Archive of Our Own

1.

Harry throws on his rucksack and rams his shoulder against the door. This time it opens with a creak. He’s told Draco to get the hinge re-greased and even bought a tube of grease for him. That was last summer. He looks in, and seeing that the corner table by the window is empty, aligns it a quarter way with a spell. He’ll correct the rest of it over the next few weeks.

The wind blows off the placard taped to the door window. Harry captures it in its dismal Wronski feint onto the slush he brought in with his boots. The Spencerian script remains legible—

 Kissed

—but the ink has faded to a light gray. He’ll remind Draco to replace it soon. Nothing on it mentions special hours over the holidays. Of course, otherwise Harry wouldn’t have his way in, and the fact that Harry has trudged through an ice storm to get here from Knockturn means that in some way, he already knows that Christmas is lost in Kissed. It makes sense, Harry reckons. Holiday spirit would be out of place here. Old pewter cauldrons hold the only merchandises of the shop, molten milk and dark chocolate. Burner flames, one on each small table, taint the peeled white walls blue. The floorboards are cracked, the furniture dull and frayed. On what used to be a bar counter, a plastic water jug and tumbler set preside over mismatched utensils. Cobwebs crawl over the ceiling fans. Harry has never seen them turn.

For a dessert shop, Kissed is miserable. London agrees. There are no couples here, no gossiping girlfriends, no grinning children. Only two types of people visit: the overworked, mostly students with their books and laptops; the drunk and broken-hearted.

The only customer at the moment is the second type. The woman has her head on the table, a mop of hair covering her face. She holds a spoon in one hand and a bottle in another. Harry sweeps her hair aside and blows out the flame. Half of the photo of her ex-lover is in the ashes.

Harry is a street patrol. He notices things.

He threads his way to the corner table, shakes off his patrol cloak and heaps it under the table with his rucksack. The hook by the entrance is still half-ripped from the wall. He pulls off his boots, modish but impossible to shake off without his socks going with them—which is fine with Harry, he doesn’t mind a bit of chill from the tiles under his bare feet. Kissed is always warm, almost too warm for Harry’s taste. He has started the habit of wearing a thin T-shirt at all times even though he never plans his visits until his feet bring him here, which has been… roughly twice a week. He pulls out his wand, spells a charm on the box he bought on his way and sticks the wand into the pile. The only thing Draco abhors more than shop maintenance is the sight of magic.

Harry’s watch says 1:39 am. The stationery set on the only marble tabletop is dry. It has been a slow night. Draco is probably getting something from his flat upstairs. Another book, perhaps. Or a sweater.

It's never warm enough for Draco.

Knockturn was as forlorn a place on Christmas Eve as it is in the shop. Harry reckons he owes himself a treat. He finds his chipped bowl on the counter, the porcelain one with the “M” emblem on it. Then he goes to check his small freezer behind the counter.

It has been restocked. A new box of ice cream—not Harry’s usual caramel—sits in full view. Harry smiles at the bright green mint flavour, opens the carton and licks the lid clean. With a generous serving in his bowl, he ladles out an even more generous serving of dark chocolate and returns to the corner table.

There’s no magic in Kissed to keep the ice cream cool and the chocolate warm. Harry’s sundae soon becomes a soup of green and brown. He draws swirls in it with his spoon. A draft slips through the windowsill and the book on the table waves to Harry with its dog-eared cover.

A Separate Peace, it said.

Draco’s voice greets Harry first, from the stairs behind the bar.

“Wasn’t expecting you,” he says, emerging from the dim yellow light from upstairs, his usual black wool slacks and grey sweater cutting a lean silhouette. The brawn he acquired from his Azkaban days is long gone. He nurses a steaming drink in his hands, something with liquor that robs the shop of its faint sweet smell.

Harry grins at him and returns to his sweet soup. Draco’s shoes are silent, his breaths are cool as air. Only the liquor smell gives him away. Harry looks up the moment Draco peers from behind his shoulder.

“What is this horrid pottage you’re consuming?”

“Slytherin milkshake.” Harry turns and clinks his bowl against on Draco’s cup, brings it to his mouth and slurps. A creamy mustache clings to his lips.

Draco tuts. Imbecile.

“You had me waiting, Malfoy.”

