sleep. In short, he looked like shit—and Harry wondered if a portal to hellish realms in the basement wasn’t Malfoy’s biggest problem right about now.

“What on earth is making all that racket, Old Bern?”

The house-elf was immediately contrite. “Oh, Old Bern is very much apologising, Master. The Ministry oaf has insisted on making a nuisance of himself, but Old Bern has him well under control. The Master may return to his rest.”

“…That’s Potter.”

“No, Master, this is the Ministry oaf.”

“Why is Harry Potter on my property?”

“The Ministry oaf is taking care of the Doxies, Master. He is not doing a very good job. Old Bern thinks Master will be needing to draft a missive of complaint.”

“I do love a good missive of complaint…”

Harry’s eye bounced back and forth between Malfoy and Old Bern, who seemed to be content to ignore Harry’s plight entirely. They were now discussing whether to use ‘the good quill’ to pen the missive of complaint, and Malfoy was steadily being bullied into breaking out a calligraphy set that had evidently been gifted to his family several years back by the Zabinis. He nodded around a yawn when Old Bern suggested he fetch the set from the study in the East Wing, and Harry despaired he was about to toddle off back to beddy-bye, moaning plaintively from behind his fast-locked lips.

Malfoy gave him a once over, than waved his hand absently, and Old Bern snapped his gnarled fingers—and Harry gasped deeply, panting as he collected himself. “Get…your house-elf…under control…Mal…foy…” he heaved.

“He is under control. Aren’t you, Old Bern?”

“Old Bern is being a model elf serving the Malfoy line for seven generations and counting.”

“Very good, Old Bern.” Malfoy sighed, crossing his arms and causing the front flaps of the robe to gape a bit. Harry pretended not to see the silvery criss-crossing scars peeking out. “Anything at all Old Bern and I can do to make your visit more pleasant, Ministry oaf?”

“Y-yeah, you could explain why the fuck you’ve got a portal leading to a pit full of demons in your dungeon.”

“I’m certain I don’t know what you’re on about,” Malfoy said, with the gall to sound bored. “Old Bern, what’s he babbling about?”

“The Ministry oaf is struggling with the Doxies, Master. Old Bern is thinking perhaps he’s been bitten.”

“Nasty business, Doxy bites.” He made a shooing gesture in Harry’s direction. “Well, if you can’t dispatch the creatures yourself, be a lamb and run back to the Ministry and fetch me someone who can.”

“They aren’t fucking Doxies, you dolt! They’re Imps—lesser demons—and you’re in for a world of trouble once the Ministry finds out you’ve been dabbling in Summoning!”

“Yes, yes…” He yawned again, expression twisting, and began climbing the stairs once more, one hand resting on the banister as he seemed unsteady on his feet. “Old Bern will see you out.”

Harry frowned, even as he felt the feeling return to his limbs as the Body Bind was lifted and Old Bern began once more shooing him back down the stairs, this time toward the front entrance. Malfoy was cocky—but he wasn’t stupid. At least not that stupid. He was shrewd—he had to know how illegal it was to attempt a Summoning ritual without proper authority, and he wouldn’t have so lackadaisically invited Harry into his home with the evidence of his poor choices there in plain view. And more to the point, he certainly wouldn’t have just turned Harry out, blithely allowing him to fuck off back to the Ministry to report the curious goings-on at Malfoy Manor to the proper authorities.

So either Malfoy was up to something nefarious—and Harry could already hear Hermione and Ron rolling their eyes and muttering Again? Honestly, Harry…—or…

Oh.

“Er—Old Bern? Hey, um, I’ve had a change of heart. I’d really like another go at those Doxies. Seeing every job through to its end is a matter of personal pride for me, and I’d hate to run back to the Ministry and beg them to send someone else to handle a task I wasn’t up to.” Old Bern continued poking at him with knobby, clawed fingers, directing him towards the front door. “Honestly, it’s a pretty nasty infestation, and I worry for the Master’s health if it’s allowed to continue unaddressed. I mean, look how long it took for them to send me out here—it could be weeks before someone else gets dispatched!”

The poking finally stopped, and Harry peeked over his shoulder. Old Bern was giving him an appraising glare. “…Old Bern is not trusting the Ministry oaf any farther than he can throw him.”

“…Well you’re no treat either.” He sank down into a crouch. “But you and I both know those aren’t Doxies, and your Master’s not in his right mind because of it. So do you want to help him, or do you want to let those Imps continue to leech off him? Wizards’ magic bolsters their life force, so it won’t be quick—but it also won’t be pretty. Ready for those seven generations of servitude to stop here? I honestly wouldn’t blame you.”

The elf’s beady-eyed glare sharpened, and at length, he grunted, “…The Ministry oaf will stay and de-Doxy the Manor, as ordered—”

“There’s a good lad. It’ll be a job and a half, that’s for certain, but it shouldn’t take more than—”

“—and he will not leave the premises until the task is complete and the Master is restored to his right mind.”

“—a few days, maybe a wee—what?”

And Old Bern, for the first time, smiled.

It was certainly not how Harry had been hoping to spend his weekend—those were generally reserved for pick-up Quidditch games at The Burrow or catching up with Neville in Hogsmeade, where he was living these days while working on his thesis with Professor Sprout—but he told himself the sooner he sorted out the Imps and Malfoy and the portal (which he had taken to calling the ‘Nope Pit’), the sooner he could get back to the aforementioned Quidditch games and catching up with old school chums.

He’d hoped, perhaps naively, that extended exposure might prompt Old Bern to warm up to Harry a bit more, or at least call him Potter or some variation thereof, anything but ‘Ministry oaf’, but to no avail. The elf escorted Harry from room to room, standing guard like a gaoler while Harry Jinxed and Hexed and Cursed his way through nests of lesser demons that had cropped up in the oddest places around the manor—there’d been one in the potato cupboard, one underneath one of the powder room sinks, and even one in the belfry, which shocked Harry less than the existence of the belfry itself. Some folks really had too much money.

The free-flying ones were trickier to manage, but it was a little bit like moving target practice, and Harry had gotten full marks there during his Auror Academy training. Doxies these were decidedly not, but the de-Doxying tactics seemed to work nonetheless, and after nearly twenty-four straight hours of Impedimentas, Flipendos, and Depulsos, he’d just about dispersed all of the Imps. Anything nastier than those would have to wait; perhaps once Malfoy’s good health had been restored, he could help Harry clean up the mess he’d made.

Utterly exhausted, he collapsed into one of the massive great chairs in the parlour, blocking out memories of what had happened the last time he’d been in this room, and closed his eyes—only to be woken a moment later by a clawed finger poking at him.

“The Ministry oaf will not be sleeping on the job.”

“Oh leave off, Bern—”

“Old Bern.”

“That’s seriously your full name? Your mum and dad named you ‘Old Bern’?”

“Old Bern did not live to be 372 only for impudent young Ministry oafs to forget the Old.” He wrinkled his nose—which was already quite crooked—up at Harry. “No lazing about is being tolerated in Malfoy Manor.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet—and anyway, I’m done. Well—” Harry gestured in the vague direction of the dungeon. “Done for the most part. Unless you’re gonna let me sort out any Imps that might be buzzing about Malfoy’s room?”

Old Bern’s lip curled in threat. “Old Bern is being more than capable of watching after the Master himself.”

“…Right. Well, run on up there and watch him, then. Make sure there’s none leeching off him now—if not, he should be right as rain in another few hours. In the meantime—” He kicked off his trainers and drew his legs up into a foetal position, punching one of the fancy throw pillows up against the arm rest. “—I’m gonna catch a few winks. If that’s quite all right with you, Old Bern?”

Old Bern looked very much like he wanted to protest, just to be contrary, but his concern over Malfoy’s well-being evidently won out, and with a last scornful look tossed Harry’s way, he toddled toward the grand staircase. Harry watched him go, blearily, before exhaustion finally overtook him, and he drifted off at last while visions of Impish Doxies and Doxy-ish Imps danced in his head.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

Harry wasn’t sure quite how much time had passed after he closed his eyes before he was rudely awoken, but it couldn’t have been more than a few hours, for there was still sunlight streaming in through the tall windows lining the parlour wall, though the rays were long and faint.

“Who let you in? Old Bern? I swear I’m going to drop him down a mine shaft… Dammit—” Someone swiped the throw pillow Harry had been using right from under his head, and he conked himself against the thick wooden arm rest. “Get up. And then get out. Or I’ll show you out myself, the hard way.”

Harry blinked up at the figure verbally—and a little bit physically—assaulting him when he was trying to remember what day of the week it was, and he groped for his glasses in his inside robe pocket. “Wh—Malfoy…?”

“Ten points to Gryffindor. What the fuck are you doing here?”

Harry eased upright, a crick in his neck from napping so awkwardly in the chair, and he carefully manoeuvred his glasses onto his nose. Yup, that was definitely Malfoy—still with the overly long hair (haphazardly plaited now, at least) and dressing gown nearly falling off his form, but the very same. “What you called me here to do—and once I’d done that, I thought a nap was in order, since we’ve still got unfinished business.”

Malfoy took a step back, an almost hunted look flashing across his features, and—hold up, was he clutching his robe closed? “I don’t know what you think I called you here for, but rest assured I was not in my right mind when I did so, so you can—just—go. We have no unfinished business, on that you can be sure.” He was giving Harry a healthy berth now and looked like he expected to be jumped at any moment. Maybe there were still some Imps leeching off him, as he was acting very strangely.

“…Well, I’m sorry to say we do still have some matters to address—like the Imp infestation I so graciously handled for you, you’re very welcome, and the goddamn pit to the nine hells standing open in your dungeon.” Harry stood now, suddenly energized by a rush of irritation, and began putting himself back together. He probably had a cowlick from sleeping awkwardly, but it wasn’t as if Malfoy didn’t know his hair was a mess, and at least his robes didn’t seem any more wrinkled than usual. He drew out a notepad and a self-inking quill. “Anything you’d like to state for the record on how the portal came to appear on the premises? If you’ve got a reasonable explanation, now’s certainly the time to have out with it.”

“I—portal? What?” Malfoy sputtered. “I haven’t the faintest clue what you’re—and you still haven’t explained what you’re doing with your feet on my family’s heirloom furniture!”

“Oi, I took my trainers off,” Harry protested, recollecting only now that they were indeed still off, and he was stood here in stocking feet interviewing a potential suspect. Whatever, he wasn’t a proper Auror yet, so it wasn’t as if he could be reprimanded. Not too harshly, at least. “And like I said: I’m here because you asked the Pest Advisory Board to send someone out to de-Doxy your dungeon—”

Malfoy snickered. “Harry Potter’s on de-Doxying duty? My how the mighty have fallen.”

“Har har—and we’ll see how much you’re laughing once you’ve got the entire DMLE up your arse for having, as I mentioned, a pit full of demons just sitting there in your basement.”

“And I told you, I don’t know anything about a pit full of demons, and I know even less about a call being put into the Pest Advisory Board.” He shook his head. “No—no, you’ve broken into private property, harassed me, vandalised my furniture, destroyed my drapes—”

“Those were the Imps. You know, the ones that slipped into this plane through that pit you’re so certain doesn’t exist? And I suppose, in the befuddled state you entered when they did what Imps do and began leeching your magic, you thought they were, I dunno, Doxies or Pixies or some other such meddlesome creature and Owled the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures—”

“I wasn’t befuddled—”

“Addled, then, let’s call it.”

“—and I wasn’t addled, either. I would certainly remember Owling that department, largely because I would never Owl that department—I’d never Owl the Ministry at all, and I’m not sure where you’d get the wild idea I would!”

And this gave Harry pause because, well…Malfoy was making quite a lot of sense. He would never Owl the Ministry, certainly not to ask for help. Perhaps to lodge a complaint, but—

“Oh.”

“What?”

“Old Bern.”

“What about Old Bern?” And because Malfoy was not half as stupid as he looked, he seemed to pick up the thread Harry was following and snapped his fingers. With a crack of magic, Old Bern popped into view at Malfoy’s feet, hunched even further forward than usual so that his long, hooked nose nearly brushed the carpet. “Old Bern, did you contact the Ministry? Without my permission? Are you responsible for Potter darkening our doorstep?”

Old Bern’s knobby shoulders spasmed. “…Yes, Master. Old Bern has invited an outsider into your grand ancestral home, and he should be punished, most harshly, for not dealing with the Doxies himself.”

“Doxies,” Malfoy said. “You tried to deal with—the Doxies?”

“And failed, Master.” Old Bern’s voice had an unmistakable waver to it, but he seemed to be holding himself together quite well for a house-elf. “Old Bern tried to hex them, to hold them, to banish them, but they were most tricksy, and so, so many…” He drew himself up as tall as he could manage. “Old Bern was hoping the Doxies might latch on to the Ministry oaf instead, and leave my poor Master to rest.”

“You—what?” Harry barked. “I was bait?”

Malfoy ignored him, though, frowning down at Old Bern—then gave a sharp nod. “Very good thinking, Old Bern. But Potter has a nasty habit of surviving near-death experiences. He is exceedingly difficult to kill, as I hear it, so don’t be too harsh on yourself, and I won’t either. You did what you thought best, and we’ll leave it at that. You’re dismissed.” Old Bern still seemed to expect a nasty blow to be incoming and visibly braced himself, but Malfoy only nudged him with his toe as if to say Go on, off with you, and finally the elf blipped from existence with another loud CRACK. “Well, that’s that mystery solved. Are we quite done here?”

“I—no, of course we aren’t ‘quite done’! We haven’t even started! Have you been listening to a word I’ve said?”

“No, I try not to. I used to be quite adept at tuning you out, but I fear I’ve let my skills grow rusty. No worries, though, I’m getting plenty of practice in now.”

“Malfoy, there is a portal in your dungeon. Like—a rift, you know? An open seam between this world and a rather nasty other plane that’s full of all sorts of terrible creatures you really don’t want to encounter. The Imps are just pests—lesser demons that cause mischief and annoy but rarely do any real harm unless they’re allowed to congregate in numbers, which they had been, and I still haven’t heard a note of gratitude from you for saving your fucking life. You know, again. That’s two you owe me.”

“Trust you to keep tally,” Malfoy muttered, but not low enough Harry missed it.

“Three if we’re counting my speaking for you and your mum at the hearings.”

“We aren’t counting that, as you didn’t speak for me. Pointing out that I was the age I was does not count as ‘speaking for me’. It’s you demonstrating you can read a birth certificate—which, yes, was shocking for all present, but not exactly useful.”

Harry knew Malfoy was just trying to rile him up—and succeeding—to distract him from the pressing matter of the Nope Pit, so he tamped his anger down deep in his chest, a totally healthy coping mechanism, and continued on. “Why—why is there a fucking portal to the nine hells in your basement, Malfoy?” He waved the notepad under Malfoy’s nose. “Inquiring minds are really going to want to know.”

Malfoy batted him away roughly. “Fuck if I know. Do I look like I’d just invite demons into my home on a lark?”

“No, but you might invite them in for more nefarious reasons.”

“Yes, I can see how your pea brain might jump to that ridiculous conclusion, as if I don’t have enough troubles dogging me, but the fact remains I did not open it. I am, however, more than equal to the task of closing it—which I shall do, once you have removed yourself from my property and given me your word you’ll not come within five hundred feet of me going forward. I’m still not convinced you didn’t attempt to take liberties with my person while I was indisposed, and if I need to file a restraining order, I shall.”

“I—well that’s ridic—and I’m not leaving, not until I’ve seen that the portal’s closed with my own two eyes. And then we’ll move on to discussing liability.”

“I’m not a First-year, I don’t need you hovering over my shoulder while I manage a simple barrier blockade.”

“I certainly don’t need to be hovering over your shoulder—I’m happy to stand back a few paces. Shall we pop down now, or would you like to take tea first?”

Malfoy’s cheeks were starting to flush, and there was a tiny little vein in his temple that had begun pulsing worrisomely. “…I think you’ve spent more than enough time as my guest, so let’s forego tea. Seeing as there are no Doxies for you to de-Doxy, I think your work here is done. I’ll have no trouble closing up the portal myself—”

“Really? Then why’s it still open? Surely you would have checked where the Imps were coming from in the first place as soon as you noticed them, right? And when you saw the huge, honking Nope Pit in your dungeons, you just thought, ‘Eh, that’ll sort itself out’?”

Malfoy took a slow, bracing breath—one Harry well recognised; after all, he’d taken a fair few of them himself around Old Bern in the past twenty-four hours. “I’m sure one of the Death Eaters opened it on a lark back when the Dark Lord was using our home as his base of operations. You can’t imagine the time and effort it took to make this space liveable again after all that mess—clearly something slipped through the cracks, as it were.”

Harry snorted softly, scratching his temple with the tip of his wand, nose wrinkling around a smile. “Yeah. Yeah, sure that makes loads of sense. Except for the part where you’d be a desiccated husk right about now if you’d been living here for nearly a year while a bunch of Imps drained your essence.” He pointed in the direction of the dungeon. “That portal hasn’t been open for more than a week, at best. And I mean to find out who opened it, because I’ve got a sneaking suspicion it wasn’t Old Bern this time.”

“Ah, yes, sounds like a job for Auror Potter—oh wait, you aren’t an Auror, are you? Judging from those motheaten robes and the distinct lack of a badge.”

“No, no I’m not—not yet, at least. But my boss is. And I’ll thoroughly enjoy running this up the chain. If I get my report in this afternoon, he could probably have a joint contingent from the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes and DMLE out here next—”

“What—” Malfoy made a wild grab for his quill and notepad, and it was only Harry’s (admittedly now rusty) Seeker reflexes that saved his notes from being snatched away. “Fuck, no—don’t—I told you I can handle this myself!”

“Oh? My…someone’s testy when it comes to having more ‘Ministry oafs’ prowling around his property.” Harry pocketed the notepad and quill, patting them proprietorially. “And clearly you can’t handle this yourself—for if your elf hadn’t summoned help from the Ministry, help that to your great benefit recognised what was going on, then you’d likely be laid out flat in your bed, a withered husk by now, and those Imps would be roaming the countryside, causing chaos and mayhem and fattening themselves on the life essence of the local Muggle populace. So no, I’m disinclined to leave you to clean up a mess I’m pretty sure you started, and if you’re not going to tell me what the hell’s going on, then I’ll let you be someone else’s problem.”

He then gave a little salute and turned on his heel to Disapparate—

—when Malfoy’s hand snapped out, this time to grab his arm, and held him fast. “Just—wait. Wait, dammit. Always have to be an insufferable little tell-tale…” And Harry did wait, because a part of him was dreadfully curious about what Malfoy was up to this time. Murder had never suited him, but he did have a nasty habit of finding himself under the thumb of wizards more devious and powerful than he, so perhaps this ritual had been conducted at the behest of another. Or perhaps Malfoy had been trying to deep-clean the dungeon and just really fucked up. Both were equally plausible explanations, in Harry’s book.

“Well?” Harry said. “I’m waiting, if you’d like to make it some time before Christmas.”

Malfoy’s lips twisted into an unhappy moue, and he bit out, at length, “…I did it.”

“Hm? Did what?” Harry tapped his ear.

“Opened. The. Portal.”

“Portal? What portal? Oh, the Nope Pit.” Harry nodded, then laughed—without an ounce of humour. “So, care to fucking explain why?”

“For the hell of it.”

“Malfoy—”

“Why do you think? I recognise most of our professors gave you passing marks out of pity, but surely you picked up something in Defence Against the Dark Arts beyond ‘hit bad wizard, get praise’.” Malfoy slumped into the chair Harry had recently vacated in an elegant heap. “Why would anyone open a portal to a demonic realm but to make a pact with whatever creatures lurk there?”

“Ah.” Suddenly, all the pieces to this puzzle were starting to fall into place. “Right.” Harry began to pace, shaking his head, surprised that he was surprised, and irritated at himself for it. “Of course you’d look for the easy way out—never knew how to take your lumps, did you? You know, you and I remember your trial very differently it seems, because I did speak for you. And pointing out your age was me telling the Wizengamot, who were more than ready to chuck you into a cell next to your old man, that you had made some stupid decisions, and sure you had made them full-well knowing what you were doing, but you still had your whole life ahead of you to make amends. And shipping you off to an island in the North Sea wasn’t gonna make anyone’s lives better, so you deserved a chance to make up for all the people you’d hurt over the years. I said it because I believed it. But clearly I do have a pea brain, because here you are, wallowing in self-pity, in a cold, empty house all alone, turning to more fucking Dark magic to try and turn your fortunes around because god-forbid you actually try and make amends—”

And then Malfoy was there, right in Harry’s face, fury building behind his eyes—and this close, Harry could see the rage was making him break out in a rash, skin pimpling up like gooseflesh. But then the skin over his nose began to stretch, and harden, going just a little hooked, and something was definitely wrong. Harry took a quick step back, frowning. “O-oi, hey, are you all—”

A balled-up fist connected with his chin, sending his head snapping back, and Harry only barely managed to catch himself before he went flying into the mantel. Maybe those Seeker reflexes weren’t quite as sharp as he might’ve hoped they were after all; he’d probably be a dark, smoking streak on the ground if he’d had to take on Voldemort as he was now.

“I’m fucking cursed, you insufferable arsehole!” Malfoy snarled, voice choking in his throat, and then he stormed from the room, robe swirling behind him as he mounted the staircase and leaving a flurry of downy white feathers floating in his wake.

Harry stood there, gobsmacked, for a good thirty seconds attempting to understand what had just happened—from the odd pimpling rash to Malfoy’s claims he was cursed to the impressive right hook he’d taken at Harry. Deciding that he ought to give Malfoy a moment to breathe, unless he wanted to sample his left hook too, Harry waited as long as his patience could stand before haring off after Malfoy down the hall leading to the West Wing.