“Really?” Draco asks, light as his approach, and takes his seat. He points an accusing finger at the napkin on the table. Harry laughs and wipes his mouth. Draco watches, playing with the rim of his cup with the teeth.

A curl of steam rises between them. It’s no longer possible to tell where the scar on Draco’s face ends and where that light dimple of his smile starts.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit tonight? Thought you’d be with the Weasels?”

Harry thought so too. He once thought he’d spend every Christmas Eve with them—with Ginny. It’s just that, more than three Christmases ago, Harry… got distracted. Ginny’s kisses began to carry a bitterness...

Why you, Potter? Why? Was there, could there ever be anyone else?...

In the end, she set him free. “Go find him,” she said. Harry did and found his way to this corner table.

“My beat was till one. Reckoned it’s too late to go to the Burrow.”

It doesn’t explain why Harry is here and not in his own flat. If Draco thought of it, he doesn’t show. “You’re patrolling on Christmas Eve?”

Harry looks around the shop. “You do Christmas here? Hard to tell.”

Draco’s eyebrows quirk just so. Harry knows he's been gifted the equivalent of a Muggle finger. He laughs.

“Patrol, on Christmas Eve?” Draco presses on.

“It’s Ferguson’s shift, actually.” A pink shade tints Draco’s cheeks as he imbibes the hot drink, and retreats just as quickly into the bluish paleness that is Draco’s skin. “As Urquhart said—he schedules our shifts—he wants no cold beds on Christmas. Ferguson’s girlfriend just moved in. Urquhart didn’t know.“

“Saint Potter.”

Harry shrugs. “Someone’s got to do it.”

“I don’t have a problem with the shift. I have a problem with peach cloaks on Christmas Eve. How many Kneazles did you save this evening?”

“It’s tan, Malfoy.” Draco chuckles into his drink as the leather of his shoe brushes against Harry’s ankle. The spark in his eyes says it all. Peach.

Peach or tan, its mud stains are impossible to get rid of. Auror cloaks, on the other hand…

“And no Kneazles tonight. Just a couple on too much Love Potion to make it home.”

“They’re good looking, at least? I hope?”

Harry shakes his head.

“Ah, Felix in the mix.”

“Having a street patrol walk into their love fest is not so lucky.”

Draco holds up his cup and peers at Harry over its rim. “Unless the patrol is, what was it again? The Finest Specimen of Wizardhood.” That was on the cover of Witch Weekly’s Victory Issue. Harry would have Incendioed every copy of it if he could. “In that case," Draco takes a sip of his chocolate whiskey, "still lucky.”

Harry snorts and rolls his eyes. Truth be told, the two wizards were not at all upset by Harry’s appearance. "Wanna join?" they croaked. Harry fled. “Strange to think I’ll report to the Berks again after the new year’s.”

This gives Harry one more week to fix his patrol habit and start to address the Berks, or Burgs, or Burgundies by their robe color, by their proper name.

Draco snickers. “The Aurors will be rolling out a red carpet for you.”

“Right.” Harry scoffs. He's their fallen star. For him, the new Ministry broke its word of equal justice that the MLE had pushed so hard for. Harry should have been sacked. He wanted to be. The rulebooks, the greater good… he was sick of them. Wasn’t that how he’d got into trouble in the first place? Instead, he was demoted from Auror to patrol. “Stay,” Shacklebolt said to Harry after the decision, his Head Auror badge gleaming. “Don't do it for the Ministry. Do it for me. For the people who deserves a real change.” Harry had been the poster child of the reform that never was. His Auror cloak has probably been burned to ashes by Ministry's old guard. With good reason too, chocolate stains had marred it on its last night of service.

Meanwhile, Harry has got accustomed the perennial shadows of the Alley. He now finds more comfort in Kissed than his flat with bright windows.

“Just…” Draco hesitates, thumbs his book and plays with its pages. He has lost his footing in his thoughts. “Just don’t compromise Wizarding Britain’s security again.” He flips another page, his mouth opens as if it wants to say I, but then decides against it. “Mortals aren’t worth it, all right?”

Harry smiles. “They're hard to pick out.”

Draco looks away, as Harry knows he would. Are mortals supposed to survive a Kiss? A half-Kiss? All Harry knows is that like a half-Avada Kedavra, a half-Kiss leaves an indelible scar. Draco’s is a grey hairline that strikes down across his left cheek, then curves towards the corner of his lips.

“Well." With a sip of his drink, Draco does a Wronski feint on the topic. "Since you’re here to remind me of Christmas, I assume I get a present.”

"That you do." Harry smiles and reaches into his pocket.

2. 

The box of Bertie Bott’s (Christmas edition) is stolen property. The shops were closed when Harry’s shift was over, so buying was not an option. His luck came in the Leaky, in the form of a wizard not unlike the snoring heap several tables away. A brandy glass floated in front of him, its companion bottle tipped and empty. Half covered by his hand on the table was the half-finished box of Bertie Bott’s.

Bertie Bott's are Harry's payment to Kissed.

In the months after Harry'd found the shop, Draco seemed determined to ignore him. He was granted eye contact only when he paid at Draco’s table. Draco never looked up between putting down his book and inking the receipt. That split second of eye-to-eye happened only when Draco handed the receipt over with a nod of thanks. His face and scar hid behind a book again before Harry could look.

Harry had noticed Draco's special chocolate long before that day. Mud-like granules clung on to the porcelain, like the dirt on Harry’s boots after a wet evening.

Then came one night, after hours of dodging hexes and not fighting back in Knockturn, Harry ignored the receipt in Draco's hand.

Draco’s book froze by his chin as Harry reached for Draco’s cup.

Draco scowled.

That scowl riled Harry like nothing else.

It shouldn't have. Draco didn’t owe Harry anything.

Harry… he didn’t owe Draco anything either.

“Good. You still know me.” Harry let his voice trump his thoughts. He was loud. An old man dropped the ladle into the cauldron. Students lifted their fingers from their keyboards and glowered. Breaking the peace in Kissed was sacrilege and Harry knew it.

He didn’t care. He’d had enough for the night, enough of this self-imposed Incarcerous against what he really wanted to do. He looked into Malfoy’s eyes and downed half of the sludge in Draco’s cup.

Draco closed his eyes. “Potter,” he whispered.

A trail of fire burned down Harry’s throat. His heart made a tight squeeze, then pounded. The bitterness on his tongue was so extreme that he wished he could Stupefy his taste buds and Obliviate them from his memory forever.

You shouldn’t... trickled into Harry’s ears.

Harry held up a hand. “Later,” he croaked, as his vision wavered in tears. He swallowed hard, tilted his head to force the muck in his throat to go down.

You don't learn, do you?

Water. Harry needed water. He stumbled to the counter for the water jug.

When his senses calmed, Harry found a moat of plastic around where he stood. He’d knocked over the tower of tumblers. He looked over to the corner table, to Draco who’d rested his elbows on the table, the back of his hand covering his nose and mouth. The spark in his eyes gave away his schadenfreude.

It was a good look on him.

Harry marched to him with the empty jug. “I take it you’re the person to ask for refill?”

“Depends on who wants it.” Draco picked up his book, his lips still curved. With the fire between them, the dark scar on his cheek usurped attention. The monochrome from the interrogation room was gone, consumed by the bright red scratch that had turned black. “And since it’s you… ” Draco's smile faded as resignation took over. “The kettle’s on the stove behind the counter. Extra detergent under the sink.”

Detergent?

Draco sighed. “Your saliva’s on the jug, Potter. The tumblers also need cleaning.”

What could Harry say to that? “Right… Fine.”

It was with his hands in the bubbles that the strength of Draco’s chocolate hit him. A subdued sweetness washed over his tongue. Calmness grew like fractals from his chest to his limbs, then to his head. It pushed away clouds he didn’t know he had. He could hear better, see better, feel better.

The chocolate enlivened him.

He set the clean jug and tumblers on the counter, poured himself a full glass of fresh water and helped himself to the seat opposite of Draco.

“Done,” he said, crossing his forearms as he leaned against the marble top.

“I didn't invite you to sit here.” Maybe because Harry had had half of his chocolate; Draco had cooled considerably.

“The chair is free. I don’t see seating arrangements here.”

Draco turned a page of his book.

The calmness in Harry was lifting into bliss. “Plus, I’m your employee of the day. I want my badge.” He grins and swirls the water in his tumbler.