It was sheer luck that he stumbled across Malfoy in the maze of rooms. Without Old Bern to guide him, Harry was in real danger of getting lost and never finding his way out again.

Malfoy was not in his bedroom, as Harry expected him to be, but in what looked to be a study—or perhaps a library. The dark wood panelling and drawn curtains made Harry want for a light, but it was impossible to miss Malfoy sitting at a massive desk positioned against the far wall, hair spilling all around him as he hunched forward, head in his hands. Several books had been pulled from their places in the bookcases lining the walls and sat piled up beside Malfoy in a worrisome tower that reminded Harry just a little bit of Hermione’s travelling library.

“…So you’re cursed, huh?”

“You’re still here, so I’d say so.”

Biting remarks were not flurries of fists, so this was progress. Since when had Draco Malfoy been one to resort to physical violence? It seemed so…beneath him. “…Care to elaborate on the finer details of this ‘curse’?”

“I can hear the scare quotes, you know. And no, I wouldn’t care to elaborate.”

Well, bollocks to that. “So how exactly do you expect me to help you if I don’t know what this supposed curse even does?”

Malfoy lifted his head, smiling tightly. “See, that’s the funny thing: you’re not supposed to help me. You’re supposed to get the fuck off my property and tell your superiors you de-Doxied the Manor and you’d appreciate never being tasked with anything to do with me again. Then that’ll be one of my problems solved, if you’re so very keen to play Saviour.”

Evidently Malfoy wanted to play hardball, so Harry Summoned one of the reading chairs from the corner and pulled up a seat right across from Malfoy, throwing his socked feet up on the desk and scissoring his toes. He relaxed back into the cushions, shrugging. “Tell me what the curse is, and I’ll go.”

“You don’t even believe me.”

“I’ll humour you if you’ll humour me.”

“I’m sure you will,” Malfoy drawled, and Harry had to snicker at that.

“Yeah, all right, you got me. I’m full of shit. But I’m definitely not going until you tell me, so either way, it’s gonna come out.”

“Let’s go back to the part where you just assumed I wanted a get-out-of-consequences-free card and you can fuck off and report me.” Malfoy reached for the stack of books and began studying the spines. “I’m not talking.” He then stood and began replacing the books on the shelves, back to Harry. There were a few errant bits of down that trailed after him.

“I’d argue you actually are talking. A lot, even. I think you might just like the sound of your own voice.” Harry removed his feet from the desk and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the polished mahogany. “So, a demonic pact, huh? Pretty tricky business, that. I hear they’re a bitch to navigate—and that’s from Hermione, who never met an unbreakable, magically binding contract she didn’t love.”

“Fascinating. Perhaps I shall make a pact with her, then. Harpies would be…mid-tier demons, if I recall?” Harry frowned, reaching for a paperweight—an orb that glowed with a soft, blue light when his fingers touched it—and chucked it at the back of Malfoy’s head. Malfoy’s own reflexes seemed more polished than Harry’s, though, for he whipped around and caught it effortlessly, and in the cool blue light cast by the orb, Harry could see that Malfoy’s nails were grotesquely pointed and over-long. For someone who’d been so obsessed with personal hygiene in his youth, Malfoy had clearly been slacking as of late.

When Malfoy caught Harry staring, though, he quickly pocketed the orb and went back to shelving books. Harry bit back the urge to leap to Hermione’s defence, reminding himself that she was perfectly capable of defending herself and that she certainly wouldn’t appreciate Harry getting written up for assaulting a potential suspect in a case, even if said potential suspect had technically assaulted him first.

He decided to press Malfoy further, see if he wouldn’t snap like he had before. Harry was well familiar with how the truth tended to come tumbling out when one was overly emotional, after all. “…The portal in the dungeon’s tiny, though. Barely big enough to fit my head through—”

“You’ve got that right. Though I would have thoroughly enjoyed watching you try to squeeze your oversized melon through it.”

“—and then there’s the Imp infestation. Since I didn’t see signs of anything nastier, I’m guessing the Imps were the only ones small enough to make it through. You’d need a portal at least two or three times larger to summon anything powerful enough to make a proper pact with. At best you’re getting…what, maybe a Fell Spawn? Or a Ghul? Or a really, really tiny incubus? Or is it a succubus most folks want? I always get those mixed up…” Malfoy seemed to be doing his level best to ignore Harry—but Harry’d always known just how to get under the git’s skin. “So if it wasn’t to, I dunno, turn back time so your side won the war, or to grant yourself a personality that wasn’t dogshit, or some other such rot, what did you need a demon pact for?”

“To sell them my soul in exchange for being rid of you, obviously.”

“You know, you say these hurtful things, and it makes me think you don’t like me, Malfoy.” He shook his head, growing tired of the back and forth. “Nah, you know what? I’ve decided I really don’t give a shit. I’ll finish cleansing this place, because I really don’t want to get called back in to deal with this again, and then I’m gonna close that portal and fuck off. Enjoy your curse.”

“What?” Malfoy practically yelped, dropping the remaining books in his grasp and scrambling around the side of the desk, a hand held out to stay Harry. “No, I told you, I’ll handle the portal.”

“…You realise the desperation oozing from your every pore right about now makes it pretty clear you’ve got zero intentions of closing the portal yourself, right? I mean, I knew you weren’t Death Eater of the Month and all, but I did give you some credit…” He frowned. “…Hold up. No, you wanna try and enlarge it now, don’t you? ‘Cause I just told you—goddammit, Malfoy, why on earth would you—no, you know what?” He threw his hands up. “I don’t care why on earth. I really, honestly don’t. But you’re fucked in the head if you think I’m gonna sit back and let you summon a goddamn demon into—”

“I’m dying.”

It came out quickly, breathlessly, and piteously—and Harry took a step back.

And then he remembered this was Draco Malfoy he was talking to and shrugged off the instinctual swell of pity that had risen in his throat. “Uh huh. From what this time? Long-term effects of being mauled by a Hippogriff when you were twelve?”

“I was thirteen when that beast attacked me—and for your information, no. It’s a blood curse. Tied to the Mark. It’s sapping my magic—”

Harry released a sharp bark of laughter. “Bullshit it is. For one thing, we’ve got dozens of your buddies locked up in Azkaban, and not one of them has ever suffered any sorts of curses or magical maladies because of the Mark. And for another thing, you just had a dozen-plus Imps suckling on your magical tits for the past week or more, a fate you might’ve been spared if you were indeed being drained of your magic by some mythical blood curse.” He crossed his arms. “Try again if you like, only be a little more convincing. It’s no fun when you make your fibs so see-through.”

Malfoy’s lips thinned into a tight line, and he whipped his wand viciously—sending another paperweight (this time in the shape of a rearing dragon) rocketing at Harry’s forehead. Harry ducked in just the nick of time, and the dragon shattered against the wall behind him into a million glittery shards.

Harry surveyed the carnage with a deep-seated satisfaction, confident he’d done everything one could have reasonably expected of him to help Malfoy out of whatever jam he’d worked himself into and could wash his hands of this whole affair without a shred of guilt on his conscience.

“Right. That’s me done,” he said, and walked out of the study. This time, Malfoy let him go.

He spent the rest of the evening rousting all the remaining demonoids from the premises—he was working on fumes by this point, but he wanted to report having done as thorough a job as he possibly could have before being quit of this place for good. Old Bern showed up when he made motions to run a final inspection of the West Wing, and though Harry made a few aborted attempts to get the old elf to spill what was really going on, his efforts were met with stony silence. Worse still, he found he was now barred from entering not only the West Wing, where Malfoy presumably had rooms, but also the basement itself, likely to ensure he didn’t mess with the portal. Harry decided that was his cue to fuck off; Malfoy could handle the rest of his demons—real and imagined—himself.

But when he sat down at his desk in the study of No. 12 Grimmauld Place, quill in hand, to pen his report—something stalled him. It was only, he hated to leave a job unfinished, and he really didn’t want to report this Nope Pit business. Not out of any pity for Malfoy, mind you—it was simply that it was a lot of paperwork, and he’d probably be called in for interviews and testimony. In the end, Malfoy’s already shitty life would just get worse, and Harry’s would take a nosedive on the back end.

So it was out of sheer self-preservation and a staunch desire to see his free time for the foreseeable future preserved that Harry decided to be the bigger person—cut Malfoy a break he very much did not deserve—and ensure the portal got closed and stayed that way this time.

Malfoy Manor was warded to the teeth, this much Harry could have told you without having had a snoop about inside. The trick was, he was old enough and wise enough now to have taken a free moment between the Impedimentas and Flipendos, while Old Bern was attempting to remove a set of bushy eyebrows painted onto a portrait of what was evidently Malfoy’s Great-Great-Great Aunt, to quietly key himself into said wards. He would only be returning to finish a job he had been directed by the Ministry to do—even if he was bending the law to do so.

Thus, praying that Old Bern followed the mantra of ‘early to bed, early to rise’ like most elderly folks, Harry slipped the copy of Exorcism and Other Evil Essentials on loan from the Ministry archives and deliberated on his destination with determination, popping into existence safely at the foot of the staircase leading down into the dark, dank Malfoy dungeons.

The Nope Pit still shone with an unearthly green light, and a few more Imps had crawled their way out of the portal and were presently fighting over a rat skeleton in the corner. Harry decided he’d deal with the portal first before dispatching them, because there was a long, writhing tentacle flailing about worrisomely from the portal mouth, and he didn’t want to wait to find out what it was attached to. A quick twenty minutes, perhaps half an hour of work and then he’d be done, and Malfoy could figure out this ‘curse’ business himself—if there even was a curse to begin with. He’d let the Ministry know he’d noted signs of demonic activity in the area in his report but leave out the part about the portal, so Malfoy might be discouraged from attempting to open it again. If he did and got caught, well that was on him.

Harry managed the preparations for the portal closure in relative peace, undisturbed by Old Bern or any other house-elves (were there any other house-elves around? Harry hadn’t seen any in his time here thus far…), and had just finished setting up the candles for what the book called the Ritual of Binding—

—when the chill silence of the night was rent by a loud, wailing screech of pain.

It echoed through the halls of the Manor, strident and agonized, followed by a string of uncontrolled guttural sobs that rang in Harry’s ears. He was immediately on his feet, wand in hand, whipping around in the dim light cast by the candles and the portal itself—but the sound had not come from the dungeon, or even the first floor, it seemed. Piercing though the scream had been, it had been muffled by walls and distance.

Harry stood, frozen, straining his ears—until there came another bellowed wail, and then he was mounting the steps, two at a time, quickly and quietly moving through the Manor with purpose. It didn’t sound like Malfoy, and he doubted it was Old Bern. It didn’t even sound human; but something was in pain, or causing pain, and if something more dangerous than an Imp had managed to slip through that portal, Harry meant to dispatch it post haste.

He followed the pained moaning up the grand staircase and into the West Wing, arriving at the door of what he was certain had to be Malfoy’s bedroom. Bracing himself for the stomach-churningly familiar sight of Draco Malfoy, sprawled on the floor and bleeding out from massive chest wounds, Harry swallowed and leaned on the golden door handle, pressing inside with quiet trepidation.

He didn’t quite know what he was looking at. It was Malfoy—but it wasn’t Malfoy. It was some twisted, writhing heap of bone and flesh, legs bent unnaturally at the knee and spine snapped entirely backwards, head thrown back with that waterfall of silvery white hair pooling behind him like a long, white tail. His mouth hung open in a silent scream, and his chest was heaving, but nothing was coming out. He still wore that thin shift of a robe, but it was hanging off of him, and the exposed skin was pimpling with that odd rash Harry had noticed before, except the rash was bubbling, boiling—popping, as spines pushed their way through his skin and then expanded into a carpet of soft, white down that blanketed every inch of him.

Malfoy was caught in the midst of some horrific transformation, and Harry hadn’t a clue what to do—was this Animagecraft gone wrong? Or was one of the demons responsible? Had he opened a letter from an ill-wisher and been struck by a Curse? Whatever the cause, the result was the same: Malfoy, rasping and croaking incomprehensibly, reaching out for Harry with fingers that ended in nasty, scaly claws as strange magic wracked his body.

Lost as to how he could possibly help, Harry rushed to Malfoy’s side, dropping to his knees and considering only a moment before he laid his hands gently on Malfoy’s shuddering, bony shoulders. “Y—you’ll be all right, Malfoy, we’ll get you some help. I’ll…” But really, what the hell was he going to do? Expelliarmus probably wasn’t going to do much here. “Bern?! Old Bern!” he called, hoping and praying that the elf would at least care enough for his Master to obey Harry’s orders to go and get help. Hermione would not appreciate such a late house call, but she could ream Harry out for it in the morning.

Blessedly, Old Bern popped into existence just at Harry’s side, surveying Malfoy’s sad, twisted state with a frown. “…The Ministry oaf is not being allowed in the Master’s bedroom suite, as Old Bern has surely told him many a time.” Malfoy lashed out with a grotesquely long arm, nearly braining Old Bern, but he seemed unfazed. “Old Bern is also wondering how the Ministry oaf gained entrance to the Manor at this very late hour.”

“Does that really seem all that important right this moment?!” Harry gave Malfoy’s shoulders a shake. “Look at the state of him! He’s—he’s—dying!”

Old Bern only deepened his frown. “…No, Master is not dying. It is only being one of his fits. There is nothing Old Bern or the Ministry oaf can do for him.”

“A—fit? What part of this looks like a fit?! He’s—well look at him!”

But the elf only shook his head and began to toddle from the room. “Old Bern is advising the Ministry oaf to look at him.”

Baffled and frustrated, Harry gave a long whine—but then he did look, made himself take in the sad, sorry state of Malfoy. He saw the neck elongating like a noodle, the hair fanned out and fluffing, the knees bent all wrong and drawing up against his chest, and everything…shrinking. Coiling down, in on itself into a small white blotch on the dark wood floor until Harry was staring at not the horrifically contorted form of a fully grown man but a dazzling white peacock, splayed out flat on the floor and panting heavily.

Lashes fluttered repeatedly over its beady black eyes, and it warbled pitifully, a keening thing that made Harry’s ears ring. He scrambled forward and gently gathered the pitiful creature into his arms, looking to Old Bern for guidance, but the elf was gone. At a loss, Harry eased onto the bed, kicking off his trainers as he did so, and settled back against the thirty pillows it looked like Malfoy slept with.

The peacock continued to warble faintly, and as he cradled it, Harry could feel its heart pounding in its chest, a rapid thrum that would not abate until Harry began stroking its back, rearranging the mussed feathers and taking great care not to crush the long train of its tail that hung off the side of the bed now.

What the hell was he doing? What the hell was Malfoy doing? Harry’s initial assumption that this had been a spell gone wrong (or a Curse gone right) had flown—no pun intended—right out the door when Old Bern had dismissed this as one of his master’s “fits”. That suggested this was not the first time this had happened—and therefore would probably not be the last.

The worst of it, at least, seemed to have passed as far as Harry could tell, and for now, the peacock had succumbed to the exhaustion of the transformation and passed out in Harry’s arms. Harry continued absently stroking the creature, his own racing heart finally beginning to calm as he felt it slip into slumber until, at length, Harry too nodded off.

When he woke the next morning, the warmth of the peacock had been replaced by the warmth of another human body, and Harry blearily blinked his eyes, trying to place where he was—and who he was with. He was not in the habit of sleeping around, or even sleeping not around (not lately, at least), and he certainly would have remembered being invited home by someone with such luxurious taste—from the luxe furnishings to the silky-smooth bedsheets to the scent of fresh linen and a dark, musky cologne that smelled like it cost more than Harry would eventually be making once he was made a proper Auror—

Oh fuck. He wasn’t an Auror—he was just a trainee, and this was Malfoy Manor, which he’d been tasked to de-Doxy, except there were no Doxies, just a Nope Pit and an ill-mannered house-elf and—

A buck-naked Draco Malfoy, nude but for the twisted bedsheets and a shower of snow-white feathers around him, curled around Harry’s torso and presently nuzzling his neck.

Harry held his breath, listening for signs of stirring from Malfoy, but all he heard was soft, even breathing—excellent, perhaps he could just Disapparate from here, no awkward morning-after-horrific-transformation conversation necessary. He squirmed in place, struggling to palm his wand with the one free hand he had that wasn’t presently stuck under Malfoy’s soft, smooth bum—

“Old Bern…” Malfoy mumbled grumpily. “Old Bern, fetch Grandfather’s Pepper-up. Don’t bother pouring a dram, just bring the whole bottle.”

Old Bern appeared with a sharp CRACK just at the bedside, holding a dark amber bottle in one hand up for Malfoy to take, and Harry dared not move a muscle, Deliberating with all of his might in an effort to wandlessly remove himself from the premises before Malfoy’s sleep-addled brain realised he wasn’t alone in his bed—

“What…the fuck—?!” And then Harry was falling, shoved bodily from the bed and onto the floor, where he landed in a painful pile of limbs while Malfoy roared, “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING IN MY BEDROOM, POTTER?!” There came the sound of mad scrambling as Harry made a desperate effort to reorientate himself from the fall—god he hoped he hadn’t landed on his wand and snapped it, again—and then there was a wand being pointed right at his nose, Mafoy’s face flushed red with anger looming behind it. “You have five seconds to explain yourself, and it’d better be a good one.” He had the bedsheets drawn up to just under his chin, clutched tight to protect his modesty, and his voice was trembling with what Harry suspected to be righteous fury.

It took most of the five seconds for Harry to collect himself, squinting up at Malfoy, who appeared nearly as ghost-white in the bright morning light as the peacock had. “I’m asking myself the same thing right about now…”

This was clearly not the answer Malfoy had been looking for, as he whipped his wand, and Harry went flying into the far wall. “Out—get out!” The door slammed open seemingly on its own, and Harry found himself heaved through it, landing hard on his shoulder before rolling a few more feet. “OLD BERN!” Malfoy bellowed, and the elf appeared at his feet. “Get this fucker off my property and see he does not return. Or it’s your ears under an iron.”

“Of course, Master,” Old Bern said in his most obsequious voice, and Harry found himself promptly hoisted into the air by his feet and Levitated down the hall, to the grand staircase, heading for the door.

“Wait—don’t you think maybe we should discuss—oi, Malfoy!” he squirmed in place, but Malfoy had already shut his bedroom door by now, and Old Bern’s magic was not to be trifled with. “Lemme go, Old Bern! I need to talk to—”

“The Ministry oaf is having worn out his welcome. He will not be bothering the Master again, Old Bern will see to it.”

“Come on! You saw the state he was in! Clearly something’s wrong with Malfoy, and I might be able to help.”

“Old Bern has learned,” the elf said, “that the Malfoys are being most insistent on taking care of themselves. Come what may.”

And with that, Harry was deposited on the front step of the manor, with the door slammed in his face.

It being a Monday, Harry was obliged to go in to the Ministry and at least report the status of his task, so he quickly Apparated back home, showered and dressed at light speed, and made his way to the cramped little corner of the bullpen the DMLE had set aside for use by the Trainee Aurors. Terry Boot, the only one of Harry’s classmates to still be in the running for an Auror position, nodded at him brightly before returning to scribbling what looked to be a lengthy report. Last Harry had heard, Terry had been helping investigate a doping scandal in the Department of Magical Games and Sports. Harry had never known such jealousy in his life, and it was eating away at him hard right about now.

He reported back to the Pest Advisory Board after the morning meeting, turning in his hastily scrawled report—“Successfully de-Doxied the site, no further signs of infestation noted.”—and accepting a new assignment that involved breaking up a Fwooper trafficking ring. He couldn’t wait until the fall semester, when he’d get a new rotation and could bid a not-so-fond farewell to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.

As soon as the workday ended, though, Harry nipped home to change out of his uniform and feed and water his Beezilbud, and then he was heading back to Malfoy Manor, because he was positively brimming with questions, and he was going to get some answers if it was the last thing he did.

Except somehow Malfoy—or really, more likely Old Bern—had uncovered his tampering with the wards and restored the Manor’s security, for he kept getting kicked back to Grimmauld Place each time he attempted to Apparate. Well, there was more than one way to pluck a peacock.

It was Old Bern once again who answered when Harry knocked on the door, and Harry nearly lost a toe bracing his foot in the jamb when Old Bern immediately moved to slam the door in his face.

“Old Bern—was being quite clear this morning—that the Ministry oaf—is no longer welcome!”

“Ah, but you see, I’m in plainclothes today—not here on Ministry business at all.”

“Bog-standard oafs are not being welcome either!”

Harry braced his hand against the door now, leaning forward to put himself closer to eye level with Old Bern. “…Listen, you and I both know there’s something up with him, something he’s clearly not equal to handling on his own, and yes, I know you just fed me that line about Malfoys preferring to manage their business privately, but you’re supposed to take care of him, right? And sometimes that means doing things for the people we care about that they might not appreciate at the moment—but will surely thank us for later.” Old Bern’s mouth twisted into a deep scowl, but he was no longer leaning quite so heavily on the door, so Harry pressed his luck: “…Just pretend you never noticed I keyed myself into the wards and say I slipped in somehow you can’t figure. I’ll handle the rest.”

Old Bern seemed very cross at the idea he might not notice something so key to Manor security, but after a long, tense moment, he allowed Harry to make his way inside.

“The Master is napping in his study at this hour,” Old Bern explained as he led Harry through the Manor—presumably less because Harry might get lost and more to ensure he didn’t wander where he wasn’t meant to be. Again.

“Napping—in his study? Any reason he’s not in his bedroom?”