Draco flipped back a few pages and scribbled down a long paragraph along the sideline. The old man who’d dropped the ladle found a table beside them. He set down his two bowls of chocolate and started talking to the empty chair across him.

“So, Potter.” Draco put down his quill. “Have you learned yet?”

It took a moment for Harry to remember Draco’s question from before. Kissed felt cozy—intimate, almost. Like warm butterbeer.

“Nope.”

Draco pushed his half-finished cup in front of Harry.

“You don’t want that, Draco. It tastes like hell but makes me happy.”

At "happy", Draco looked up.

“I can't learn like this.” Harry chuckled.

Draco tightened his jaw, closed his book and stationed it on the window sill. Its spine was perfectly aligned with the ledge. When he turned to Harry, his scar looked deep enough to penetrate his soul.

“It’s got raw cocoa, chilli, nothing else.” He lifted his cup and downed the rest of the chocolate. “I call it Fiendfyre.”

Harry wondered how Draco did it without a change of expression.

“If it’s Fiendfyre, then it makes sense I should taste it.”

“Of course." Draco dapped his mouth with a napkin. "Who else but you.” The bitterness in Draco’s words seared a silence between them. The old man took the opportunity to make his payment. As he pocketed the receipt, he glanced at Draco—who returned his attention—and whispered, “We won’t be here next week. Margaret and I … we’re traveling.”

“Have fun,” Draco said.

“In case I…we find a new place to settle…”

The old man fidgeted. Draco waited. Harry had never seen such patience in him before.

“Thank you for having us for this past year, Mr. M.” The old man patted the back Draco’s hand with his own. Draco didn't flinch. “I wish you the very best. You deserve the very best.”

He gave Harry a once-over, curious about who this daft and loud person was. Draco didn't offer him an answer.

They watched the old man out of the shop. “He ate Margaret’s share tonight,” Draco whispered. “He won't come back.” When he turned and saw Harry again, he straightened and thinned his lips as if Harry’s presence had, for a moment, been forgotten. Then he crossed his legs and picked up his book once more.

He resumed reading far from where he’d left. His eyes did a horrible job following the lines, flickered above the book edge every now and then.

“You should’ve learned too, Draco.”

The eyes flickered again at Draco’s given name.

“You should’ve learned that ignoring me doesn’t make me go away.”

Draco settled his book on his knee. “We’ll see.”

On the wall behind Draco, the clock with its black face and white letters ticked. Minute by minute. Hour by hour. Draco’s face became a blur. The book in Draco’s hands changed without Harry’s noticing. Every time Harry rubbed his eyes, he smelled burnt hair.

The last time Harry's vision cleared in front of him, the sun was already up. Kissed, however, remained in the shadows. Dust covered every window pane except for the one beside Draco’s chair. The customers were gone, the burner flames blown out and Draco was nowhere to be seen.

Harry let himself out. Not until that evening, when he was patrolling in Knockturn again, did he found a note in the pocket of his cloak.

As payment for the half cup of Fiendfyre, bring a box of Bertie Bott's.

That was how Bertie Bott’s made their way into Kissed and Harry’s life, back into Draco’s. The first time Harry brought them, Draco poured the beans on a saucer but didn’t touch a single one. It took another month, and as many boxes counted in days, before Draco asked Harry to charm the beans into black and white capsules.

"Like those Muggle pills", he said.

He then straightened, took a knife and sliced along the black-white divide. He picked up the white half with a fork and told Harry to take the black.

“Now, tell me what it tastes like.” Draco whispered, looking into the summer night. The white glare of a car parked outside the shop seared into the subdued blue that was Kissed. The scar on Draco’s cheek was dark as soot.

Mint. Their first bean was mint and Draco couldn’t tell. Harry thought of the monochrome in the interrogation room, its grey that’d too swallowed Draco’s tongue. So he kept his questions to himself, just like he’d never asked for how long still would Draco need to drown his senses with chocolate, or when he would consider wearing something lighter than wool, or why he’d shunned magic and abused everything with the Malfoy emblem.

Three years have gone by, and Harry is sure they’ve had gone through every flavour of Bernie Bott’s. Not long ago, Draco confessed to Harry that sometimes, he thought he could catch a taste—not the usual sweetness, saltiness, sourness or bitterness—but of memories. The latest mint bean reminded him of songs from the Sorting Hat and sweets at the feast.

He shares these memories with Harry on the rare occasions he picks up a black half-bean. No luck so far tonight, with beans flavoured with roasted chestnuts, Tipsy Laird, turkey, and mulled wine. He is quiet; the only noises in Kissed are from the woman who stirs occasionally in her chair.

“Third breakup this year,” Draco nods in her direction. “She comes here for a week after every one. Does a verbal vomit of every detail that contributes to her misery.” His fingers make a circle on the cover of his book. “Doesn't know how to choose men.” He throws at Harry something between a smile and a smirk, and forks another half-bean in his mouth. The black one.

Draco freezes. Staring at a point far behind Harry, his grasp on the fork tightens until his knuckles turned blue. He curls up in his chair and begins to shake.

“Draco?” asks Harry, but his memory knows and his magic fires off. Under the table, his tan patrol cloak tosses his rucksack aside, flies towards Draco and wraps around him.

Harry follows and wraps himself around the cloak. Draco is cold. Easy, he mouths into Draco’s hair. Easy. His lips turn numb. In the biting chill, that night’s memory, powerful enough to call its own Accio, returns and stalls in Harry’s head…

3.

The oversized clock was distinctly Muggle: bold, black letters on a bland white face, black hour and minute hands. Around the clock, the windowless walls and the ceiling were lined with gray paddings. Harry had been told that they absorbed all traces of magic generated in the room. He put his wand on the ash-wood table. There were few things it could destroy. The clock. The table. Two chairs. One human being.

The second hand lined up with the minute hand. Six o’clock. It’s time to start.

At the center of the table was a corked flask with 507908 etched on its neck. It was Veritaserum, and enough of it to feed a herd of hippogriffs.

The filled flask, and afterhours scheduling, the spell-absorbent room… it was easy for to guess what Harry was asked of. Officially, he would witness Malfoy’s Declaration of Innocence, a one-line statement from Malfoy that he’d done no harm to his Auror custodians. Unofficially, he would make Malfoy talk. He would make Malfoy recount every detail of the night he’d been released from Azkaban and his boat trip back to England. He would make Malfoy re-enact the attacker’s every move and how each led to death of the Aurors but not himself. The Veritaserum would guarantee the authenticity of Malfoy’s every word.

The Wizengamot had been at war with the MLE since Harry and other MLE fresh bloods had proposed, among other things, restricting the use of Veritaserum to defendants who volunteered their Declaration of Innocence. The Wizengamot found the perfect counterargument in Malfoy’s case. That night was far more significant than two Aurors meeting their demise, they said. Dementors should be meeting their own death in the ice-shelves in Antarctica; not a single one should be found feasting on souls in the British Isles. How would fragile peace of Wizarding Britain react to this news? More importantly, how would the new Ministry defend itself against all the accusations to come?

The Wizengamot concluded that Draco Malfoy, the only survivor and witness, must testify on the Dementor's attack. The truth of his testimony must be certified with Veritaserum. For the greater good. Feed the potion to anyone else and people might protest; feed it to a Malfoy and they would only say comeuppance.

It was bullocks, Harry knew, except for the last count.

He sighed and took a good, hard look at Draco Malfoy. It’d been a year since the war had ended; a year since Malfoy had become an outcast and Harry had become…

Harry closed his eyes.

… establishment.

In the Auror rulebook, the footnote on Veritaserum said this: "if unavailable, intimidation is a way to go (this is not an endorsement, mind)". Harry did not believe in intimidation. He wouldn't be effective anyway, since Draco Malfoy had specifically asked for him to be his witness. The Wizengamot granted the request for a convenient excuse to feed Malfoy Veritaserum and more than that, for the opportunity of a lifetime to dispose of a prominent political family forever.

Once he completed the Declaration, Malfoy had said, he would take leave of Wizarding Britain. He would even offer his wand, and his manor to the Ministry if in exchange, he would be free to spell Silencio on his night’s memory. Forever.

It had to be a rash decision. Draco's father had got a life sentence; his mother had been murdered by former, low-ranked Death Eaters in a prison riot. Harry pleaded with MLE to make a counter-offer and it did, in the form of the best Obliviate the Aurors could offer and to be administered immediately after Malfoy’s testimony.