“The Master is not lazing about in bed all day like some bog-standard oafs. He is deep into his research. Only, he is not sleeping well some nights. So he is on occasion…nodding off.”

“…Some nights?” Harry asked, and even in the low light, he could see Old Bern grimace.

“…Most nights,” he corrected.

So this was a regular occurrence, then—frequent, even. “…What’s he researching?” Harry asked, but Old Bern did not deign to respond, only stepping aside to give Harry a wide berth when they reached the landing just outside of Malfoy’s study. Well, nothing for it but to ask the man of the hour himself. He gave Old Bern a nod of thanks, but the elf was already shuffling away, perhaps not wanting to be around when Malfoy inevitably tried to Hex Harry or chuck another paperweight at his head. Deeming the one scar on his forehead more than enough trouble to deal with already, he decided to choose his words carefully this time and maybe not purposefully rile Malfoy up.

Harry gave a soft knock, not wanting to startle Malfoy for a second time that day, and carefully eased the door open. Malfoy, though, was indeed napping at his desk, and in the still quiet, Harry thought he could hear the faint whine of a snore. He cleared his throat and spoke up, “Malfoy, wake up.”

Malfoy jolted, head snapping up, and there was a piece of parchment attached to his forehead. He snatched it away, blinking blearily—then was instantly on his feet, groping for his wand in the vest pocket of the same flimsy robe he’d worn in every interaction Harry had seen thus far. “What the fuck are you—”

“Ah ah ah, easy there—” Harry’s wand was already in his hand. “I don’t want to have to Disarm you and put you into the wall, but I’m happy to return the favour from this morning.” Malfoy froze but didn’t take his eyes off Harry, and Harry motioned for him to take his seat again. “I’m not here to arrest you or harass you about the portal. I only want to talk.”

Malfoy swallowed, then bellowed, “OLD BER—”

“Silencio,” Harry sighed, and Malfoy’s head was immediately encased in a bubble of silence. Harry watched him shout himself hoarse for a good thirty seconds before shaking his head. “Are we really gonna do this every time? I mean, this is what—the third time we’ve interacted in nearly as many days? And all three times you’ve tried to have me removed from the premises before I had a chance to explain myself.” Malfoy’s answering glower was nearly dark enough to douse the lamps burning in their sconces around the study. “Now, I’m gonna un-Silence you, and you’re not gonna cast anything on me, because the last guy who tried it got hit by his own rebounding Curse. Old Bern doesn’t know I’m here, so don’t try and punish him for me slipping through your very poorly secured wards.” Malfoy’s facial muscles were spasming like he’d just bit into a live wire, but he wasn’t reaching for his wand, so Harry was going to count that as a win. “…All right. Finite incantatem.”

That Malfoy didn’t immediately lay into him verbally was win number two, Harry decided, and when he finally did speak, it was in a voice soft with threat rather than a roaring bellow—so win number three. Everything was coming up Harry this evening.

“Forgive me for not showing more courtesy to someone who’d popped into my bedchamber unawares.”

“Okay, well, you’ve got a point there—but if you’d let me explain myself—”

“You mistake me for someone who cared why you were there and simply wanted you out.”

“…Another fair point.” Damn, this conversation really wasn’t going quite how he’d expected it would. “But I did have a good reason.”

“I’m certain you think you did.”

And his patience with Malfoy was rapidly wearing thin, so he took a breath and dove right to the heart of the matter. “…I saw you. Writhing on the ground, body wracked with pain, screaming.” Malfoy’s already sallow face went sheet white, throat bobbing as he swallowed thickly. “I saw the—creature. The peacock. Was that really you, then?”

Malfoy exhaled sharply. “I’ve yet to hear this ‘good reason’ you had for not only being in my home in the dead of night, but my bedroom. How kindly does the Ministry look upon its employees trespassing on private citizens’ property, I wonder?”

“Threatening to get me sacked isn’t gonna make me forget what I saw. I don’t think I could forget it, even if I wanted to.”

“…This conversation is over,” Malfoy said, standing, and Harry crossed the distance between them before Malfoy could lay hands on his wand.

“On that, I’m afraid you’re sorely mistaken. I let the Nope Pit stuff go when I really ought to have pressed harder, and I let my temper get the better of me when I ought to be used to that kind of thing from you by now. I’m not gonna make either mistake again. I’m not leaving here until you tell me what the hell is going on. So no more of your pithy remarks, no more flimsy lies—you’ll tell me what’s going on, or—”

“Or?” Malfoy said, chin jutting out in stark defiance.

“…Or I’ll report to my superiors that Old Bern should be deposed for testimony. Under recent revision to Elf Legislation, owners are barred from forbidding their house-elves to testify fully and completely before a court. I gather an elf that old has quite a few tidbits to share about the Malfoy line, no?”

Malfoy purpled with rage, and Harry thought the bulging blood vessel in his temple might actually explode this time—but perhaps still too worn out by the transformation, Malfoy only sank into his chair, defeated, and hunched forward with his head in his hands. The pity was starting to build back up again, so Harry said, “…He’s clearly worried about you, in his own way.”

“Of course he is,” Malfoy muttered. “If I lose possession of him, he goes back to serve Mother in Wizarding Paris, and he hates the French.” It was difficult to tell if Malfoy was being serious or not, so Harry didn’t press for more details. After evidently coming to some personal conviction, though, Malfoy settled back in his chair, wiped his face, and leaned onto one elbow. “…I wasn’t lying, before.”

“…I’m afraid you’ll have to be a bit more specific about which lie wasn’t actually a lie.”

Malfoy rolled his eyes. “It really is a blood curse. Only it has fuck-all to do with the Dark Lord.” He sucked on his teeth, clearly still loath to share the gruesome details of whatever this ‘blood curse’ actually was, but Harry wasn’t about to let him off with just the broad strokes. “…I don’t suppose in your grand total of five whole minutes spent in the Library during our school years you learned anything about ‘Maledicti’, did you?”

Harry searched his memory, which of late was mostly preoccupied with statutes and bylaws and enough legalese to drown a dragon in. He shook his head, and Malfoy released a derisive little snort.

“Of course you didn’t. Well, way back in the days of yore, one of my very distant ancestors made the exceedingly stupid decision to double-cross the wrong sort—a Hag, and a vengeful one at that.”

“Are there any other types of Hag?”

“Do you want to hear this or not?” Harry ducked his head, and Malfoy sighed—but continued. Maybe he really did like the sound of his own voice. “The Hag—being a Hag—couldn’t just Hex the bastard and be done with it, no. She decided to curse his line—gave us our name, even, when she did so: Bad Faith Breeds Bad Magic.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk and steepling his fingers, staring at nothing. “The curse places…a certain condition on the life of a Malfoy child at birth. If the child meets that condition by his 20th birthday, then all is well. However, should he fail to satisfy the condition…”

He left the thread hanging—and Harry picked it up. “…You turn into a peacock?” Malfoy nodded, and Harry wrinkled his nose—then realised: “Wait, but, you aren’t 20 yet. Right? Your birthday’s not ‘til…” Fuck, when was the git’s birthday? Summer some time…wasn’t it?

“June. And indeed. This is but a delightful prelude of what I can expect in another two months’ time.”

Harry shook his head in an effort to sort all the pieces of the puzzle being laid out before him. “Prelude—you mean…you mean it’ll be permanent then?”

“Obviously,” Malfoy scoffed. “This isn’t Animagecraft, you dolt. It’s a fucking curse. Of course it’s permanent.”

“Well—” Harry could feel his throat starting to tighten in panic. “Well surely there must be some way to undo it—”

“Yes, surely there must. Why not ask the other seven of my ancestors who failed to meet the deadline how that worked out for them? They should be eating Mother’s rose bushes and shitting in the central fountain right about now.”

Harry boggled as he realised the implication. “You’re saying—those peacocks your family keeps on the grounds are…other Malfoys?” He grimaced, horrified. “That’s…macabre.”

Malfoy wagged a finger his way. “Don’t ever try and say my father didn’t have a dark sense of humour.”

Okay. So Malfoy was going to turn into a peacock in two months—an evidently exceedingly painful and permanent process—and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. That sounded like a bunch of bullshit to Harry—surely it couldn’t be any more difficult to manage than breaking into Gringotts, right? “You said there was a condition that had to be met—what is it? Why can’t you meet it?”

“I can’t meet it because I can’t. That’s all you need to know—no, wait, that’s actually more than you need to know. So there you have it. Are we done?”

“Wh—no, of course we aren’t done. What’s the condition?” Harry drew up a chair, leaning over the desk to meet Malfoy’s eye. “The Hag left a way out, and I’m assuming most of your dad’s line managed to meet it just fine, so it can’t be too tall an order. D’you have to dye your hair purple or something? French-kiss the Minister for Magic? Or something really difficult for you lot, like pay your fair share of taxes?”

Malfoy flashed him a simpering smile. “Maybe all of the above? I’ll leave it to your imagination. Now if you’ll kindly remove yourself—”

“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me the condition!”

A loud, sharp CRACK rent the air between them as Old Bern popped into view atop the desk, drawing himself up to his rather unimpressive full height and reciting in a raspy voice with his eyes locked with Malfoy’s:

“O bonny babe so cool and fair

With precious golden flax for hair

A sin hast thou committed not,

But pay you shall, within your cot.

Should twenty summers pass and yet

No ring upon your finger’s set,

The line of Malfoy, long and lean,

Shall vanish, henceforth sight unseen.”

Rage flooded Malfoy’s features once more, and he lunged over the desk, making a mad grab for Old Bern, but the elf vanished as quickly as he’d appeared, leaving behind the scent of fresh ozone and the poem’s final notes ringing in Harry’s ears.

“I’ll fucking murder that little—”

“‘No ring upon your finger’s set’…” Harry muttered to himself, interrupting Malfoy’s grumbling threats. “Like—a wedding ring?”

“No, any old piece of junk will do—of course a fucking wedding ring.” Malfoy sank dramatically back into the chair. “That’s the whole damn purpose, to continue the line—and thereby continue passing along the curse.”

“So…” Harry ran the lines over in his head once more. “You have to marry someone by your 20th birthday, or…you’ll turn into a peacock, forever?”

“Sharp as a tack, you are. Pieced that all together by yourself? You were wasted in Gryffindor—clearly you’re a Ravenclaw man!”

Harry ignored the slight. “Well—I mean, you made it sound impossible. That doesn’t seem all that difficult to avoid.” At least, not if you started looking for a spouse more than a matter of weeks before the deadline. “Sure, no one wants to be practically forced into a marriage, but…” He shrugged. “I mean, weren’t you and Pansy a thing, back in school? What ever happened to her?”

“She’s in Uppsala now, probably neck-deep in muff.” Harry didn’t know what half the words in that sentence meant. “And even if she were amenable to a marriage of convenience, her family would never stand for it—nor would the families of any other eligible youths in good standing who care at all about their image.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Okay, so then find someone who doesn’t care about their image.”

“Right, yes, because so many folks are just lining up to get hitched to a Death Eater,” Malfoy spat. “I wasn’t referring to social standing, you realise.”

It was starting to sound like Malfoy didn’t want to get married at all, and Harry threw his hands up. “Fine, marry a Muggle, if you’re so arsed about it. They’ll see the Mark and just think you’re into ink and leave it at that.” He knew Malfoy would be revolted by the idea, but that was half the fun, really.

But Malfoy was eyeing him shrewdly and didn’t seem up to taking the bait. “…All right, tell me just how I’m supposed to convince a Muggle to marry me without first breaking the Statute of Secrecy?”

“Wizards marry Muggles all the time.”

“And have to jump through a lot of bureaucratic hoops to do so.”

“Then skip the discussion of magic for now and just offer them a boat load of cash. Muggles’ll do a lot if they think they’re gonna be properly compensated for the effort, you’ll find. Aren’t you lot loaded? Just—” Harry gestured vaguely. “Make up a story, say it’s your grandmother’s dying wish to see you hitched even though you’re a confirmed bachelor, and then pay them off. I’m sure you’ll get some bites.” Those ‘bites’ would come from less than reputable sorts, for sure, but it didn’t sound like Malfoy really had all that much choice in the matter.

Malfoy only stared at him, though, lips curling into a grin—and then he laughed. “Wi—with what money?” He pounded a fist on the desk. “This? And all of this?” He waved a hand around the study. “This is all that’s left of our ‘fortune’. Any liquid funds we had were entirely garnished after the war for reparations—it’s half the reason Mother fucked off to Paris. The house-elves are gone, all but Old Bern at least, the gardens have gone to pot because we can’t afford anyone to keep them up anymore, and thank the gods I’m under house arrest, as I’ve got fuck-all to wear aside from hand-me-downs from my great-uncle Sardinius!”

God, trust Draco Malfoy to keep his standards sky-high in the face of a doomed existence—Harry wanted to laugh, until he recalled why he’d been tasked with checking out the Manor in the first place. “Wait, so you’re saying that rather than try speed-dating, you thought you’d just summon a demon? That’s what you wanted to make a pact for? To break the curse?” He’d given the git far too much credit—this really was Malfoy just trying to take the easy way out, except in this case, the easy way out would probably threaten the wizarding community at large.

“No one fucking asked for your shite opinion, you know.”

“No, but you invited it by making spectacularly horrible decisions—again! God, it’s like you learned nothing from the last five-or-so years! Did you even think to, I don’t know, tell literally anyone about this? Maybe see if someone smarter than you—because shockingly, there are a few such rare gems out there—if they couldn’t think of a way out of your predicament that didn’t involve just saying yes to the dress?” Malfoy opened his mouth, but Harry was on a roll. “No, of course you didn’t, because god forbid you accept help from anyone—”

It was the little crystal dragon again that came flying towards him, evidently having been meticulously Mended after their last run-in, and Harry batted it away—but Malfoy was already on his feet, wand clenched tight in his grip. He was shaking visibly, and his eyes had gone beady and black and—oh shit, his skin was starting to break out in that rash like before. Was he going to just explode into the peacock? Was it tied to emotional outbursts? A melodramatic little shit like Draco Malfoy was going to be fending off rogue transformations every five minutes, in that case.

“You—don’t have the first fucking clue what it’s like to be me—”

“And thank god for that.”

“—so don’t stand there and pretend you have any right to lecture me! I didn’t want you here in the first place, and you can run off and tell tales to your superiors all you like, turn Old Bern upside down and give him a shake, see what secrets come spilling out if that’s how you get your rocks off, but I’m fucking done.” And he punctuated his little tirade with a Depulso strong enough it knocked the wind out of Harry when he went flying out the door of the study and hit the hallway wall just behind it. The door then slammed in his face, the sound echoing through the empty halls of the Manor.

“…The bog-standard oaf is clearly being most eloquent in his arguments with the Master.”

“Fuck off, Old Bern,” Harry grunted as he heaved himself upright, dusting off his knees. “He doesn’t want my help, so I’m not gonna force it on him.”

“Old Bern has told the bog-standard oaf—”

“Yeah, yeah…” He sighed, staring down at Old Bern. “…He doesn’t deserve your loyalty, you know. He was a horrible child, and he’s grown into an equally horrible man, and he’ll never show you an ounce of gratitude for what you’re trying to do for him.”

“No wizard is ever showing a house-elf an ounce of gratitude. Why should Old Bern be surprised? Our loyalty is not being earned. It is our gift to give. The bog-standard oaf is not a child himself and should be knowing these things by now.”

And though Harry did not entirely agree with all of that—he tried to be kind to all the house-elves he’d ever met, even the ones who really didn’t deserve it—he let Old Bern have his age-addled delusions, and with a nod, he took his leave. Old Bern did not insist on accompanying him this time.

Harry slammed the front door behind him, stomping out onto the front lawn in a huff—when a plaintive peeping cry called his attention. He whirled around, wand in hand, and found himself staring at a peacock. No, three peacocks, out for an evening stroll. They pecked at the tall grass, their long tails rustling softly behind them as they walked. The one that had called out to him had a broken crest and looked like it had lost a few patches of feathers over the years, perhaps from stress. It watched Harry for several long moments, then waddled back to join its fellows. Harry wondered which ancestor that had been—and if Malfoy too would join the flock in two months’ time.

Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t—it certainly wasn’t any of Harry’s concern, and with a final disgusted scoff, he turned on his heel and Disapparated.

For the next week, Harry drowned himself in work. He’d never thought the day would come when he would need a distraction from Draco Malfoy—well, arguably that day had already come, some time back in Sixth Year, but that was neither here nor there—but here he was, diving enthusiastically into his latest assignment that involved the Office of Misinformation. He’d initially been tasked with shadowing a more senior Department member while they liaised with the Gringotts goblins, but then it had been discovered he was no longer allowed on the premises, so there’d been some personnel shuffling, and now he was transcribing a witch’s phone call with a Muggle newspaper editor, where she was posing as an Environment and Forestry Directorate agent trying to convince the man that his scoop reporter had not had a genuine sighting of the Kelpie that called Loch Ness its home but had only mistaken a log and old fishing tackle for something more fantastic.

He worked overtime, took on extra projects, and kept himself as busy as possible—so busy he wouldn’t have time to wonder if the Ministry archives would have any information on Maledicti or if the Being Division had any tips on dispelling Hag curses. He came home so late most evenings it was nearly the next day already and face-planted onto his bed, passing out until his wand buzzed insistently to wake him for the next day of work, where he would rinse and repeat.

It was during one of these brief respites between the end of one workday and the start of another, though, that Harry was rudely jostled from his slumber. He’d been dreaming he was being chased by a snow-white peacock intent on eating his shoelaces because it thought they were worms, and when Harry had taken refuge atop a large boulder, the peacock had transformed into a massive white dragon and threatened to eat him whole. When the jostling had woken him, Harry had panicked, thinking for a brief moment that the dragon was real and here—but instead, he was staring down the long, snout-like nose of Old Bern, who was shaking Harry roughly and rasping, “Wake up, oaf! Wake yourself! Now!”

“Wh—what the hell—” He laid a hand against Old Bern’s chest, shoving him away. “Old Bern? What the hell are you doing here? What time is it?”

“The hour is not mattering—the oaf must come attend the Master, immediately. Up, up!”

“What?” Harry muttered, reaching to draw the coverlet back over his shoulder. “Did he get eaten by one of the pit demons? God, I hope so…” He closed his eyes and snuggled back into his pillow, getting comfortable.

Old Bern only ripped the coverlet from his bed entirely, snapping his fingers and disintegrating the material. “The Master is having a fit,” he said, expression grim, and Harry sat up straight, irritation at the loss of his bedding momentarily tamped down.

“Wh—is he—” But he made himself take a beat—and a breath. This wasn’t his concern, and touching though Old Bern’s worry was, Harry didn’t see what that had to do with him. “…Malfoy will be fine. You said yourself he has them all the time, and he’s gonna have more, so he might as well get used to them. He doesn’t want your help, and he sure as shit doesn’t want mine. So I’m sorry if his…condition…is worrying you, but I’d wager this isn’t the first Malfoy you’ve seen in this state.”

Old Bern’s lined face tightened. “…The Master is proud, as all of his ancestors have been, and Old Bern has watched three of his predecessors succumb to this curse. But the Master is also frightened—he is not showing it to anyone, not even Old Bern, but house-elves see things. Know things. The Master will not survive this curse. He is proud, and he is smart, but he is not strong. Not strong enough for this. The oaf is not proud or smart, but he is strong, Old Bern thinks. He is being a good match for the Master.”

“Well, I appreciate the back-back-back-handed compliment, I think, but this still isn’t any of my business—”

Old Bern reached for Harry’s hand, covering it with his own. “Please, Harry Potter. He is scared. And he is just not wanting anyone to know it.”

Well fuck.

Harry wiped a hand over his face, groping with the other for his glasses on the nightstand. “…Fine, fine—I don’t know what you honestly expect me to do, but I guess I can…I dunno. I’ll think of someth—”

Old Bern grabbed his arm, drew him close, and then they were turning into nothing, essence twisting down into a single, infinitely small point—before POPping back into existence at the foot of the grand staircase.

Harry took a nasty stumble, nearly dropping square onto his arse. “What the—oi! I haven’t even gotten dressed yet!” Harry gestured to his semi-nude body and the tatty boxers he was wearing, a pair he’d owned since Third Year when he’d received them as a gift from Mrs. Weasley after his last set had disintegrated in her wash. “Take me back!”

“After the bog-standard oaf has calmed the Master down from his fit,” Old Bern said, and began to tug Harry towards the staircase.

“But—hey, what happened to ‘Harry Potter’?”

“Perhaps when the bog-standard oaf stops behaving like a bog-standard oaf, we will see.” A familiar keening wail rent the night air, and Old Bern paused, listening. “…It is being a bad one this evening.”

“Is it ever a good one?” Harry asked, not really expecting an answer, and shook off Old Bern as he took the stairs two at a time, jogging down the long hallway of the West Wing to the suite that lay at the end. He didn’t bother to knock—Malfoy was not going to be in any fit state to answer, and even if he’d been able to refuse Harry entry, Harry likely would’ve ignored him anyway.

To Harry’s mild relief, the transformation was in its final throes when he stepped inside, so he did not have to see Malfoy horrifically contorted at unnatural angles or the veins of feathers shooting up through his skin like pea plants. Instead, he was nearly all peacock now, and in the few moments it took Harry to make his decision and stride over to scoop the bird up into his arms, the transformation had completed, and the peacock’s head hung limp, its body trembling and tail feathers shivering with soft susurrations.

He carefully orientated the peacock correctly so Malfoy didn’t wake with a crick in his neck and settled onto the mattress, stroking its back until the frantic thrumming of its heartbeat subsided to something more reasonable. Its claws hurt something fierce, digging into the meat of his bare legs, but he let it stay there, perched on his lap, a warm and comfortable weight.