But Malfoy had spat on the proposal. Harry surveyed the grey paddings, the clock, the flask again; he really couldn't fault the MLE for siding with the Wizengamot.

At this moment, Harry saw one more reason the Ministry was comfortable to seat him here: Malfoy didn't need to be intimidated any further. He even sat wrong. The Hogwarts Malfoy had perched like his peacocks—back straight, chin high, insufferably proud. This Malfoy was slouched, his head bowed all the way. An incomprehensible mumble escaped his mouth occasionally, behind the curtain of matted blond hair.

The irony was, the slouch could not hide the newly acquired strength in Malfoy’s figure. His shoulders were wide, curled in as they were, and his biceps hard with tension. Sinews ran down from his arms and distorted the faded Dark Mark into something of a cheap tattoo. It’d come from the sentence for his war crimes: nine months of manual labor in Azkaban, during which he renovated the prison without magic.

Harry had, too, improved his physique with Auror training was admittedly quite happy about it. But a rough, muscular Malfoy was just…wrong. Even more wrong were the calloused hands caught between rubbing and trying to keep each other still on the table. Old wounds blemished the skin, the nails were chipped and black along the edges. These hands resembled too much Harry’s own.

It shouldn’t have come to this. Malfoy's and Harry's lives should have run in parallel, seeing but never meeting each other. Scars had always been Harry’s thing.

Had he come to missing the old Malfoy?

Would Malfoy miss the old Harry too, the old Harry who would’ve marched out and raged at whoever had approved of this setup? He would. He should.

Harry sighed. They had grown up, that was all. He banished his thoughts. The Declaration protocol began with the Auror confirming the defendant’s name. He would do it in an impartial, impassive voice. He cleared his throat.

Malfoy raised his head. Harry couldn’t go on any more.

He’d always thought Malfoy was parchment pale, but the face on the other end of the table made him aware of the palette that had used to be there. For now, almost a half of Malfoy’s face, from the left corner of his eye to the mid-line of his mouth, looked as if a realm of monochrome had taken it over. The hue descended from light grey on his cheek to a dark gray on his lips. Whatever light had been in the grey eyes was diminished.

It only made the bright red scratch that ran across his left cheek, from which the many shades of grey seemed to have dispersed, all the more striking. A fingernail had made the inicision, Harry could tell from its curve and depth. A long, sharp fingernail.

Malfoy stared back at him.

“Your name, Malfoy…” Decorum was not Harry’s forte and this Malfoy was making it impossible. “Sorry. Let me start again.” He drew a breath. Malfoy tilted his head. “Please state your name, Mr. Defendant, followed by your date of birth.”

“Draco Abraxas Malfoy. Fifth of June, nineteen eighty.” The tone, while subdued, was astoundingly alive. His dull eyes, while struggled to maintain focus, managed to level with Harry’s. “I’ve agreed to be here, to make a Declaration of Innocence under the influence of Veritaserum, by my own free will.” The statement was rehearsed, fluent, as if Malfoy was the one who knew the rulebook by heart.

The Malfoy pride had survived, bruised but intact. Harry intended to keep it that way.

The wide neckhole of Malfoy’s prisoner garb kept drooping, exposing flesh rough with goosebumps. Harry knew the bone-gnawing chill from a Dementor’s encounter. The prison guards should know it too but would never consider loaning a Malfoy an extra blanket or supplementing his meals with chocolate. After all, they could point out the Ministry rulebook had two full scrolls on the evils of unequal treatment towards defendants.

Malfoy pulled up his neckhole at Harry’s stare. He scowled when Harry didn’t—couldn’t—relent.

“It’s cold here,” said Harry at long last. Chatting between interrogators and their respondents was not protocol. Chatting between Harry and Malfoy was out of ordinary and saying what he’d said, out of mind. It was August and the weather spells had been malfunctioning.

Malfoy didn’t respond. A good part of his will was devoted to suppress his shivers, to instill the strength and calmness he shouldn’t have.

Harry was awful at following protocols. He was good at breaking them and brilliant at walking away unscathed.

He stood and shook off his cloak. “Here. Wear this.” He shoved it across the table, around the flask of Veritaserum. Then, without checking Malfoy's reaction, he got up, announced he was hungry and would return with dinner in fifteen minutes.