“…So how long has this been going on, exactly?” Harry asked Old Bern, who was presently standing at the entrance to the room, wringing his gnarled hands before him.

“…Too long. It is happening more and more frequently as the anniversary approaches.”

That wasn’t exactly what Harry had been asking. It couldn’t have been happening at Hogwarts—word would definitely have gotten around. Since Seventh Year, then? Or thereabouts? Maybe it was tied to coming of age as a wizard; that meant it could have started as recently as…god, three years ago? This sad bastard had been dealing with excruciating, increasingly frequent transformations for three whole years?

Harry settled back against the pillows, absently stroking the peacock from its crest down its long, serpentine neck. By morning, Malfoy would be back to rights, but the respite would be far too brief. The change would take him again, and again, and again, until one day it held him and never let go. He is scared, Old Bern had said, and Harry had seen before how foolish Draco Malfoy could be when he was terrified and didn’t see a way out for himself. Demonic pacts might only be the beginning.

Harry didn’t know how he could help—only that he really kind of wanted to, despite Malfoy’s protestations. The git couldn’t make his amends, after all, strutting about covered in feathers without the sense god gave a goose. He held the peacock close, soaking in its bodily warmth, and told Old Bern, “…Next time you see a fit coming on, you come get me immediately, all right? Doesn’t matter what time of day, or where I am. I’ll make excuses if I have to.”

Old Bern said nothing, only bowed his head deeply, and that seemed to be all that was said about that.

And it did happen again—several more times over the subsequent few weeks. Usually the fits came in the middle of the night, presumably brought on by bad dreams, but once Old Bern had popped in right as Harry had been about to go on stage to give his speech at the Second Annual Battle of Hogwarts Remembrance Banquet. He’d begged a very confused Hermione to deliver his remarks in his stead and then found the peacock passed out amidst a battlefield of broken glassware and art pieces in a room Old Bern said had once been the drawing room.

By the third instance, Harry had learned to keep at hand a ‘go bag’ of dried crickets and grubs and feed grain—and even a few canisters of owl pellets to see if the peacock fancied them—as the ordeal of the transformation always left the creature exhausted. He was distressed to find he knew a lot more about peacock biology now than he had three weeks ago, but such was his very strange life, he supposed.

Not wanting to endure a repeat of their first post-transformation encounter, though, Harry always ensured he was gone before Malfoy woke the next morning. Being so sapped by the ordeal, Malfoy typically slept in, and Old Bern was good about helping Harry extricate himself from the clinging limbs that always wound up encircling Harry when Malfoy eventually shifted back to his human form. He didn’t want to be intimately familiar with the birthmark shaped like Italy on Malfoy’s right buttock, but this too was evidently now part of his very strange life.

But each time he stumbled back to No. 12 after another long night spent putting Malfoy back together from the pieces the transformation shattered him into left Harry feeling drained. The thought of all this pain—for absolutely no good reason—rankled fiercely. He understood Malfoy had pride, he understood he was terrified and feeling at the end of his rope, with the 2nd of June approaching all too quickly. But clearly he didn’t want to die—and this would be, as Harry understood it, a ‘death’ in most every sense of the word.

So Harry decided he needed to be the bigger man—needed to be fucking enormous, really—and do a little digging of his own, since Malfoy seemed to think if the cure to his curse didn’t exist in the Manor libraries, then there was no cure.

Like he did with any other problem in need of solving, Harry went to Hermione. Now, she was already eyeing him with a bit more curiosity than usual, on account of the banquet dine-and-dash Harry had pulled, but there was little Hermione liked more than a good puzzle, so she still happily agreed when he invited himself over for tea to pick her brain.

“So—and this is for an assignment at work, of course—”

“Of course,” Hermione said, taking a diplomatic sip of her tea, and Harry sensed she didn’t believe a word he was saying.

“So that means you can’t go telling anyone else about the stuff we’re discussing, all right? It’s a need-to-know basis kind of thing.”

“Can I tell Ron?”

“Wh—no, of course n—well, I mean…” Harry began nibbling on a biscuit. It would sound suspicious if he said ‘no’, but Ron had enough on his plate with the summer break coming soon. The Wheezes shop did booming business once the Hogwarts students were all home from school, and he and George were pulling late nights prepping for the coming onslaught. “I guess if you think he ‘needs to know’, but otherwise, just keep it between us.” Hermione nodded. “…Right, so I’m wondering what you maybe could tell me…about pacts. And contracts. Mostly how to make and break them.”

She blinked at him, clearly confused. “Like…how to get out of a contract you’ve made with someone?”

“Not so much someone but maybe…something?”

“Something…” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I’m really not following, and I think I need more specifics here. Is this a business contract you’re trying to get out of—”

“Not me, and no, it’s more…” He nibbled on his biscuit some more. “…More along the lines of, like, a deal with the devil.”

Hermione’s eyes went wide, and she shifted forward in her chair. “A demonic pact, then?” Harry nodded, and she released a delirious little huff of excitement. He could see he’d intrigued her—which boded well. She’d be less likely to ask too many questions about the finer details, getting caught up in the academic joy of it all. “Well, first off I’m sure you know this subject area’s not exactly been thoroughly explored—for obvious reasons—”

“I know—I’m mostly interested in what people might get out of one. Like, why would you tangle with such a creature in the first place? Are they particularly powerful compared to the magic wizards wield?”

She reached for a biscuit of her own, but rather than eat it, she gesticulated with it. “They’re particularly powerful full stop, and it’s not so much that their power dwarfs our own, it only works…differently. A bit like house-elf magic, you know?” Harry nodded solemnly, like he didn’t recognise this was a pointed reminder she very much remembered Harry being spirited away from just outside the Great Hall by a house-elf not a week prior and was keen for an explanation. “They can achieve with relative ease things that even the most skilled human wizard might spend his entire life attempting. Pacts with demons…” She winced. “Honestly, they’re sort of low-hanging fruit. The kind of thing you’d attempt either in an act of desperation or because it seemed the quickest way to get what you wanted.” Or possibly a little bit of both, Harry noted. “Demons are devious creatures, though—shrewd, cunning, and dangerously intelligent. They’ll make a deal with most anyone who petitions them, but those deals always come with caveats or drawbacks or fine print the petitioner never considered. To my knowledge, most every pact recorded in history ultimately backfired on the petitioner in the end. And since the petitioner’s soul is generally the subject of the bargain…” She shuddered. “I don’t even want to imagine what becomes of it. Honestly it sounds like a fate worse than the Kiss.”

Harry wondered if Malfoy had imagined it. Given the pitiful size of the Nope Pit, Harry doubted he’d done too much research into the finer details of the rescue route he was attempting to take. “…Say you had a curse on you. A powerful one that no one else seemed able to break. Could you make a pact with a demon and break it that way?”

“Presumably,” Hermione said with a shrug. “…But then, well, you’d be in a pact with a demon. Is that really any better?”

To some, it might be. “Could it break a Hag’s curse?”

“Now we’re on to Hag magic?” Hermione tapped her chin in thought. “It’s conceivable. It would depend on the demon—and the Hag. But probably? I can’t be sure—it’s never been documented, so it’s uncharted territory, I’m afraid.”

“Yeah, I figured…” He wrinkled his nose. “You, uh…you don’t know any other way someone might break a Hag curse, do you?”

She gave a slow, confused blink. “…Well, no. Not off the top of my head. That would require a fair bit of research and—Harry are you sure this is for an assignment?”

“Yes, of course it is—you know I’m in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.”

“Oh—right, you are, aren’t you?” She sighed and shook her head. “Well, unless you can give me more details, I’m afraid I can’t tell you much more than ‘maybe’. Hags are a bit like demons—their contracts and curses are usually pretty solid. They’re Fey, though, so there’s always a chance you might be able to outsmart them, since they’ve usually got an overinflated sense of self that blinds them to loopholes in their own magic.”

That was promising—but it sounded like it would take time Malfoy very much did not have. Which meant there was really only one other option if he wanted to avoid spending the rest of eternity being a poncy white bird instead of a poncy white wizard.

“So…bit of a topic shift, but I had a few questions about…er, wizarding marriages.”

“Wh—that…is definitely a topic shift, yes. What…” She narrowed her gaze. “…What’s brought this on? You’re not going to convince me this is for a work assignment too.”

He waved her off. “Just call it a passing fancy.”

“Marriages are far more than passing fancies, Harry Potter.” Her gaze narrowed even more, and it felt like she was trying to peer through him. “You…you aren’t seeing anyone, are you?”

He did not mention the fact that he’d woken up in Draco Malfoy’s bed, next to a nude Draco Malfoy, several times over the past few weeks. There were some things you just didn’t bring up with your best friends unless you absolutely had to—and they weren’t there. Not yet at least. “I’m not. I promise. This isn’t about me. More…a thread I’m following. Really, it is just a passing fancy. So humour me?”

Her lips twisted and she sighed, settling back with arms crossed. “…All right, what exactly are you curious about concerning wizarding marriages?”

“…Mostly how you get married—and then if you know, how to get out?”

Hermione laughed, albeit without much mirth behind it. “First you want to know how to make and break a demon pact, and now you want to know how to make and break a marriage contract? Are you sure you’re not in any trouble, Harry?”

“Like I said—humour me.”

She nodded, sipping on her tea to give herself time to collect her thoughts. “Well, obviously you’ve seen how you get married as a wizard.”

He frowned. “I have?”

“W—of course you have! Bill and Fleur’s wedding!”

“Oh.” But that had been several years past by now. “Well…honestly, that didn’t seem all that different from Muggle weddings I’ve been to. Not that I’ve been to that many Muggle weddings, but I’ve seen them on television before.”

Hermione hmmed softly. “True, on the surface it might seem similar—ceremonies binding couples together share common traits across all civilizations. But where Muggle marriages are about a binding of lives—wizarding ones are also a binding of magic. Not that you’d know, but the ceremony isn’t all that dissimilar to an Unbreakable Vow.”

Harry’s heart skipped a beat. “Wait—unbreakable? Don’t wizards ever get, I dunno, divorced?”

She scoffed. “I said it wasn’t dissimilar—doesn’t mean it’s the same. And of course they do on occasion get divorced—but that’s more of a modern convention, instated in the last hundred years or so.” Harry didn’t ask what happened to unhappy couples before the last hundred years or so. “But it’s very old, very powerful magic. And despite how commonly such ceremonies are performed, it’s woefully misunderstood. Of course we know the nature of the magic involved, how to perform the rituals and all, but who invented the spells, where the idea to create such magical bonds came from—and if we can extend them to other relationships, like families or even enemies—these are all the subject of intense research and debate.”

“Enemies? Why would enemies get married?” Harry asked, for no reason whatsoever.

“Not married—pay attention, Harry! I’m saying wizarding marriages are as much about love as about a magical bond between two people—if that bond, and its magical effects, could be expanded to other relationships—like enemies—then there might be all sorts of ways to capitalise on it. Marriage contracts for wizards are unlike any others we have in our society today. Really, a well-worded wizarding marriage contract and a poorly worded demonic one could technically get someone out of a pact with a demon. And I’m actually certain I read mention somewhere that some historians hypothesise that the reason Dumbledore waited so long to face Grindelwald involved a magical pact that prevented him from doing so…”

Harry had never been less interested in Dumbledore’s relationship with Grindelwald. He had his own (formerly) Dark wizard to worry about. “Right, so…these marriage pacts, they can be undone, right? Divorce is a thing now?”

Hermione’s nod was ambivalent, which did not instil Harry with a great deal of confidence. “Yes, there are ways to dissolve the contract—legally of course it’s an easy matter, while the magical bond takes a bit more doing to mitigate.”

“Yeah, sure—but it’s possible, right? Like, say two people decide on a whim to get hitched—”

“Oh gosh, I don’t think anything about the wizarding wedding ceremony lends itself to being performed on a whim…”

“Yeah yeah, but hypothetically.” He didn’t need the details—they were on a timer here. He just needed to know that if he did this—not that he was doing this—then it wouldn’t have to be a permanent thing. “Hypothetically, if they got married and then realised they’d made a mistake, how long would they have to divorce?”

“Divorce—or get an annulment?”

“Pretend I don’t know what an annulment is.”

She gave him a funny look—which she was welcome to, Harry knew he wasn’t exactly being all that subtle with his questions. He just needed answers, and he needed them promptly, because it would probably take between now and June to convince Malfoy this wasn’t the worst idea in the history of magic.

“Well, British wizarding law allows a marriage to be annulled within a year of the ceremony. But—” She raised a finger. “Of course, your marriage would have to qualify as voidable. Otherwise, you’d be looking at a divorce.”

“What are the qualifications?”

“Oh, there’s a whole list, I’m sure I couldn’t name them all off the top of my head. Generally issues that relate to whether or not the ceremony was allowed, or if both parties were capable of consenting.”

Harry thought on this. “…What if one party were under duress? Would that count as not being able to consent?”

“…I’m quite sure that’s one of the legal definitions of not being able to consent, so of course.”

Harry leapt to his feet, pumping the air with a fist. “Excellent! You’ve been a great help! More than you realise, actually, but I’ve got to—oh, er, one more thing.” Hermione gaped up at him in shocked silence, so he took his chance. “You said the wedding ceremony wouldn’t generally be performed on a whim—but how quickly could it be performed? You know, if time were of the essence?”

“I…I’m not quite…I suppose…with an Officiate present, and all party members prepped on what to expect, you could complete the ceremony itself inside of…perhaps a couple of hours?”

That sounded perfect to Harry, and he nicked a few more biscuits from the tray. “You’re a gem, Hermione—I’ve really gotta run now though, something urgent’s just come up at work, but we’ll definitely catch-up next time, yeah? You and Ron can come ‘round for dinner some time next week or something—Kreacher’s got a soufflé he’s been banging on about wanting to serve up.”

“Er—I really wouldn’t want to imp—” But Harry didn’t catch the rest, as he Disapparated with a bright POP!

The thing was, there was really only one way out of this curse business for Malfoy now. Maybe if he’d brought the matter up sooner, perhaps approached the Ministry for help, or even asked Professor McGonagall for advice, they could have been working on breaking the curse itself, before birthdays and weddings even entered the picture. But for whatever ridiculous reason, Malfoy had tried to go about this on his own, so here they were, staring down the rapidly approaching 2nd of June with the only thing standing between Malfoy and a feathery forever being someone willing to marry him, promptly, with no questions asked.

And since Harry hadn’t saved anyone in a while, it stood to reason that that ‘someone’ should be him.

Really, it wasn’t as if this would be forever—he thought of it as a simple ritual that would stave off the effects of the curse long enough for someone (probably Hermione) to figure out a way around the curse. If they did it inside of a year, then they wouldn’t even have to go through the mess of red tape that came with seeking a divorce. ‘Had to get married to him because it was either that or turn into a peacock’ certainly sounded to Harry like grounds for an annulment, and he was sure the Ministry would see it similarly. If everything went well, they’d be done with this business by Harry’s birthday.

The only flaw with this plan was…that Malfoy had to agree to it.

“The way I see it,” Harry opened, because Malfoy was reasonably clever and would surely respond most positively to logic, “you’ve got to marry someone, right? That’s all—just marry them. You don’t have to be in love with them, you don’t have to sleep with them—thank god—you just have to go through the whole ceremony, pop the ring on your finger, and everything’s aces, yeah?”

Malfoy only blinked at him—an understandable reaction, as Harry had only moments ago stormed the Manor, Banishing Old Bern to a closet—because he really didn’t need any interruptions of The bog-standard oaf is not making a proper appointment to speak with the Master today—and depositing himself squarely in Malfoy’s field of view. He had found Malfoy in the parlour this time, curled up on a settee with a hand-knit blanket thrown over him for warmth against the dogged spring chill. There was a mountain of thick tomes stacked precariously on a side table next to him, suggesting that he was as usual reading for business and not pleasure.

“OLD BERN!” Malfoy bellowed—and Old Bern appeared with a pop, bowing obsequiously. “How did this one get in? No—I don’t care, only see him out for me.”

But Harry brandished his wand in threat when Old Bern turned to him with a glint in his eye. “Touch me, and I’ll turn you into a teacup.” He addressed Malfoy again, speaking with a more rapid tempo now in case Old Bern decided life as a teacup might not be so terrible. “And seeing as I know all about your predicament already, we can skip straight to the ceremony. Hermione says it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours, and then it’s just a matter of making it past your birthday. Once that’s settled, we can get an annulment and go back to pretending we don’t know each other!”

“Forget it, Old Bern—I’ll handle him myself.” Malfoy reached for his wand, resting this time on a stand next to the worrisomely wobbly tower of books.

“And I’ve checked—I’m pretty sure this sort of thing is legal. Between blokes, I mean. I’m, like, 95% certain that Collins in the Portkey Office and Collins in the Office of Misinformation are husbands and not brothers, or else they were doing something really inappropriate for siblings to get up to at the last Inter-office Amity event.” Malfoy stood, doffing the blanket to reveal he was once more clad in a thin, faded robe and little else, and took a threatening step forward, and Harry hastily averted his eye. “S-so this strikes me as the quickest and easiest way to get around the curse. You could be a free man again inside of a few months, and all you’d need to sacrifice is a few weeks hitched to me.” Malfoy was smacking his wand against his palm now and seemed to be deciding which Curse to fling at Harry—or perhaps thinking of Summoning another paperweight from his study. “Also to be clear, this would only be a business arrangement—I’m sure you’re gonna make someone very miserable some day, and I wouldn’t want to stand in the way of that. But this way, we just sign a couple of documents, exchange some rings, and then poof! No more curse! And I’ve got enough friends at the Ministry who owe me favours by now that I can make sure no one ever has to know this happened—you can imagine I want people knowing I’m married to you about as much as you likely want people knowing you’re married to me.”

Malfoy arched a lacy white brow. “You don’t want people knowing you’re married to me?” The words dripped with saccharine innocence, but Malfoy’s dark expression betrayed the inherent venom.

“I—listen, it’s not a slight, so stop acting like it’s—it’d just be a whole thing, and you damn well know it. So since I’m sure you don’t want reporters banging on your door at all hours of the day and night, I thought we’d try and keep this between us—”

“Except it won’t be between us.”

“What?” Malfoy actually addressing him, in a somewhat civil tone, had not factored into Harry’s calculations, and he’d lost his train of thought. “What?”

“It won’t be between us; it will be between you, me, and the Officiate. And the licence office. And any witnesses—”

Oh, so now he was going to just be difficult because he could. “Listen, all right, it’s not without its flaws, but it’s at least a plan, and if—”

“No, it’s not a plan. It’s suicide. Because—and let me be crystal clear, I will kill myself before I marry you. Full stop.”

“Then I’d start saying my goodbyes if I were you, because if you don’t marry me—the one person in the world actually offering, I’ll remind you—then you’re gonna turn into a peacock. Forever.”

“Then I’ll be a fucking peacock. Forever.” He stabbed Harry in the chest with the tip of his wand, pressing forward with uncomfortable force. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you slipping through my wards, playing nanny while I lose myself to this gods-forsaken curse. Does it make you feel good? Does it make you feel righteous? Turning the other cheek so far you’re liable to pop your head off? Do you sleep just a little bit better at night knowing you’ve given me comfort at my lowest point? I’d have thought you’d be too busy with all your do-gooding these days to spare a thought for me, but I guess nothing gets your rocks off quite like getting one over on Draco Malfoy, eh?”

Old Bern cleared his throat. “…Old Bern will see that the bog-standard oaf is remov—”

“Fuck off, Old Bern. I mean to make this mine and Potter’s final conversation, one way or another.” Harry didn’t dare take his eyes off Malfoy, but in his peripheral vision, he could see Old Bern sweep another low bow and disappear with a pop. Malfoy leaned in close, nose nearly brushing Harry’s. “…In one month’s time, I will meet my fate, alone, and when that transformation takes me for the last time, know that it will be with thoughts of you, not being able to ‘save’ me, dancing in my mind that I go to that final great unknown.”

Harry thinned his lips into a tight line. “…You’ll give in to the curse just to spite me? If I weren’t set up so comfortably already, I’d take up proper residence in that rent-free space I apparently occupy in your head.” With a muttered Flipendo, he sent Malfoy reeling back against the settee, straightening his robes and dusting himself off. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”

“Flattery? I’m charmed. You really must want to marry me, then.”

“I’ve known you since you were eleven years old. Nearly a decade. And in all that time, not once have I ever seen you be brave. Not for bravery’s sake, at least. You choose the path of least resistance every single time. Whatever route will get you to where you want to go with the least amount of sacrifice. And I always found it odd that someone who seemed to care so much about what others thought of him would show himself to be such a coward—publicly, even! Like, you’d think you’d have at least figured out a way to get what you wanted, how you wanted it, without being an obvious little tit. But then again, you weren’t Sorted Ravenclaw, were you?

“So any time you’re faced with a problem that asks an ounce of bravery from you—asks you to stand up, show some spine, and take a chance—you shrink back and you lash out and you push away everyone who wants to help, whether they be a dickhead you knew in school or an unaccountably loyal house-elf. Because you don’t mind people thinking you’re an arsehole, you don’t mind them thinking you’re lazy—you mind them thinking you’re scared, that you’re a human man with human foibles who’s not untouchable, he’s just fucking terrified, like all the rest of us.” He leaned over Malfoy, who seemed to be vibrating out of his skin with pure, unadulterated rage, and Harry knew he was this close to combusting in a cloud of feathers. Good. “You’re right. I do have do-gooding I ought to be attending to, but I’m here. With you. Offering this. Because I know what it feels like to be terrified of dying—and to not want anyone else to know it. Just like I know that even the tiniest of comforts in moments like that mean the world.” He drew back. “…I won’t tell your secret if you won’t tell mine.”

Malfoy was breathing rapidly now, flushed with anger—there were little pink dots in his cheeks and spreading over his chest. Or maybe that was the pimpling rash preceding what was bound to be a spectacularly horrific transformation. “You…know nothing about me—”

“I know enough. I know that in eighteen days’ time, your bones will crack and your skin will explode and you’ll spend your final sentient moments in abject agony—the same agony I’ve watched you endure night after night after night. And then you’ll be gone, and I’ll go close up the Nope Pit and head back to work. And who knows—maybe I'll adopt you once it's all done. Keep you in the front garden at Grimmauld Place. It's brimming with bugs and beetles and all sorts of creepy-crawlies. You'll love it. And every morning, I’ll step outside and dump my compost in the heap so the worms’ll come up for a root around, since I’m sure those’ll be your favourites. People will ask what my pet peacock’s name is, and I’ll tell them it’s something like ‘Larry’ or ‘Ed’, and they’ll laugh, because what a silly name for such a magnificent creature. Don’t worry, though. When it’s just us, I’ll still call you ‘Malfoy’. But you won’t know, because you’ll be a fucking peacock. Forever." He then held out his hand. “Or you can be married to me, for one month, and then we can forget we ever knew each other.” Malfoy recoiled, regarding the hand as one might a tumorous growth, so Harry waggled his fingers invitingly. “Come on. Make me the most miserable man on the planet.”

Malfoy still balked, a dozen different emotions flitting across his features, and Harry suspected a not-insignificant part of Malfoy genuinely wanted to wandlessly explode Harry—or at least send another paperweight flying into his forehead. At long, long length, though, he seemed to come to the conclusion that he really would rather not die after all, and he spat out a gruff, “Fine,” before crossing his arms very deliberately, leaving Harry’s hand hanging in the air.

Well, it would have to be good enough, he supposed—and then Harry realised he had an entirely new problem.

He needed to find someone who could marry them.

There was really only one person he could go to for the simple reason there was only one person he’d even made mention of this predicament to: Hermione. But she was the obvious choice even barring their previous conversation, being the most clever person Harry knew and also the one likely to be the most level-headed about the whole thing.

At least, this had been his assumption—one he was presently beginning to reconsider.

“So,” he began on another tea date, one he suspected Hermione had allowed if only to grill him about his abrupt departure (and strange line of questioning) at their previous engagement. “I did have another favour to ask.”

“You’re racking up quite the debt to me, Harry Potter,” she mused, stirring her tea cup with a wry grin. “Any chance you’re ever going to pay off your tab? Or should I chalk it up to a loss?”

“Well, when I’m Head Auror and you’re Minister for Magic, you’ll be my boss and can call in all the ‘favours’ you like on your end, so I think we’ll be even then.”

“Ah.” She nodded. “How convenient that won’t happen for at least another, what, ten years?”

“Come on, it’s us—we can make it in…eight? Five if we’re terribly ambitious, I think.” She laughed—but in that way that said I know you’re stalling, so get on with it. So he did. “I was wondering…if you’d marry me.”

Hermione’s teacup hit the carpet and went rolling, and her eyes boggled. “If I’d—what?!”

And then Harry heard what he’d just said, immediately on the defensive. “Oh—wait, no, no not ‘marry me’ you, but you marry me—oh bollocks, that didn’t sound right either.”

“No, no, it didn’t,” Hermione muttered, half to herself, and leapt to her feet to pace out her nerves—a habit she engaged in on the regular, Harry suspected, as he could see the faint outline of a path starting to be worn into her parlour room rug. “You—you need to start speaking quickly, and maybe be a bit more judicious with your words. Because the last time you were here, you asked me all about wizarding marriages and this time you—what, want to be in one? With me? Or officiated by me? I’m terribly confused…”

She sank back into her seat on the sofa, and Harry crouched down between them to pick up her teacup. “…Yeah, sorry. I got a bit ahead of myself.” He quickly Scourgifyed the spilt tea and settled back down across from her, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “I need you to preside over a wedding ceremony. Officiate it, like you said. If that’s possible, at least.”

She frowned, leaning forward herself. “…Like, a wedding…for you?” When he didn’t deny the assumption, she made a little gasping sound in the back of her throat. “Ohmygosh, Harry—I didn’t even know you were seeing anyone. Wait—is it that witch from Games and Sports? The one who mistook you for Keaton Flitney? Match made in heaven, if you ask me—she’s probably the only person around with eyesight worse than you.”

“Wow, thanks for that vote of confidence—and no, it’s not her.”

“Well, I was only half-joking—but if not her, then who?” Her brows waggled. “I can’t believe you’ve kept this from us! Or—ooh, you’d better not have told Ron and not me, Harry Potter.” She pre-emptively punched his shoulder, and he winced; she still had a mean right jab, which did not bode well for the remainder of the conversation. “Is it serious? Gosh, who am I kidding? Of course it’s serious. So? Spit it out!”

He held his hands up in a vain effort to both calm her down and fend off any further assault on his person. “It’s—it’s complicated, and there’s a very good reason I haven’t told you, either of you.”

“And that reason is…?” When Harry continued to dither, trying to think of how best to frame the request—really he should have prepped in front of a mirror for this—she reminded him, “I mean, presumably I’m gonna get to meet them at this ceremony you want me to preside over, so…?”

“Just…you’ve got to promise me you won’t freak out. Or Jinx me. Or hit me.” Now Hermione was frowning. “It’s just, I need you to let me explain why I’m doing this—and not do any of the aforementioned freaking out or Jinxing or hitting, as might be your initial instinct.”

She shook her head. “Harry, I don’t understand, what’s so terrible about—”

“It’s Draco Malfoy.”

She sputtered in laughter, reaching for the teapot to refill her cup. “Right—pull the other one.”

“No, I…I’m serious. That’s who it is.”

“Uh huh. Wanna resurrect You-Know-Who to be your Best Man while we’re at it?” She continued snickering at her own humour. “Did Ron put you up to this? Tell him this doesn’t count—he’s going to have to try a lot harder to—”

“Draco Malfoy’s under a Maledictus curse, and if he doesn’t marry by his 20th birthday in just a few weeks, he’ll be irreversibly transformed into a peacock and live out his days strutting about the Malfoy Manor grounds. I’d like to help ensure that doesn’t happen—and I’m hoping you’ll continue to be a gem and lend a hand with the ceremony.”

Hermione dropped her second cup of tea.

“Male—did you say Maledictus? But—” And then she was on her feet, hands slapped over her mouth in shock. “That house-elf! The one that spirited you away at the banquet! That—”

“—was Malfoy’s elf. He’s been fetching me whenever Malfoy has a fit—it’s what Old Bern’s been calling the uncontrolled transformations. They evidently hurt like hell, so I’ve been helping Malfoy through them—” He paused, considering what he actually did during the fits. “For very loose definitions of ‘help’.”

And now Hermione was pacing again, this time at a much more rapid clip than before. “Are you out of your mind? Are you out of your mind? Did you ever get checked for brain damage after taking that second Killing Curse? Really, if you were technically dead for even a little bit, your brain might have been deprived of oxygen long enough to—”

“Wh—of course I’m not out of my mind, and this is what I meant by ‘let me explain why I’m doing this’!”

Hermione crossed her arms. “Well then, by all means! Explain away this ludicrous suggestion.”

This was going fantastic. “…Like I said, Malfoy’s got this ‘Maledictus’ curse on him—he said a Hag placed it on the family line ages back—and under the terms of the curse, if he doesn’t marry someone by his 20th birthday, then the curse takes effect, which essentially turns him into a…well, a peacock. Which under most circumstances would be absolutely hilarious, believe me, I agree, but…” He threw his head back against the chair, closing his eyes, and he could feel her watching him intently. “…I’ve seen it happen. His elf called it a ‘prelude’ to the actual curse taking hold of him. When he gets emotional or out of sorts, it sends him into a fit, and he transforms without meaning to. It’s…it’s horrible, Hermione. I’ve never seen something so…it was like watching someone get Crucioed, over and over and over, and he screamed. He screamed the entire time.” He opened his eyes, and her expression was difficult to decipher. Like she wanted to pity Malfoy but couldn’t manage it. Harry couldn’t blame her.

She stopped pacing, though she still seemed overcome by a nervous energy, shifting back and forth from one foot to the other, arms still crossed. “Well—has he told anyone about this? Reported it? Has anyone in his family?”

“What do you think?” Harry muttered. “It’s Malfoy. It’s the Malfoys. You really expect them to make an appointment with the Janus Thickey ward at St. Mungo’s?”

“Good point…” She tapped her chin, then seemed to force herself to sit back down, going about it in a very jerky manner. “All right, start from the beginning again. How on earth did you get involved with Malfoy in the first place?”

“Well—it really was a work assignment. The DMLE’s passed me off to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures for the spring training session, which has been just riveting work, do let Ron know how much fun he’s missed.” She snorted softly but did not interrupt. “Anyway, they task me with menial work the actual Department members don’t wanna have to deal with—and in this case, over a month back by now, I got assigned de-Doxying duty at Malfoy Manor.”

“Doxies? They’ve got Doxies?”

“It wouldn’t have been the worst thing infesting that place, would it?” Hermione shuddered in remembrance, rubbing her arms. “And as it turns out, it wasn’t Doxies at all, actually. It was—and seriously, you can’t mention this to anyone, as I haven’t…exactly…reported it yet—” Hermione frowned, and before she could start a lecture, he continued, “It was Imps—escaped from a small portal Malfoy had apparently been trying to generate so he could summon a proper demon.”

“A demon—?!”

“Yup. Luckily for, well, everyone, he’d only been able to manage a portal large enough for a few Imps to slip through, and they started leeching his essence before he could try widening the rift. When I asked him what the hell he’d been thinking, I eventually got it out of him that he’d been hoping to leverage a demonic pact against this curse on his bloodline. Apparently he’s been neck-deep in research trying to solve the thing himself for months. Now the deadline’s coming up fast, and he’s getting desperate.”

Hermione nodded. “So he’s prevailed upon you to step in and save him once more, has he?”

“What? Oh—no, I’m the one who suggested it.”

She froze. “You—what? You suggested—oh, Harry…” she groaned. “This again?”

A flash of defensiveness speared through him. “What do you mean ‘this again’?”

She sank back down onto the sofa, head in her hands. “I mean this—getting caught up in whatever mess Draco Malfoy’s gotten himself into.”

“When have I ever—”

“Sixth year, when you insisted on stalking him wherever he went—”

“He was up to something! I was wholly vindicated!”

“Seventh year, when you nearly got us all killed going back for him and his lackeys when the Fiendfyre was nearly upon us—”

“And what was I supposed to do, just let him die?”

“Sometimes—sometimes yes, you’ve got to let people pay for their own mistakes!”

“And what mistake was this, hm? One of his great-great-great-times-eighteen grandparents fucked over a Hag, and now he’s got to take the fall for it?” He shook his head—it’d been a mistake, asking this of Hermione. He didn’t blame her for her clear reluctance, but he didn’t have time to deal with this right now. “Just—forget it, I’ll find someone else who’ll—” He moved to stand, and she quickly reached over to lay a hand on his knee, staying him.

“Oh don’t be like that, Harry! It’s not that I don’t want—it’s just…well.” She lifted her brows. “He didn’t ask you to do this, did he? You offered?”

And what was that supposed to mean? “…You think he’d ask for water to put himself out if he were on fire? He’d wait ‘til someone pissed on him or merrily be reduced to ashes. Arseholes like him are too proud for their own good.”

“…And rather than come to me or anyone else looking for answers, you just decided to solve it on your own and—my god, marry him? Really?”

“Wh—it’s what the poem said!”

“There’s a poem?” Hermione sat up a bit straighter, casting about for something—and then grabbed a notepad and quill from a writing desk. “It figures there’d be a poem. What did it say?”

“Oh. Uh…” Harry wrinkled his nose—this had been nearly a month ago now, hadn’t it? “There was…something about blond hair. And twenty summers…and a ring? And the Malfoy line ending.” Hermione stared at him, expression slack. “What?! I’m supposed to have remembered it when I heard it all of once? Obviously I took away the most important part, which is that all that needs to happen is Malfoy’s gotta be married to someone by his twentieth birthday, which is June the 2nd.” She lifted a brow, and he quickly amended, “…Or so he told me.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Well how am I meant to help him break this curse if I don’t know the details of it?”

“Er, I wasn’t gonna ask you to break it—I mean, not right away? We just need an Officiate. Surely that’s an easier task than breaking a centuries-old bloodline curse, yeah?” Harry laughed—but Hermione did not seem to find this funny at all.

“Why does it have to be you though? Oh, do you have any idea what you’re proposing, Harry?”

“Well, yeah. Marriage.” She looked like she wanted to throw a paperweight at his head now, and he held his hands up in defence. “Right, right—poor timing. I mean—yes, I realise what I’m suggesting, and believe me, Malfoy was no more enthused with the idea at first than you are.”

“Nice to see he’s at least got some good sense.”

“But I really don’t see the problem! The curse says he needs to be married—so he’ll be married. And then, once we’re certain we’ve freed him from the curse, we can get divorced. Or an annulment, like you mentioned. No harm, no foul.” He searched her face, suddenly concerned by her concern. “That…that should be fine, right?”

“Well, I mean, of course I’d need to see the actual language of the curse—this poem you mention—to ensure it really would only take a simple ceremony to satisfy the terms. And what was the bit about his line ending? It doesn’t require a child be conceived, right? That might be difficult on such short notice—not to mention the mountain of associated ethical and consent issues…”

“No, I’m pretty sure—hold up, what do you mean ‘on such short notice’? You mean at all, right?” Hermione was nibbling on her quill, seemingly lost in thought. “It’s me and Malfoy—we’re blokes.”

“What? Oh, don’t be daft, Harry. Of course you’d still be able to have children—not that I in any way support any sort of procreation with that cretin. But conceptually, of course it would be possible.” Harry blanched as visions of himself waddling around sporting a baby bump danced through his head. His queasiness must have been writ large on his features, for Hermione immediately amended, “Through magic! Magic, naturally! I mean, there’s all sorts of spells for surrogacy and the like. I even read there’s a coven of witches in Finland who grow their offspring communally in a cauldron…” And now he was picturing Malfoy standing proudly before a bubbling cauldron in Potions class, with Snape reaching in and pulling out a screeching little Malfoy clone already wearing Harry’s glasses and proclaiming Top marks, Mister Malfoy, but no accounting for taste. “Regardless,” Hermione said, snapping Harry’s attention back to the present. “As it is, I’m afraid I can’t see why a perfectly legal wizarding marriage wouldn’t satisfy the terms of this curse…much as I might wish otherwise.”

Oh, well that was fantastic, wasn’t it? “Seriously? So—then you’ll do it?”

“Do what?”

Had she not been paying attention? “Officiate! We need someone to actually oversee the ceremony, and for obvious reasons, we’d rather keep this close to the vest. The fewer people who know about this, the easier it’ll be to pretend it never happened once the thing’s off.”

“Oh. Right.” She wiped a hand over her face and sighed, massaging her neck. “…I suppose I could look into getting ordained… I hear it’s not too terribly difficult. A couple of forms, a licensing fee, that sort of thing. But—” She held up a finger when Harry looked like he was about to celebrate. “I’m warning you Harry, this isn’t a contract to be entered into lightly. Like I told you—wizarding wedding ceremonies involve very old, very complicated magic, and with a curse thrown into the mix…well, I can’t promise it’ll be undone quite as easily as you might be hoping.”

Harry frowned. “…What’s that supposed to mean?”

“…It means you should ask yourself if you’re prepared for it to be unable to be undone, worst-case scenario?” Oh, fuck. “Because with next to no time to dig into the particulars of this curse or do half the research I might want to—I do have a job, you know, as do you—then while yes, it might save Malfoy from what sounds like a fate worse than death…it might doom you to your own ‘fate worse than death’ in the doing.”

…Well, that wasn’t much of a choice at all, was it? After all, what really were Malfoy’s alternatives this late in the game? There were none, as far as Harry could see—and he suspected Malfoy couldn’t see any either, or else he surely would have proposed them by now. The options were marry Malfoy—maybe for forever, and in doing so never be able to legally marry someone else he might actually love—or…let Malfoy die. Let him turn into a fucking peacock, forever. It was Malfoy’s life weighed against Harry’s hypothetical future happiness.

So he asked himself if he was prepared for it to be un-undoable—and no, he wasn’t really prepared for it…but he was ready to accept it, he supposed.

Really, it was Malfoy who would be less likely to go along so blithely, but if he hadn’t thought of this potential eventuality himself, Harry certainly wasn’t going to bring it to his attention.

Harry sighed. “…I dove into fire to save his ungrateful arse once. What’s once more, in the grand scheme of things?”

Hermione’s expression seemed half-disappointed, half-resigned, like she’d kind of expected this from him but had still hoped otherwise. “…Well, let it be on your head, then. Right, I suppose I’ll look into becoming an Officiate—so you and Malfoy should make sure you’ve got the Vows squared away.”

Vows? Oh, right. “I mean, I was just gonna go with the usual. Having, holding, blah blah blah.”

Hermione fixed him with a blank stare. “I don’t mean—I mean the Vows. You know, the Vows you take during the ceremony?”

Harry wasn’t certain what she was getting at. “I—think I do? Like you said, I was there at Bill and Fleur’s wedding. And I haven’t actually been to a Muggle one, but I’ve seen a couple on the television before. Seems like pretty standard stuff?”

“Wh—no, no, I mean like the Consummation Clause?” Harry hadn’t a clue what that was, but he already didn’t like the sound of it. “The Influx? The Blood Boon? Oh my god…” She leapt to her feet and sprinted over to her bookcase, where after a few moments muttering to herself, she pulled a tome and handed it to Harry. He wrinkled his nose at the title: Hitched for the Bewitched: A Complete Idiot’s Guide to Wizarding Marriage (evidently by the acclaimed author of So You’re Marrying a Pure-blood).

“Why the hell do you have this?” It was the sort of insipid tripe Harry thought he’d seen Ginny giggling over in the Common Room with her girlfriends once upon a time.

“It doesn’t matter, just take it, study it, and let me know what day I need to clear my schedule for. In the meantime—I’ll be spending a bit of time down on Level 2, I expect, getting in good with the Administrative Registration Department so they won’t ask too many questions when I have to submit a Marriage Certificate that I don’t want anyone peeking at too closely.”

Harry felt his shoulders sag in relief. “Thank you, Hermione—seriously. He’ll owe you massively for this.”

“Not half as much as he’ll owe you.” She pursed her lips, then settled in the chair just next to the one Harry presently occupied, leaning in close and studying his features. “…You are doing this because you feel sorry for him or something, right?”

“I—what? Why else would I…?”

“I mean to say, you aren’t…you aren’t actually attracted to him? You aren’t—dating him, and this is some elaborate scheme to—”

“OH—god no!”

“—Just, I can’t say I’d be thrilled for you, but I do want you to know I at least wouldn’t judge you. Well—all right, I might judge you a little, but I like to think I’d be open to it—”

“Hermione, honestly, you’re so far off the mark it’s not even funny.”

“—and Ron would throw a fit, probably not talk to you for a few days, but you know he’d come around. At least he wouldn’t burn you off the family tapestry like some folks might.”

Oh god, Ron. Harry held up his hands to stop her before she jumped headlong into any more wild conclusions. “First off, I’m most definitely not secretly dating Malfoy. There is no elaborate scheme—you know I’m too much a Gryffindor to scheme—”

“Mm, but Malfoy might…”

“But he didn’t. It was like pulling teeth to get him to agree to this, so trust that neither of us is thrilled with the prospect of being hitched to one another, however short or long that might be—but we’re gonna do it. With your help, I’m hoping?” He gave her a long look, and she sighed and nodded. “Excellent! Oh, and, uh, also…if you could maybe…not mention this business to Ron? At least not until it’s said and done and there’s nothing he could do to stop it, you know, like stage a hunger strike or anything.”

Hermione laughed a bit more genuinely this time. “Well—ordinarily I don’t like any of us keeping secrets—” Harry wondered if that extended to reasons for owning books about marrying into pure-blood families. “—But I think Ron might sleep just a little bit more soundly if he learned you were very briefly Harry Potter-Malfoy only once the annulment paperwork has been filed.”

Harry choked on the biscuit he’d just discreetly stuffed into his mouth, coughing violently. “Harry Potter-what-did-you-say?”

The implication that he would be taking Malfoy’s name was, it turned out, not the worst thing he took away from Hermione’s flat. It was the book, which he did as instructed for once and read. Well, not so much read as skimmed, admittedly—but he still picked up the broad strokes, which left him feeling so queasy, he forewent dinner altogether.

Like the ‘Consummation Clause’—which to Harry’s abject relief nowadays did not actually involve ‘consummation’ but rather required the couple spend thirty uninterrupted days and nights under the same roof. It seemed ridiculous, the more he read about it; the newlyweds couldn’t leave the wedding site—not even together—without the contract being nullified. What about a honeymoon? What if there was an emergency? And what was Harry meant to do if he couldn’t go into work? He had all of three sick days he could use—the rest would be down to Head Auror Robards’s very generous magnanimity. Just what Harry needed—incoming accusations of favouritism before he’d even joined the Auror force properly.

And then there was the ‘Influx,’ a phenomenon apparently brought on by the fucking blood pact, wherein he and Malfoy would be expected to share blood in a magical ritual that sounded dreadfully unsanitary at best and downright deadly at worst. If this was a blood curse afflicting Malfoy, would it transfer to Harry? Was he going to become a peacock in the doing, or would the same terms then apply to him, the wedding to Malfoy protecting him as much as his would-be husband? That alone was enough to give him pause—until he read on and learned that the shared blood mingling between their bodies would form a magical tether that would, at least for the first few years (years!), allow the two of them to sense each other’s emotions. Fucking fantastic.

The only kind of cool aspect to this whole wedding ritual was turning out to be the ‘Blood Boon,’ which the book explained would present as a magical boost they could benefit from when touching one another as the bit of each other’s blood in their own body called out to its original owner, drawing on their strength and empowering each spouse. Harry suspected that might prove pretty useful—except there was little chance of Harry ever being pinned down in a firefight with Malfoy, close enough to reach over and hold hands just to make his Jinxes pack a bit more punch. Nice, but not too terribly useful, and certainly not outweighing the inconvenience of the Consummation Clause or concern regarding the Influx.

He didn’t bother bringing any of this up with Malfoy though. After all, Malfoy was a pure-blood and probably knew all about these stuffy rituals already, right? Of course right. And since Malfoy didn’t seem inclined to offer much beyond the odd monosyllabic grunt when Harry explained that Hermione had kindly agreed to oversee the ceremony (“Don’t call it that.” “All right, what should I call it?” “Literally anything else.” “Fine, she’s agreed to oversee our wedding.”), Harry didn’t bother to elaborate further either.

Indeed, Malfoy seemed disinterested in aiding in the preparation efforts at all, as if it wasn’t his soon-to-be-feathery arse on the line if they didn’t pull this off, but to his great credit, Old Bern pulled through, proving quite an enthusiastic participant now he had his Master’s tacit permission to do everything in his power to see that the wedding was a success.

He was only too happy to recite the poem for Hermione, accompanying Harry to her flat after Malfoy abjectly refused to allow anyone into the Manor until the day of the ceremony. “I won’t have you turning my home into a zoo!” he’d snarled, and his mood had not improved when Harry had corrected, “Our home, Darling.”

Old Bern, being much more learned on the particulars of Malfoy’s curse than Harry was, related everything he knew to Hermione, who seemed utterly fascinated by the complex magic at play. Harry had to remind her at regular intervals that a man’s life was essentially at stake here, and it would be better all around if they could break the curse before they had to go through with the wedding. “Well of course I know that,” Hermione said, defensively. “But it’s not every day you get to encounter an actual blood curse! Do you think Malfoy will allow me to write a paper about it?” Perhaps, Harry concluded, it was better she not visit the Manor before it was absolutely necessary after all.

Somewhere between her research and getting ordained and throwing Ron off the scent as to why she and Harry were spending so much time together (“We’re trying to plan a surprise birthday party for someone, and if you don’t mind your own business, it won’t be for you.” “But my birthday was like two months ago…” “Well that’s what makes it a surprise!”), Hermione still found time to harass Harry about what he was planning to wear to the wedding.

“Surely you aren’t planning on wearing your plain old dress robes for the ceremony, right?” she said as she guided Harry towards Twilfitt and Tattings. It was a bustling Wednesday morning in May, and Diagon Alley was packed. Harry, under a series of spells meant to disguise him beyond recognition, found himself silently praying Malfoy would have another fit, just so Old Bern might appear and spirit him away from the crushing crowds.

“Well—” Harry said, releasing a sharp oof as an old witch nailed him right in the solar plexus with her oversized handbag. “I mean, yeah, I was actually. Is there some reason I shouldn’t?” He ducked, narrowly missing being scalped by a low-flying delivery owl. “It’s not as if this’ll be real.”

“It’ll be real enough for the Curse; show it some respect.”

Harry chuckled. “It’s magic, not a person.”

Hermione reached for the door to Twilfitt and Tattings. “Magic can have a curious sentience at times.” She threw a knowing look at Harry. “Do you want to risk it?”

And no, after going through all this trouble, of course he didn’t. “Well then—why don’t we go to Madam Malkin’s? Or one of the second-hand shops? I’m not dropping a month’s salary—”

“You don’t get paid, Harry.”

“—on a set of robes I’ll never wear again!”

Hermione cast a quick glance around—the shop was mostly empty, the only visible attendants in the back, taking measurements from another customer and cooing compliments at them as they admired themselves in a floating mirror. When she spoke again, she’d dropped her voice to a loud whisper. “And what if you are able to successfully annul this you-know-what and find someone you actually want to get you-know-whated to in the future? You’ll already have a lovely set of robes for it, then.”

“Right, because I’m definitely gonna want to wear the same clothes I got you-know-whated to you-know-who in—”

“Oh, god, I think we need to stop with the code-speak; you sound like you’re getting hitched to Voldemort now.”

Harry quite agreed, and they spent the rest of the afternoon discussing colour and fabrics and cuts and lengths and all sorts of other things Harry didn’t give two figs about. He ultimately allowed himself to be outfitted in the simplest set of dress robes the attendants had in stock, which was already far more extravagant than anything Harry had crumpled in the back of his wardrobe. Hermione seemed satisfied in the end, claiming Harry looked quite handsome in the dark, trailing fabric that she felt would contrast nicely with his natural eye colour, and though he didn’t really see it himself, he took her word for it. After parting with a small fortune, he left her to the remainder of her shopping—she was heading to a jewellery shop now, for she was in charge of procuring rings for them, and he wanted no part in that—and returned home to reconsider the life choices that had brought him to this point.

They set the date of the ceremony for May the 20th, just shy of two weeks until the Curse took hold.

Of course it was an absolutely lovely day for a wedding. They couldn’t have selected a better date if they’d gone to a proper Augur.

Harry Apparated to the Manor, a travelling bag packed with everything he would need to survive a month cohabitating with Malfoy in tow, promptly at 10 AM. Hermione and Ron would check in on his Beezilbud while Harry was, as Ron had been informed, on a ‘lengthy assignment in Siberia’, and he’d already delivered his pre-emptive apologies to Andromeda and Teddy for missing the next four weekend playdates together. He’d finagled a few extra days off for ‘bereavement leave’ from work, claiming he needed a breather in the wake of another painful war anniversary just passed. Between that, all his accumulated holiday leave (three whole days), and an impending follow-up request to work remotely for three weeks while he recovered from what he would claim was a bad case of Spattergroit, he’d squared away any need to leave the Manor for at least a month.

Everything was set—now all that was left…was the actual act of marrying Draco Malfoy.

When Hermione had bullied him into purchasing the overpriced dress robes for the occasion, Harry had despaired that he’d definitely be made fun of by Malfoy for taking the act so seriously, having to endure his cackling down the (hopefully metaphorical) aisle. His worries, though, had been entirely misplaced—as Malfoy actually glided down the grand staircase the day of dressed rather smartly himself in an elegant, form-fitting suit with nary a line nor crease to speak of, draped in a long robe-like shawl that trailed the ground behind him in a fashion Harry was definitely not going to call a ‘train’, not on today of all days.

He’d even had his hair done—where before he’d generally kept the ridiculously long locks tightly plaited over one shoulder or piled atop his head, today they hung around him in a long, shimmering white curtain that shone with an odd opalescence when the sunlight hit it just right, and Harry wondered not for the first time if the Malfoy line didn’t have a tiny bit of Veela blood floating around in there somewhere. It would certainly explain rather a few things about Malfoy’s ridiculousness.

Harry had expected him to turn up in another of Sardinius’s robes, like usual, or something stuffy and dated like his Yule Ball robes—but clearly Malfoy still had some finery boxed up in the attic, and Harry was admittedly a bit dazzled by the sight (and grateful he’d let Hermione convince him he ought to put in a bit of effort, or else he might have been left feeling very plain next to Malfoy). Peacock though he might not be yet, Malfoy was still quite the fancy specimen, to Harry’s irritation.

At their mutual request, the ceremony itself was perfunctory, prioritising function over form. Harry had thought they might go out into the garden and at least have a nice space to enjoy despite it all, but when Malfoy reminded him that the Venomous Tentacula had been allowed to grow wild once they’d had to let the gardener go, he’d decided that Malfoy’s study would suit just fine after all.

Hermione recited the Officiate’s lines by rote, and Harry and Malfoy responded when requested, with differing degrees of enthusiasm. When Hermione asked if they were interested in the part where they were to kiss their new spouse, Malfoy said something very rude, and Harry kicked him in the shin but privately concurred.

The whole matter was over and done with inside of fifteen minutes. Harry supposed that was what happened when you stripped the affair down to its barest bones, leaving off the personalised vows and five hundred guests looking on expectantly and witch’s dozen doves serenading the wedding party.

The rings Hermione had chosen were really quite nice, from an aesthetic perspective, and Harry mouthed a quiet Nice work! to her when she presented them for collection. Harry would have been satisfied with a couple of simple gold bands, but then he remembered Hermione’s insistence on the existence of sentient magic and decided it was worth it for the peace of mind. He could always pawn his later to recoup some of his losses.

He picked up the one she indicated was to be placed on Malfoy’s finger and tested its weight. It was an elegant little silver thing shaped like a snake eating its own tail, with a tiny emerald for an eye, and when he squinted, he could just make out letters engraved on the inside of the ring: m. HJP 20 May 2000. It was lovely—if a little flimsy for something that would (supposedly) spare Malfoy from his curse and save his sanity.

He glanced over to see Malfoy similarly inspecting the ring meant for Harry’s finger—an equally elegant gold band with a stylised lion’s head eating its own tail and a tiny ruby where its eye was meant to be. He could not make it out from here, but he imagined this ring too had an engraving on the inside of the band, perhaps along the lines of m. DLM 20 May 2000.

Harry didn’t typically wear jewellery, his only accessory of note being his glasses, and he wondered if it wouldn’t feel a little strange, having those initials pressed up tight against his flesh for the next month. Still, it was only a temporary measure, and in a matter of weeks, he’d be able to toss the ring into the junk drawer of the kitchen at Grimmauld Place and forget it existed. He could bear its weight until then.

They left the Blood Pact for last, after the ceremony proper, as there was every chance they were going to ruin their dress robes, and Harry had paid a pretty Knut for his and might want to wear them again for some other occasion (not another wedding, though, as Hermione had proposed). Old Bern had taken his unofficial position as Hermione’s aide-de-camp quite seriously, standing at the ready with a Healer’s Kit and—at Malfoy’s suggestion—a freshly Conjured fainting couch (“You are prone to passing out, after all, Potter.”). Harry had to remind himself he was married now, and he did not want his eventual biography to end with, “Serving a life sentence in Azkaban for the murder of his husband, Draco Lucius (Potter-)Malfoy”.

Harry had an unexpected moment of panic, though, when he drew his wand and laid it against Malfoy’s bare forearm, right over the Dark Mark, where he was meant to make his incision with a shallow Diffindo. It was supposed to be a quick, easy thing—just enough to draw blood, and then they would press their wounds together, the blood would mingle, and Hermione would finalise the ritual. Unsanitary and grotesque, but not so very difficult to accomplish.

Except when he pressed the tip of his wand to Malfoy’s flesh, prepared to split it open, he was wracked by a stomach-churning flashback to Sixth Year, with Malfoy sprawled out flat on the bathroom floor, bleeding out and so much red everywhere. He’d done it with this same wand, even, and he could almost hear the incantation beating against the doors of his mind, begging to spill from his lips: Sectumsempra.

But then Malfoy stamped hard on Harry’s toes with his pristinely polished loafers, and he whispered under his breath in a threatening hiss, “Get your shit together, Potter; you’re embarrassing me in front of the help. This is no time for one of your legendary fits—that’s my purview these days.”

Harry bit his tongue—then cast the spell without issue, relishing the soft grunt of discomfort Malfoy gave in response. As they held each other by the forearm, their blood mingling and Hermione’s soft droning echoing in Harry’s ear while she finalised the ritual, he resolutely kept his gaze averted from Malfoy’s face, unsure of what he might see there—and unsure of what Malfoy might see on his.

“And that should do it!” Hermione huffed, looking quite pleased with herself. Harry hoped that boded well; she was generally very self-critical, so if she thought she’d done a decent job, there was every chance she’d absolutely nailed it. He would have to arrange for a very impressive gift for her in the near future; maybe with the curse hopefully broken, Malfoy could be convinced to allow her to write a paper on him after all. It was really the least he could do.

Harry delivered his thanks once again, though no amount of nudging—verbal or physical—would elicit any words of gratitude from Malfoy’s corner. Harry counted it a blessing he at least wasn’t calling Hermione horrible names, only sitting on the sofa in the parlour frowning at his wedding ring, as if its mere existence caused him great offence. Given this was Malfoy, perhaps it did. Well, if he’d wanted something nicer, he could have found a way to chip in himself.

“Goodness, it’s later than I expected,” Hermione said after a quick glance at her watch. “Ron’ll be extra suspicious if I’m late for dinner; Sunday evenings are Burrow affairs, and everyone’s going to want to know what’s kept me if I’m even thirty seconds late.”

“Definitely don’t let us keep you—and deliver my apologies, won’t you? Tell Molly I’ll be around…well, as soon as ‘work’ lets up, yeah?”

Hermione gave him a wink, then ducked her head around Harry to catch sight of Malfoy, calling out, “And goodbye to you too, Malf—oh.” She covered her mouth.

“What?” Harry turned to look Malfoy’s way. “Did he make a rude gesture at you?”

“No, no, nothing like that—only have you decided what to do about your names? I know there was…a bit of controversy. I’ve got to file the paperwork for you within 48 hours, and I’m going to do my very best to be sure no one looks too carefully at the names, but there do need to be some names on there for legal purposes, and they’ll need to be your new married monikers, for however long those happen to stick.”

“Oh, right.” Harry wrinkled his nose in thought—then shrugged. “Not much choice, is there? I guess Potter-Malfoy will be fine.” Certainly better than the alternative.

“The hell it will be!” Malfoy called, scrambling to his feet and stalking over, and here came their first spousal quarrel. “Malfoy-Potter, or the whole thing’s off.”

“You’ll be a peacock before a Potter?”

“Damn right, I will!”

“Oh for goodness sake!” Hermione huffed. “Honestly, you two were made for each other! I’m going to flip a coin and Owl you the results later once I’ve filed everything. Goodbye, both of you.”

And with that, she stormed from the Manor, slamming the door behind her and leaving Harry and Malfoy alone for the first time that day—with nothing to distract them now from the fact that they’d just completed a complicated wedding ritual and were now magically bound to one another for the rest of their lives, or until they got a divorce. Whichever came first.

Eleven-year-old Harry might have pitched himself off the top of the Astronomy Tower on realising this. Nineteen-year-old Harry was certainly considering similarly drastic measures right about now. There was a belfry on the premises, after all.

Malfoy grudgingly dragged himself back into the parlour, slumping down onto the sofa again and resuming his ring-peeping. Harry gave him a wide berth, unsure if he had the same compunctions concerning spousal homicide as Harry. Lingering at the threshold, he called out, “…So, do you feel any different? Like—does it feel like anything’s changed?”

“No,” Malfoy said, curt as ever—then stood and brushed his hands over his dress robes to smooth the lines. He winced when he pulled the newly mended skin over the wound made for the Blood Pact. “But I suppose we’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?”

Indeed they would. In just two weeks, it would be June the 2nd, and Draco Malfoy would turn 20—and maybe into a peacock. All they could do now was wait and hope.

Malfoy brushed past him, barking out an order for Old Bern to bring his dinner up to his rooms.

As Harry mounted the steps of the grand staircase soon after, heading to his own room in the East Wing, it occurred to him that he’d gone out of his way to propose and execute marriage to Draco Malfoy so that he wouldn’t have to endure an eternity as a fucking bird—

—and the world-class git hadn’t even said ‘thank you’.

Still, Harry had not really expected otherwise, and so it was with expectations at the ground floor that he and Malfoy began their thirty days of cohabitation.

No, he had to correct himself, he and Draco. ‘Draco’, because for one, it seemed a bit ridiculous to call your kind-of-husband by his maiden (bachelor?) name, and for another, it annoyed the shit out of his kind-of-husband. Both excellent reasons to turn over a new leaf and not at all born of spite.

For his part, Draco paid about as much attention to Harry’s presence in the Manor now as he had before they were married—which was to say, virtually none. He generally kept to the West Wing, flitting between his study and his suite, leaving the East Wing and the entire rest of the Manor to Harry and Old Bern.

Harry spent the first couple of days in his new abode exploring. He hadn’t exactly gotten a good look around the first time he’d been a ‘guest’, outside of the dungeon at least, and though he’d gone through most rooms de-Imping the place with Old Bern, he’d been in a hurry at the time and hadn’t had time to really take in what was admittedly a massive and fascinating old home. It was nothing like Grimmauld Place, which hadn’t been properly inhabited in years before Harry moved in and still honestly felt a bit haunted—this had been the Malfoys’ home for generations, as Old Bern told it, and there was a rich history in every nail and doorknob and floorboard. He was struck again by the fact that he was so new to the wizarding world, where Malfoy—Draco—had been raised in it. The git didn’t realise how lucky he was.

Or maybe he did, and that was why he was such an insufferable knob.

It was three days after the ceremony when it happened.

Truthfully, Harry had been feeling out of sorts ever since the wedding, but he’d attributed it to his temporary accommodations and the stress of preparing for the ceremony itself. It was normal, he figured, to feel a little ‘off’ in a new place; it’d taken a month before Hogwarts had started feeling like home back in First Year, after all, and Grimmauld Place had only just begun to feel like his own space, even after a year. If he felt a little on-edge, like he couldn’t calm down, couldn’t find sleep as easily as he might want, well that was only natural.

But the sensation worsened, mounting in insistence until he was snapping at Old Bern to make the goddamn peacocks shut the fuck up while he was trying to concentrate on a report.

“…The peacocks are being in their roost for the evening, Master’s oaf.”

“Then why can I hear the—did you call me Master’s oaf?” No, no that was an issue to address when his head didn’t feel like it was about to split in half. It wasn’t a spiking pain like Voldemort’s anger, but it wasn’t entirely dissimilar either, and he certainly hadn’t missed feeling like—

Oh. Fuck. The fucking Influx. This wasn’t his stress and frustration but Draco’s—and clearly he was in a pique. This made Harry want to stay as far away from him as possible, but this couldn’t be allowed to continue, for Harry’s own mental stability’s sake. He apologised to Old Bern for his sharp tongue, inquired about the presence of any alcoholic spirits on the Manor grounds, and carefully mounted the steps of the grand staircase, a bottle of Blishen's Firewhisky in one hand and two tumblers in the other.

If he hadn’t known where Draco’s study was already, the sharp tinkle of shattering glass emanating from its general vicinity would have led him there without issue. The victim, Harry surmised as he studied the shards lodged in the rug lining the hallway, was the little crystal dragon paperweight. Draco really seemed to like chucking that one when he was in a mood, and Harry wondered how many times it had been Mended and shattered and then Mended again over these past few months.

“…With an arm like that, perhaps you ought to have played Chaser.”

Draco was hunched over his desk, head in his hands, and Harry didn’t see his shoulders tense so much as felt it across his own back, a line that tightened sharply, like someone had over-twisted a screw. He made a conscious effort not to react to the sensation—it would lead to a vicious cycle, Hermione had warned, which was why the Influx could be so dangerous for new couples. While meant to help them understand one another better, it just as often drove them toward resentment, each blaming their own dark mood on the other’s emotional slip-ups and winding up with both sliding into a mental downward spiral.

“If you’re lost, Potter, I’m sure Old Bern can direct you back to your wing of the Manor.”

“It’s ‘Harry’. And he directed me to your liquor stores, which is almost as good. Fancy a break from…whatever the heck it is you’re attempting?”

“Already broke something—but if you insist.” He Summoned the bottle directly from Harry’s hand, which was really quite rude, but Harry reminded himself he was supposed to be calming Draco’s nerves, because it would do neither of them any good if they were both in sour moods.

Harry approached as if on eggshells, carefully setting the glasses on Draco’s desk. He reached for the bottle, but Draco was already filling one of the tumblers—then taking it for himself and leaving Harry to pour his own. If Draco felt the spark of irritation that speared through Harry at this slight, he didn’t show it.

They shared their drinks in an awkward, tense silence, before Harry finally cleared his throat softly and asked, “So what is all this?” There were more books missing from the shelves than there had been the last time Harry had been in here. “Surely you haven’t found a new impossible-to-solve problem to tackle already—shouldn’t you be enjoying your, I don’t know, honeymoon I suppose this would count as?”

Draco swirled the contents of his tumbler around with a pinch-faced frown. “What? Don’t be daft—I’m looking for clues on how to break this godsdamned curse.”

Harry sat up straighter, joining Draco in his pinch-faced frowning. “The—curse? But—but we’re meant to have solved it. Broken it. You’re safe now.” Or at least Harry had assumed as such; had something happened to make Draco think otherwise? Had he had another fit? Had he uncovered some ancestor’s old diary and learned there was a catch they hadn’t considered?

Draco looked at Harry like he was being very thick—which was about how he always looked at Harry. “Of course we haven’t broken it. Good gad, did you take too many Bludgers to the head as a child? We’ve only given the Hag what she wanted—it’s still there, in my blood. If I were to ever have progeny—and we may not have had time for any sort of prenuptial agreement, but hear me now clearly: we are not procreating, ever—they would be just as susceptible to this curse as any Malfoy. Nothing’s been broken—we’ve only satisfied the terms for the time being.”

Harry had known Draco Malfoy for a good long while, even if they hadn’t exactly been bosom buddies, and in all that time, never had Draco shown himself to have a single altruistic bone in his body. So Harry didn’t need the Influx to know that this research Draco was pouring himself into had nothing to do with any hypothetical future children and everything to do with the fact that they would have no way of knowing if the terms of the curse had truly been satisfied until Draco’s birthday came and went.

Harry set his glass down—and reached to take Draco’s left hand in his own.

Draco snatched his hand back as if he’d been burned. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“I was looking at your ring. The one I put on your finger.”

Draco’s expression shifted from one of suspicion to one tinged with worry, like he thought Harry might be coming down with something—and perhaps it was catching. “…What of it?”

“Just noticing that it’s there. On your finger. Just like the poem said it needed to be, if you wanted to not turn into a peacock.” He leaned forward. “You did what needed to be done. You met the terms, and you’re gonna turn 20 and be totally fine. I do know a thing or two about saving people, you know.” And this time Draco showed him a couple of fingers.

“I don’t need you coddling me—”

“Not coddling. Only trying to keep you from stressing out over nothing, because then that makes me stress out over nothing and I have a bear of a time trying to concentrate on my reports.” The worry in Draco’s expression shifted to confusion, and Harry clarified. “The Influx. I can—feel you.”

Draco’s face lit up like a Christmas tree, and Harry felt the tension and stress and frustration that had been building up in his core be washed away in a flood of shame and embarrassment. “I—well that’s—you weren’t meant to—”

“You don’t have to explain yourself. I wasn’t—peeking or eavesdropping or anything like that. I only just realised what it was myself. But I’ve been in a foul mood because of it for days now, and it’s exhausting.”

“You think it’s a treat feeling this way myself? As if I can help it?”

“Of course not—and of course not. But if we don’t learn to recognise these things and nip them before they snowball into something neither of us is capable of handling or talking the other down from, then we’re gonna be in for a miserable month.”

“Going to be in for a miserable month either way,” Draco muttered, reaching for the bottle and refilling his tumbler. “I’m not going to sit here and do nothing, waiting for the bell to toll on my birthday and just hoping Granger’s half as smart as she thinks she is.”

“Fine—then don’t do nothing. But just…I dunno, try to keep a positive outlook? Instead of looking for ways we might have screwed up, look for signs suggesting we’ve done just what we meant to do. If you go looking for trouble, you’re bound to find it, after all.”

Draco traced the rim of his glass, lip curling into a ghost of a sneer—it was oddly familiar, and a welcome sight in place of the dark cloud that had been hanging over Draco’s head when he’d walked into the study. “Quite rich, coming from you.”

“I’m aware of the irony, thanks.” He lifted a brow, ducking his head to catch Draco’s eye—but he was lost in thought, staring into space as he continued to trace the lip of his glass. “…I could help, if you wanted.”

“Or you could not, if I didn’t want.”

“Two heads are better than one—”

“Only when both have brains in them.” He flicked his wand, sending Harry’s chair—with Harry still in it—sailing out the door. “I’ll see that Old Bern gets this bottle back. Good evening, Potter.” And then the door slammed in Harry’s face, and he was left alone in the dark West Wing hallway.

Small comfort, he supposed, that as he made his way back to his room in the East Wing, there was a little skip in his step he was certain he was not personally responsible for.

The reprieve from Draco’s dark emotions, though, was distressingly short-lived, and too soon, Harry felt a heavy cloud blanket the Manor once more, as if Draco’s frustration and despair were made manifest. The tension continued to mount with June the 2nd bearing down on them, until Harry could barely think, so distracting were these feelings that weren’t his own but had wormed their way under his skin. Had Draco discovered something terrible and been keeping it from Harry? Was he determined to meet his fate himself and damn Harry’s attempts to help any further? Even Old Bern was keeping his distance, leaving Draco’s meals on a tray outside his door. He’d shut himself off from anyone who gave a shit about him—and maybe that was the point.

That there had been no further transformations or even near misses since the ceremony did little to ease Harry’s worries—and evidently little to ease Draco’s as well. Old Bern confirmed that this stretch was the longest Draco had gone without a transformation in months, but Harry suspected Draco would not be convinced until his birthday had come and gone without incident.

And suddenly, it was upon them.

Harry’s frayed nerves and the constant stress of the Influx buffeting him with Draco’s spiralling mood had exhausted him, and he’d turned in at a respectable 9 PM that evening, desperate for a few hours of blissful ignorance before he had to wake up and deal with it all over again. He hadn’t seen Draco in three whole days, and he suspected a trip to the West Wing now would be met with even less enthusiasm than his last one had. He’d tried to distract himself from the date with a game of Wizard’s Chess against Old Bern, hoping the change of pace might resonate Draco’s way and lighten the mood even an iota, but he’d been soundly trounced and wound up in worse spirits than before.

He was done with this day—and maybe come the morrow, Draco would see he’d had absolutely nothing to worry about, and they could get through the back half of fulfilling the Consummation Clause without all this drama.

Something was poking him insistently, though.

Harry opened his eyes blearily—to see Old Bern’s pock-marked nose pressing against his own, an ever-burning lantern held in one hand. “Wake up, Master’s oaf.”

Harry winced, rolling over and shrugging off Old Bern. “Go ‘way. ‘S too early for this…or too late… An’way, fuckoff…” He somehow felt more tired now than he had when he’d gone to bed however many hours ago it had been, and this mattress was so comfortable…

Old Bern gave him a rough shake. “Wake up, Master’s oaf! Master is needing his oaf, right now.”

Harry grimaced—they really needed to discuss this ‘Master’s oaf’ business—but it could wait for in the morning. “Old Bern, whatever it is, can we please just—”

He didn’t get to finish his thought, though, for a spear of panic and terror like he’d never felt before lanced through him, and he was immediately on his feet, heart pounding a drumming tattoo in his chest and a cold sweat sheening over his skin. “Wh—what’s going on?” he stammered, throat dry and adrenaline spiking.

“As Old Bern has said, Master is needing his oaf now!” Old Bern reached for Harry’s hand to drag him away, but Harry shook him off, snatching up his wand from where it lay on the nightstand and turning in place—popping back into existence at the foot of Malfoy’s bed.

Draco was hunched over in bed, legs drawn up to his chest and face buried in his knees as he shook with violent, chest-rattling sobs. The sounds were muffled, even from this distance, but Harry could feel—really feel—the despair threatening to swallow him up. Instinctively, he launched himself at the bed, hissing, “Shit—shit—”

Draco’s head snapped up at the sound—and then there was shame added to the mix as he scrambled backwards, warding Harry off. “What—the fuck are you—get out now—” His words were choked out between sobs, voice strained.

Even without his glasses, by the soft glow of moonlight, Harry could tell that Draco’s eyes were bloodshot from crying, and there were dark tear tracks winding over his sharp cheekbones and down his face. “Easy—it’s just me—”

“I kn-know who the fuck it is! Not all of us are blind as fucking bats!” He scrambled for his wand, brandishing it at Harry in bald threat. “Get out. G-get out!”

“No,” Harry said, standing his ground. The shame radiating off of Draco was almost eclipsing the fear now—but only almost. Harry could still feel panicked terror coursing through his veins, and though it was nearly enough to send him to his knees, he held on. He’d faced death head-on. Whatever Draco was facing, he could handle it too. “I won’t.”

And this seemed to break what little bravado Draco had had left in him, the anger in his face twisting into an ugly mask of despair, and Harry didn’t know what to do, so he stepped forward, closer, close enough that he could place a comforting hand on Draco’s shoulder—and Draco grabbed at it, tight, dragging Harry down onto the mattress beside him. He pressed his face into Harry’s shoulder, threading his fingers through Harry’s and wept long and loud, cries punctuated only by broken gasps.

A tall grandfather clock ticked solemnly in the corner—and it was only now that Harry noted the hour: 11:56 PM.

Harry shifted around, letting Draco keep his death grip on his left hand while he reached around with his right and gingerly patted his back, stroking gently as Draco cried himself into exhaustion.

He still thought he might die—might transform one last time and have his spirit snuffed out forever, as surely as if he’d been Kissed. Old Bern had told him once that Draco was terrified of his fate—and they had reached a point where he could no longer hide it. He had laid himself raw before Harry because it was all that was left of him, pride and ego stripped away for sheer animal panic.

Harry knew what it was like, to know that death was coming for you, that there was nothing you could do about it, and that all you had left were these precious few moments. Draco was now facing that same dark truth—or at least he’d convinced himself he still was, the ring on his finger be damned—and had been reduced to little more than what all became when they stood on this precipice: human, desperate to cling to that fleeting spark of life.

Harry laid a hand against Draco’s jaw, forcing his gaze to meet Harry’s own. His grey eyes shone, wild and wavering, and his nose was red, cheeks inflamed. “Look at me.” Draco sobbed, shunting his eyes away, but Harry gave him a little shake, demanding his attention. He squeezed Draco’s hands, where they clung fast to him. “This isn’t the end, all right? You’re not half as weak as those birdbrains pecking about in your gardens, and you only haven’t found anything in your hours of research because there isn’t anything to find. You didn’t miss anything—we did everything right.” He tapped Draco’s ring. “There’s a ring on your finger—I put it there myself, so I ought to know. There’s a certificate sitting in the Ministry of Magic archives that says we’re married, whether you like it or not. And you know as well as I that Hermione’s the brightest witch of our age, so she performed that ritual flawlessly. I can feel you. That’s how you know it’s working.”

The clock in the corner began to toll with an ominous BONG—and Draco’s eyes went wide and white. Harry held him fast. “I told you, look at me. Not at the clock. At me.” Draco looked absolutely miserable, a choking whine burbling up in his throat. “Yes—I know I’m no great treat to feast your eyes upon, but humour me anyway.” With each BONG of the clock tolling the hour, announcing that Draco’s birthday was imminent, a new ripple of fear spread through him, and Harry was back there in the Forbidden Forest once again, plodding to his death, with only the clammy, clutching grasp of Draco’s hands to ground him. “This isn’t the end. Look at me. This isn’t the end. I promise. I saved you once, and I’ll goddamn do it again.”

Harry held his breath. Draco did too.

BONG.

The final toll echoed through the Manor halls…and then came silence.

It was June the 2nd, and Draco Malfoy-Potter (or maybe Potter-Malfoy, Harry hadn’t been able to summon the nerve to ask Hermione what had ultimately won out) was still a pale, lanky, pinch-faced shitstain of a human.

And then Draco was crying again—long, sobbing peals of relief, and Harry got more than a little choked up too as the emotion flooded into him, overflowing Draco’s banks and seeking every available outlet. Draco buried his face into the little divot where Harry’s shoulder blended into his neck, and Harry reached up to rub his back again in an awkward attempt at comfort. He wasn’t built for this sort of thing—and neither was Draco. But in this rare moment, they allowed themselves to break character and just be human.

After several long minutes—12:04, the grandfather clock said—Draco seemed to have collected himself somewhat, shoulders no longer shuddering with repressed sobs. The world was tilting itself back onto its axis, for the time being at least, and Harry needed to find his way back into his proper box before Draco put him there bodily. He unclenched his grip on Draco’s hands, tugging gently for release—

But Draco refused, drawing Harry’s arm to his chest and tightening his hold. His eyes flashed in alarm as he looked up, locking eyes with Harry. “Wh—what are you doing?”

Harry tamped down the panic that speared through him, reminding himself it wasn’t his own and focusing on remaining calm, now that the dreaded moment had passed. “Easy. I’m just going back to my room—only right down the hall. Old Bern will look after you the rest of the night, I’m sure.”

“Wh—but…but you can’t, you can’t—what if—fuck.” He pressed his forehead to Harry’s shoulder, refusing to relax his death grip on Harry’s hand, and released a soft keening whine of frustration, voice broken when he spoke again. “…Please…just, not yet…”

Harry knew that the upwelling urge to protect this miserable sod was only because of the Influx, but it didn’t make it any easier to ignore him, not when he was being so very vulnerable, showing Harry a side to himself he’d sooner die (nearly had died) than let anyone else see. It left a strange sort of pride burbling in Harry’s midsection—like a very mean and finicky cat had sidled up and chosen his lap to curl up on. Maybe the wizards of old had known what they were doing when they created this Influx business after all.

“I won’t,” Harry promised, giving Draco’s hands a squeeze. “Here, budge up. Old Bern interrupted my beauty sleep, and I need all of it I can get.” Draco gave a snorting sniff that really could have been anything, but the flicker of amusement that tickled Harry’s brainstem said he’d actually found the quip genuinely funny.

With no small effort—helped not at all by the fact that Draco refused to let go of Harry’s hand—they manoeuvred themselves on the massive bed that took up nearly half of the equally massive bedroom. Clearly Draco was more than making up for seven years spent in the Hogwarts dormitories, and Harry would enjoy sharing the accommodations while they lasted. It certainly beat the cupboard under the stairs.

“…I was so fucking scared,” Draco rasped, grip still white-knuckled as he clutched Harry’s hand to his chest. Come morning, he’d probably have lost feeling in it—but it was Draco’s birthday. This would do as a gift, Harry decided.

“…I told you, we did everything we were supposed to, complied with the terms of the curse to the letter—”

“Think I don’t know that?” Draco hissed, and Harry could feel the shame welling up again. “Think I’m not—not humiliated, shown up by a M—” Harry fixed him with a dark look of warning. “…Muggleborn? It’s pathetic…”

“…You said it yourself: you were scared. People don’t act rationally when they’re scared.”

“…You seemed cool enough just now, while I was practically pissing my pants.” Harry heard the unspoken My father definitely won’t hear about this.

“Well. I’m holding your hand, cuddled up with you in your bed, having a calm, civilised conversation with you. I’d say that’s not exactly ‘rational’ for me. Maybe I just handle certain doom in a different manner to you.”

There was a long pause…and then the soft sound of faint snoring reached his ears. The ordeal had clearly taken its toll on Draco, leaving him too tired to even properly dress Harry down—quite the feat indeed.

With no more conversation or crying jags or fits of any sort to be had this evening (morning, technically), Harry made himself as comfortable as he possibly could, enjoying the warmth of another body lying next to him—even if the tongue it was attached to was a vicious one—and finally drifted back to sleep.

When he woke the next morning, he roused slowly to consciousness, for once not left to the mercy of Draco screeching his offence or literally kicking him from the bed. In fact, Draco was still asleep himself, and Harry watched him doze for several long moments before he caught himself, with a mental reminder it was rude to stare for one and that there was nothing to stare at for another.

It was only, he didn’t think he’d ever seen Draco so…calm. So unguarded. So comfortable in his own skin. Not just in the past few weeks but ever-ever. Not that he’d made a habit of popping into the Slytherin dungeons just to peep in on a sleeping Draco—but still. The git had always seemed like he’d had his guard up, like even the tiniest slip-up might invite disaster. Just now, though, still desperately clutching Harry’s hand to his chest, cheek pressed against Harry’s knuckles, he was dangerously close to endearing.

And that just wouldn’t do.

Harry gave his hand a gentle shake, jostling Draco. “Oi, rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty.” Draco lifted his head from the pillow, nose scrunched and blinking blearily—he had a terrible cowlick, and it was not a good look on him at all. Harry took a mental snapshot. “I know half of what’s mine is supposed to be yours now, but I kind of need all my limbs for myself.” He gave Draco’s hands a squeeze—

—and Draco immediately released him, shoving Harry’s hand away in disgust before panic seized him as he seemed to remember just why he’d been holding on to Harry’s hand in the first place. He reached to snatch Harry’s hand back up before catching himself, hesitating, and then realising that…nothing had happened. He was still human, even without holding on to his personal security blanket.

It was June the 2nd, Draco was twenty years old, and he was not a fucking peacock, forever.

He marvelled at his hands, clenched them into fists—and then made a keening little whine of excitement before pumping both fists into the air and leaping from the bed and onto his feet. He bounded around the room, racing for the balcony, and threw the windows open before—fully nude and seemingly without a care for his state—crowing a loud FUCK YOU! to the peacocks strutting below, out for a morning nip about the garden. Harry watched this without comment and could not help himself—he smiled. The Influx made Draco’s relief and joy literally infectious, and he couldn’t bring himself to hate it at all.

He let Draco continue cursing out the local wildlife and basking in the morning sun with his everything hanging out for another five minutes before he laughed, “Put on some pants, would you?”

And Draco turned around—forcing Harry to quickly avert his eyes before he had too close an encounter with the Malfoy family jewels (it was bad enough realising now he’d slept like that)—and marched back inside, head held high, as he said, “You know what? I will. Not because you’ve told me to, but because I can, because I’m a fucking human, forever.”

The remainder of the thirty days of house arrest imposed by the Consummation Clause did not pass by quickly, but they certainly didn’t drag half as badly as the first two weeks had. Draco was in staggeringly lighter spirits now that he’d beaten the curse, and the improvement in his mood consequently had Harry feeling more focused as well.

Harry was now in the ‘Sorry, I’ve come down with a nasty case of Spattergroit, so I’ll be working remotely until that’s cleared up,’ stage of his extended holiday from work and was receiving assignments by Owl daily. It was tedious busywork, so now that he wasn’t feeling like the human version of nails on a chalkboard, Harry decided rather than stay cooped up in his room in the East Wing all day, he would spend some time in other areas of the Manor—mostly the bits he didn’t associate with pain and torture and death.

The sun room was lovely, though it could get toasty now that summer was bearing down upon them. The tea room was nice as well, if a bit too much on the fancy side of things for Harry to feel comfortable just putting his feet up and settling in to copy reports. The parlour was his favourite room, if only for the occasional Floo calls he got from Hermione, checking to see they hadn’t killed one another and left the peacocks to reclaim their hold over the Manor. Granted, she asked more intimate questions than Harry was quite comfortable answering—mostly about the Influx and how it was affecting their physical relationship (“We haven’t got one!” “I only meant have you felt compelled to be more tactile!” “I don’t know what that word even means but I’m pretty sure the answer’s a resounding NO!”)—but he still appreciated the outside human contact.

All in all, things were actually going pretty smoothly. Draco did whatever it was he did most of the day—Harry didn’t think it was more research, since there’d probably be more paperweights thrown at walls if so—and generally kept to the West Wing, while Harry had the run of the rest of the Manor. Old Bern served them meals in their rooms, and there were no more fits or transformations or anything out of sorts. Every few days, a few more Imps crawled out of the Nope Pit and started making mischief, and it was in rare moments like this that Harry and Draco put their wands together to dispatch them before things got too out of hand (that Blood Boon was no joke!), but otherwise they stayed out of each other’s way.

Which, Harry decided, was kind of silly. After all, they’d managed quite well leaning on each other in a rather vulnerable state—perhaps that had been a sign they’d matured enough they could actually be civil with one another without a threat to one or the other’s life hanging over their heads forcing them to play nice.

And so, damning any unspoken rules about where it was and was not appropriate to congregate, Harry decided that instead of poring over expense reports and invoices for the Ministry’s janitorial services in his room, as he usually did, he would do so in the parlour.

The parlour, it turned out, was also Draco’s favourite room, and it was not difficult to see why. Nothing bad had happened here, at least that Harry could recall from his brief stint in the Manor during the war and the snatches of memory he’d siphoned from Voldemort’s mind, and unlike most of the other rooms in the Manor, the parlour was furnished for comfort rather than fashion, the sofa deep and inviting and the chairs plushly upholstered. Draco often laid claim to it himself in the evenings after Old Bern had served their dinner, venturing forth from the West Wing only after sundown like an actual ghost in his own home. He would sprawl out on the couch, putting his feet up, and read—ostensibly for pleasure this time, rather than hunched over the desk in his study as he’d done when doing research.

Harry had watched from afar until this point, catching glimpses on his way to and from the bathroom, but that all changed tonight.

On this particular evening, he found Draco in his usual position—laid out long and lanky, taking up nearly the entire length of the sofa, and deeply engrossed in what looked to be a book on either dragon husbandry or dragon husbands. Seeing as the couch was more than long enough to comfortably seat the both of them, if some people didn’t insist on taking up the whole thing, Harry gathered up his papers and quill, made his way to the parlour, and parked himself right on top of Draco’s toes. It was only Draco quickly drawing himself into a foetal position that saved said toes from being stuck under Harry’s arse for the remainder of the evening.

Harry made a show of making himself comfortable, Summoning an inkwell to settle on the little table nearest his end of the couch and pointedly organising and re-organising his papers, muttering to himself all the while. Annoying Draco was, Harry had learned, the quickest way to start a conversation, and he was very bored and very much in want of a good tête-à-tête this evening.

Draco quietly seethed—Harry could very much feel it—for a good ten minutes. And then he began to not quietly seethe.

“You know,” he said, one leg thrown over the other. He wasn’t wearing any socks, which seemed very plebeian for someone so priggish. “The Manor has seven bedrooms, three libraries, two studies, a master office, a sun room, a tea room, and reading nooks at the end of either wing.”

“Sounds like overkill to me.”

“Hm. Any chance you could kindly fuck off to one of those other locales and leave me to read in peace?”

“I’m leaving you to read in peace right here. Stop talking, and it’ll be a lot more peaceful.”

Draco said something softly under his breath that Harry couldn’t catch but figured was probably a swear. He then kicked at Harry a few times, trying to stretch out his ridiculously long legs, and only seemed satisfied once he’d shoved his toes in between Harry’s spine and the back cushions of the couch. Harry blithely tolerated the intrusion into his personal space, and for another ten minutes, Draco did too—before slamming his book shut with a huff, leaping to his feet, and moving to one of the great chairs. He Summoned a little ottoman over to support his legs, cracked open his book that was probably about dragon-diddling, and settled in once more to attempt to focus.

Harry could feel that focus stretched paper thin, though, and it was starting to worry at his own concentration. Much more of this tension, and they’d find themselves stuck in a spiral, dragging each other down until one or the other popped off and tempers flared brighter than they already were.

Harry was, once again, going to have to be the bigger man. He set aside his papers very deliberately, and though Draco did not look up or say anything, Harry could still see his grip on the book binding tense, knuckles going white. Harry took a breath to try and calm himself, hoping the Influx might unruffle Draco’s now-metaphorical feathers, but had no idea if it worked.

“…You really don’t want to share space with me that badly?”

“Really I don’t.”

Harry wanted to immediately retort Could have fooled me the other night, but a tiny little niggling voice inside of him said that that would be very dangerous ammunition to play with. Instead, he said, “And what is it about me that’s so very horrible?”

“Let me count the ways.”

Harry held out his arms in invitation. “Okay, go on. Count the ways.”

Draco sighed and slammed his book shut. “For one, I don’t like you—I make a point of not spending time in close quarters with people I don’t like.”

“That doesn’t do anything to answer the question of why, though. I mean, me? I’ve got about fifty reasons not to like you—but I honestly struggle to come up with more than, like, three for you to not like me.” He threw his head back, staring up at the slowly rotating chandelier hanging from the tall ceiling above. “I just don’t see why for two weeks we can’t pretend we at least tolerate each other—maybe talk some, because I’m gonna go absolutely spare if I have to spend another night copy-editing the Head Auror’s birthday remarks for the Junior Assistant to the Minister for Magic.”

Draco shifted forward, gaze narrowed in incredulity. “…So all this is because you’re bored?”

“…Well, a little bit, yeah. There’s a dozen other things we could be doing with our free evenings besides sitting holed up in our rooms. We could listen to Quidditch on the Wireless or even play Quidditch—you’ve got a gargantuan ballroom at the end of the East Wing, did you know?—or play Wizard’s Chess or Exploding Snap or Gobstones or anything. I swear I had more fun stuffed into a cupboard under the stairs the first eleven years of my life.”

“Oh, my apologies I haven’t made your house arrest as thrilling an experience as I’m sure you were expecting!”

“Oh come off it, I wasn’t expecting anything—I’m saying we’re both stuck here, and maybe we could pretend we don’t despise each other for just a few more days to stave off the boredom.”

“Who’s bored? It sounds to me like it’s just you.” Draco waved his book for show. “I’m catching up on my reading.”

“Why are you so—” Harry swallowed down a grunt of frustration. “I’m trying to be fucking civil with you, to maybe be something approaching friendly, and you insist on—”

“Except we aren’t friends! We—are—not—friends,” Draco said, punctuating each word with deliberation. “We aren’t chums, we aren’t pals, we aren’t best mates—we aren’t anything—” Harry opened his mouth to point out one thing they very much were now, but Draco cut him off, “And if you fucking call us ‘husbands’, I’ll Hex your lips to the back of your head.” Draco squared his jaw, and Harry could feel a sort of nervous energy arcing between them, though it was difficult to tell if it was the Influx or just raw arcane power about to explode the both of them into bits. “We are in this—arrangement—purely because you have forced me into it. And once it’s no longer a matter of necessity, I intend to move on as if it never happened. Preferably very, very far away from you. I reached out to you in a moment of shameful weakness—and every time I look at you now, that is all I can think about. So you’ll pardon me if I don’t want to see your face any more than I absolutely have to.”

Harry frowned—less offended by the cutting remarks than the idea that his very presence caused Draco pain. Harry knew he could be a jerk sometimes, but he liked to think he wasn’t needlessly cruel. “I…I didn’t mean to—”

“Of course you didn’t,” Draco sighed, leaning back and massaging his temples. “And I’m sure you thought you were doing me a grand favour—offering a shoulder to lean on, an unjudging embrace, a gentle pat on the back to instil in me a fraction of the courage you had burning in your veins.”

“Oi,” Harry protested, standing up. “That wasn’t why I did it at all, I—” He shook his head. “Do you just—while away your afternoons up there in your study concocting ridiculous excuses for why I act the way I do? If so, be a lad and share them with me—I could use a good laugh. Hell, I don’t even know why I do half the stuff I do!”

“Just because you’re unable to understand your own motives doesn’t mean the rest of us are so lacking.”

“Well I think I’d know for sure if I were doing you a favour! If you’ll recall, I was keeping track of them!”

And then Draco was on his feet as well. “I don’t care what you think you were doing—honestly, I don’t! I don’t give two shits about your motivations—I try to think about you as little as possible in a given day, but you’re for some reason insistent on making that very difficult. All I want is for you to stop pretending like this is anything but a stopgap to your next charity project!”

His next charity project. A favour. A matter of necessity. Draco couldn’t wrap his mind around the idea that Harry might actually enjoy being around him. Not that Harry did enjoy being around him—Draco just couldn’t fathom the existence of any reality where Harry might. And anything that remotely resembled such a reality evidently scared the shit out of him.

“…Why did you try to be my friend back in First Year?”

Draco looked at him like he’d grown a second head. The subject shift had probably given him whiplash. “Why did I—what?”

“In First Year—you tried to make friends with me. In your own way. You were terrible at it, and you haven’t gotten any better in the time since, but you did make the first move, forever and a day ago. Why?”

“I—” Draco scoffed, as if this were a very silly question. “You’re you. I assumed at the time your celebrity meant status—blessedly you rejected my advances, so I never paid the price for how very poorly I judged your usefulness.”

“You didn’t know who I was, though.”

“What?”

“The first time we met—you didn’t know who I was.” Draco was now looking at him like he’d grown a third head. “You were there, at Madam Malkin’s when I went to get fitted for my school robes. You were making conversation—and I was a total stranger. I know for a fact I didn’t look like much—certainly no one the likes of you would find worth hobnobbing with. So why’d you chat me up, if I wasn’t gonna be of any use to you?”

Draco frowned, and Harry could see him searching his mind for this memory—and failing to find it. Harry wasn’t sure why he remembered it so vividly himself, but there it was. Probably because so much of that day was burned into his mind—the day he’d realised there was ever so much more to the world around him and it was worth hanging in there to see and explore it all.

“I…I’m sure I’ve got no idea…”

“Now who’s having trouble understanding their own motives? It’s all right—maybe it’s easier for everyone to pick apart how someone else thinks and acts than to self-reflect. ‘Cause see, I think I know why.”

Draco’s lip curled, and he crossed his arms. “Oh, pray tell.”

“…I think you wanted a friend. I recognise that sounds a bit circular—of course you tried to be my friend because you wanted a friend—but it’s not quite that. You didn’t look at me and think, ‘Oh, here’s someone who’ll help me get ahead,’ or, ‘Here’s a fellow who’s going places,’ or even, ‘Humiliating this one will make me look important to others’. I was a nobody to you. And yet you went out of your way to try and impress me—to try and make me look up to you. To like you. To want to hang around you more and hear all about the amazing things you’d accomplished in your eleven whole years upon this earth.”

Draco’s cheeks were darkening with shame, and Harry could feel it welling up inside him as well. Draco was at his most dangerous when he thought someone was getting too close to seeing the real him, and Harry had to tread very carefully, he knew.

He stepped closer, knowing he was well within paperweight-chucking distance. “You wanted this random kid who’d wandered in off the street to like you. And funnily enough, I was ready to—because I didn’t have any friends back then. I had Hagrid, and I think you and I can agree he doesn’t count. But you were…” He shook his head. “It was a weird day for me—and you were one of the best parts of it. Now—full disclosure, you got on my nerves pretty quick, but I was still absolutely fascinated by you. I mean, you were a wizard. The very first real one I’d ever spoken to—my age, at least. You flew on broomsticks and you knew what House you wanted to be in, and you had a mother and a father who were magic, too.” He laughed—a bit self-deprecatingly. “…I felt so stupid talking to you. Like I didn’t have a single interesting thought in my head. You were snotty and priggish and I knew in my gut we wouldn’t get along—but I still wanted to. I wanted to be your friend. Before Hermione or Ron or Neville or Luna or anyone else.”

Draco’s nostrils flared a bit, and Harry thought he could hear his heart pounding in his chest. Or maybe it was just Harry’s own. “And what the fuck is this little jaunt down memory lane supposed to mean?”

“…It means that this isn’t a charity project or a favour or anything else you might dream it to be. Maybe I don’t really know why I’m doing it either, but I remember standing in the lobby of Madam Malkin’s Robes For All Occasions and seeing you and thinking I wanted nothing more than for you to tell me everything there was to know, and maybe even a few things I shouldn’t know. For better or worse, you were one of the very first people who taught me about being a wizard. You helped make me who I am. And once upon a time, you wanted to be my friend. Genuinely, without wanting anything from me in return but for someone to think you were amazing. And for a brief few moments, eleven-year-old me did think that. Then I realised you were an arsehole. But—you were still an amazing one. And maybe part of me still thinks that a little bit.”

Draco blinked at him slowly. “…I genuinely do not know what the fuck that was about.”

“…Yeah, I think the thread of it may have gotten away from me there.” Harry scratched the back of his neck, wrinkling his nose in irritation with himself. His lack of eloquence had never pained him more than in this moment. “Anyway, the point I’m getting at is that I’m here because I wanna be. Full stop. And I’m down here, sitting in the parlour with you, also because I wanna be. And once upon a time, you would’ve wanted me to be here too. So I’m just wondering…why we can’t go back to then. And maybe try to not piss each other off this time, see what happens. You won’t insult my new best friend—I won’t call you ‘the wrong sort’, and we’ll go from there. You can stand on top of that Ottoman and tell me all about your family home and how loaded you are and—I think there was a story about nearly running into a helicopter in there at some point? And we’ll see how far we get.”

“I don’t know how things worked in House Gryffindor, but in Slytherin, we weren’t exactly the cuddle-on-the-couch types, friends or otherwise. Since we’re decidedly otherwise—I’m going to reiterate that this is a very spacious manor and ask you to avail yourself of any of the numerous other spaces. If it’s a gaming opponent you’re after, Old Bern’s a deft hand at a fair few such distractions and could put up more than a fair fight, I’m sure.”

Harry made a face. “Wh—I wasn’t asking to cuddle. I was just—well, I mean—I was mostly…” He wrinkled his nose, feeling quite childish. “…Mostly was just…trying to annoy you. You know, get a rise out of you.”

“And lucky day! It worked!”

“Well—right, fine, that’s on me. You need your personal space, I can understand that—but we can still be civil around each other and have conversations that don’t involve strings of insults.”

“I’ll take all the space you can give me—you in the East Wing and me in the West suits me just fine. Maybe you want to rehash the greatest hits of 1991, but I’m good, thanks. I’m not going to curl up on the couch with you in front of the fire in ‘companionable silence’ or share a laugh over a drink about some kooky co-worker you had to deal with today and pretend like this is—like we’re…like…” He seemed to run out of steam, his own train of thought perhaps having jumped the tracks, and he broke into frantic, nervous pacing. Harry wasn’t the most insightful of blokes, but he was beginning to get the sense this wasn’t just about invading Draco’s personal space.

And then Draco stopped, running a hand through his hair. Strands were working themselves free from the long plait draped over his shoulder, and he looked decidedly frazzled. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

Harry didn’t know what ‘it’ or ‘like this’ was, so he let Draco tell him.

“…I wanted to be like my parents when I grew up.” Why was Harry not surprised? Perhaps Draco could see the internal rolling of the eyes, for he continued defensively, “And save your smart remarks. However horrible you think my family is, my parents did love each other. They married with affection and mutual respect—they were each other’s favourite person. And when I had fantasies as a child, it wasn’t about being Minister for Magic or swimming in Galleons, it was just…” He turned to frown at the sofa behind them. “This couch. With my parents sat upon it, in quiet companionship, while I read my picture books by the light of that fire grate.” He turned back to Harry. “And even when I grew up, I still wanted to go back to those moments. Relive them.” His expression twisted, and Harry felt regret and frustration burn in his chest. “…I don’t want to be your friend—I don’t want to be someone my spouse barely tolerates, someone they share space with for only as long as absolutely necessary. I don’t want this. I want to be someone’s favourite person too. Someone they’re proud of and care about and want to protect not because I need them to come to my rescue, but because they just like me, very much, and want me to be happy.” He dropped down onto the couch, bent over at the waist and head in his hands. “I’m supposed to be the Lord of the fucking Manor. And now I’m just trying to outrun some ridiculous bit of bog magic, stuck with you. I wasted a marriage on you to save my own skin.” He rubbed his arms as if for warmth, staring into the cold, dark fire grate. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this…”

So it all came back around to the wedding—to a ritual Harry had generously taken part in to spare Draco from the fate-worse-than-death that would have been the Hag’s curse. But of course Draco didn’t see it that way—perhaps it was a pure-blood thing. Maybe they didn’t generally get annulments or divorces. God, what if he didn’t want to get one at all, simply because it wasn’t ‘done’? No—no, that was an issue to be argued about (and argued about and argued about) far in the future. Harry would worry about that when it came.

For now, it seemed the more pressing matter was reminding Draco that there was indeed a relationship to be had between ‘barely tolerating’ someone and wanting to…canoodle with them. Harry had perhaps hamstrung his own efforts to coax Draco into something approaching companionship; where he worried he might come on too strong and offered only a facsimile of friendship, Draco likely saw him making only the most base of efforts with no real intent behind it.

He sat down on the couch as well—at the opposite end, enough they weren’t touching. “…I’m not sure what I thought this was supposed to be like, personally. Getting married, I mean. I guess I always imagined I would—I wanted a family, after all, and I kind of assumed that was the quickest way to get one, if not the only way. But…some very nice people over the years have helped me realise I didn’t need to rush into anything I wasn’t really ready for just to be part of a family. So I decided to…press pause on that sort of thing.” He shrugged. “I mean, I never really knew my parents, and most of the marriages I’ve seen have been…odd. Kind of twisted. Or at least not exactly something I saw myself in.” He snorted softly to himself. “…Maybe it’s kind of an arsehole thing to say, but it strikes me as a little funny that you’re the one who grew up seeing two people in a marriage you wanted for yourself—and I grew up hoping I never married someone like my guardians.” He sighed and leaned back against the couch, staring ahead at nothing and letting his mind wander. He thought he could feel Draco watching him, but he didn’t dare turn and look, for fear of ruining the moment. “I always heard that your spouse was supposed to be your best friend, and that sounds all right to me. I’d like being married to someone I can have fun with. Someone I can mess with and who’ll mess with me back. Someone I can just sit with. Someone I can fight with—and make up with.” Harry nodded to himself. “That sounds nice, yeah. Though being someone’s favourite person would be pretty swell, too.”

And then he looked at Draco, and Draco was indeed looking at him. Even the Influx couldn’t help him figure out what Draco was feeling, though, so he just pressed on. “…I’m sorry for…for being myself, I guess. I get a bit myopic and feel like everything’s my problem to fix. I know this whole thing hasn’t exactly been a picnic for you for probably a dozen different reasons, and that you’re having to deal with it all while I’m practically attached to you at the hip can only be making things worse—but I promise I’m genuinely just…trying to figure you out. Just…” He bobbed his head. “It seems kind of silly to go through all this and not come out understanding each other at least a little better.” And then he sighed, finally accepting what Draco had been trying to tell him in every way he knew how. “But I guess we really weren’t meant to be friends after all.”

And truly, he didn’t mean it poorly—it was just accepting what was. Draco didn’t like this, didn’t like any of it, and didn’t wish to be reminded of it after all was said and done. Having even the barest semblance of friendship with Harry ran counter to that goal, and though it did not sit entirely well with him, Harry supposed he would have to accept that not everyone wanted to be saved, even if they needed it.

“Of course we weren’t meant to be friends,” Draco said, a bitter thing bitten out from his end of the couch, and Harry blinked—then narrowed his eyes, suspicion creeping in.

“…But you did want to be.”

And this time, Draco did not deny it, instead scoffing, “I wanted a lot of stupid things as a child.”

Harry nodded. “…Maybe. But the great thing about being an adult, I’ve learned, is that now you can actually give yourself permission to do all the things you weren’t allowed as a child. Stay up late, eat junk food, swear, sleep ‘til four in the afternoon.” He cocked his head, raking Draco with an appraising look. “No offence, but you don’t strike me as the type who’s ever allowed himself to make stupid decisions.”

“Why on earth would I take offence at someone saying I’ve made good choices?”

“I never said you made good choices—just that you probably didn’t allow yourself to make stupid ones. At least not the harmless stupid ones. I think, though, that given your recent brush with death, you’re allowed one or two stupid decisions. Having dodged death a few times myself, I feel I’m an authority on the matter.” He reached for his papers again, dipping his quill in the inkwell. “It’s entirely up to you, though. In the meantime, I’m going to sit at the end of this very comfortable couch—which I want you to know I was very distressed to have learned just now was used by your parents to (god I hope only) cuddle, though I won’t let that put me off my meals—and do my very boring paperwork. And should you feel like being just a little bit stupid at any point in time, I promise not to judge you, nor will I tell another living soul. They can’t make spouses testify against each other, after all.”

He braced himself for Draco’s sputtering huff, to be told for the fiftieth time to fuck off, to be saddled with another long, quiet evening alone. Instead, he got, “…Of course they only used it to cuddle—good gad, why would you make me think otherwise? Fuck…” and with a shudder, Draco shoved himself into the farthest corner of the couch, drawing his legs up to his chest so as to touch as little of the cushion as possible, and went back to reading his presumably filthy dragon smut.

And from that evening on, Harry took his dinner in his room and then promptly collected any work he might still have or any book he was working his way through or a pack of cards or Wizard’s Chess set and made his way down to the parlour, where Draco would invariably also have set up shop. They wouldn’t speak—not at first—or even nod or make eye contact, but eventually Harry would ask Draco how to spell ‘paraphernalia’ or miss an obvious move in his solo card or chess game, and Draco would be too tempted to lord himself over Harry that he’d be forced to interact.

It went this way most nights, until eventually Draco cut right to trouncing Harry the moment he saw an opening, at which point Harry decided he didn’t wish to play cards or chess at all, on second thought, and they went back to quietly reading on opposite ends of the couch. Shortly, though, one or the other decided he wanted to relax, and then it was all-out war to claim territory. Legs went in laps, toes wound up tucked under bums—really nothing was off-limits, and there was even one time when Harry had seen how long it would take Draco to realise he was slowly but steadily scooting from his end of the couch over to Draco’s that Draco nodded off in the middle of a riveting chapter on differentiating healthy and sick dragons based on their scat and ended up listing against Harry’s shoulder.

Harry froze up, not daring to make a move, and was left with no choice but to ignore the fact his left arm was going numb as he tried to focus on the crossword puzzle in the latest copy of The Quibbler (Luna had hinted he himself was the answer to one of the clues, but it just turned out to be 16-across “In Beedle’s Tales, the quality of a warlock’s heart: H-A-I-R-Y”).

This close, he could catch the faint clean-earthy scent of Draco’s shampoo—how did he manage to wash all that hair? Maybe that was what he spent his days doing—and his book had fallen open in his lap. Harry leaned closer to get a peek: Draco had paused on a page of illustrations depicting common breeds from around the world. The Romanian Longhorn was snorting a lungful of smoke at the Anitpodean Opaleye, charring its lovely pearly scales a filthy black, and the Chinese Fireball was chasing its own tail. Harry idly wondered how Norbert—Norberta?—was doing these days and decided he’d send an Owl to Charlie and check in.

Draco exhaled softly, breath tickling Harry’s collarbone, and Harry realised he hadn’t been this close to Draco in any capacity since his birthday. There’d been no more fits, no more transformations, not so much as an upset stomach ever since the ritual nearly a month ago now, with any turmoil on Draco’s end born entirely of his own overactive imagination and piss-poor personality. Not two months ago, Harry would have Hexed you if you’d told him he’d shortly be sitting in Draco Malfoy’s parlour, on Draco Malfoy’s couch, wearing Draco Malfoy’s wedding ring, practically canoodling with him—but all in all, it hadn’t been the worst experience of Harry’s life so far. In the grand scheme of things, marrying Draco Malfoy had been pretty darn easy—he hadn’t even had a paperweight chucked at his head in weeks. If he’d had to choose between marrying Draco and subsisting on little more than mushroom-flavoured gruel while Apparating around the British Isles for three months, Harry would’ve been hard pressed not to go with the option that came with three square meals, his own neatly furnished room, and a Nope Pit to keep him on his toes.

Once this was all wrapped up, he might even miss—

CRACK!

Harry nearly jumped out of his own skin, shoving Draco away so fast he launched himself back toward his own end of the couch, heart in his throat. Draco blinked blearily at the commotion, limbs askew and hair in utter disarray.

“Would the Master and his oaf care for an evening toddy?” Old Bern grunted, presenting a tray with two piping-hot mugs atop it.

Both too soon and not soon enough, the thirty days of virtual house arrest imposed by the Consummation Clause were up, and it was time for Harry to move back to Grimmauld Place. While he’d had just about enough of being cooped up in the still-quite-dreary Malfoy Manor, not even allowed to explore the gardens or lands the family laid claim to, he was going to miss what had been his longest holiday in, well, forever and was not looking forward to heading back into the Ministry first thing Monday morning.

Draco, predictably, went out of his way to be unavailable once Harry had packed up his little suitcase and finished tidying up his room (to Old Bern’s dismay; “Master’s oaf has ruined Old Bern’s afternoon! Now what shall he do with himself?!”), so the only person he could bid farewell to was Old Bern himself, who just made a rude gesture and shuffled away, grumbling under his breath.

Well, it had been nice while it lasted, in a few different respects.

And with a note left behind, slipped under the shut door of Draco’s study that reminded him he’d be back once his schedule freed up so that they could close up the portal before it got out of hand—and to not let the Imps get him down—Harry turned on his heel and was gone in a flash.