The minimarket around the street corner sold soggy ham sandwiches and Mars chocolate bars. Harry had been spoilt by chocolate frogs. His childhood favorite treat tasted like sugared wax.

Malfoy, swathed in Harry’s burgundy cloak, didn’t seem to care. His wide-opened mouth exposed an almost black tongue as he stuffed another bar inside. The sweet sent him into a coughing fit, but not enough to stop him from grabbing another, tearing off its wrapper and shoving in another bite. Gooey chocolate smeared all over his lips.

Harry pushed aside his half-eaten bar. The sight of Malfoy losing… himself was too much for Harry to stomach.

Malfoy spat out a small piece of wrapper he neglected to remove before. A string of saliva dangled from the corner his mouth.

Harry couldn’t take it anymore. “Merlin, Malfoy.” He scrambled for a piece of unused napkin out of his jean pocket and pushed it across the table.

Malfoy looked up a second, and kept eating.

“Stop.”

Malfoy didn’t bother looking up this time.

Harry shook off the wrapper from his unfinished bar, tore it open and held the glossy side in front of Malfoy’s face. “Malfoy. Draco. Look at yourself.”

The silver wrapper caught the fluorescent light in the room and shone between them. It won Malfoy’s attention away from its sequence of tearing, stuffing, coughing. He blinked at the wrapper, at his reflection as the clock behind Harry ticked. One. Two. Slowly, Malfoy put down the chocolate bar and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of Harry’s cloak.

“Malfoy, in this room only I eat like an imbecile, all right?” Harry dropped the wrapper and flattened it with his fingers in front of Malfoy on the table. “The chocolate needs time to work through your system.”

"Time," Malfoy echoed and nodded after a long moment of silence. He sat taller in his chair. “Thank you.” He reached for the napkin and brought it to his mouth. “I enjoyed these chocolates. Please excuse my manners. I do miss sweets.”

Then Malfoy smiled. It was a haunting smile—lopsided, the left, grey side of his lips barely moved.

“I’ll get us chocolate frogs next time.” How could Malfoy think these Muggle chocolates were even decent?

“No next time, Potter.” The right corner of his lips lifted more. It was a smile, and it was for Harry. The chocolate was working.

“Right,” Harry smiled back. Had they ever smiled at each another? He gathered the empty wrappers on the table and threw them under his chair. “So, Malfoy, now that we’re full and warm, you want to get this over with?”

Malfoy opened his mouth. For a moment, Harry thought he had something to say but in the end, he just gave a curt nod and closed his eyes. He wrapped another chocolate bar with his fist. “Our pact, again. After the Declaration, I’ll never be made to testify, in front of the Wizengamot, Aurors or anyone else, about what happened on the boat that night.”

“Yes. That's what you and the Wizengamot agreed on.”

“Should I believe them, Potter?”

“I represent the Ministry in this room. You have my word.”

“Should I believe you?”

Shouldn’t Malfoy have asked himself this question before? “Yes.”

“Why?”

“You chose me, Malfoy.”

After a long while, Malfoy sighed, his eyes still closed. “Of course. Who else.”

Harry didn’t understand what Malfoy meant.

But he said, “Look, Malfoy, I understand.”

He understood even less his own actions to come.

He reached for the flask of Veritaserum between them. Malfoy opened his eyes. When Harry lifted the flask, he realized that Veritaserum was, indeed, no water. It was heavy. He yanked out the cork, nursed the neck of the flask with both hands and guzzled down half of it. The liquid morphed into a low heat, a smoke that curled in the depths of Harry’s abdomen, snaked through the most tortuous vessels in his heart and knocked at his temples.

Draco opened his mouth. Harry’s held up a hand stopped him.

“I, Harry Potter, am making an oath to you, Draco Malfoy with the help of Veritaserum. I promise I’ll never try to find out what you saw, heard, said, did, or felt on the night of August 13th, 1999. I’ll never trick you, or anyone else, into talking about that night. I’ll also to protect you from anyone who wants this information without your consent. This promise holds for today and for as long as I live.”

Malfoy’s lips quivered. Out came a sound between a sob and a snicker.

“If I break my promise today,” Harry continued. “You can make me talk about whatever you want.”

Malfoy started laughing. Harry had never seen him laugh like this before. His gums showed, crowfeet marked the corner of his eyes from which a tear fell, ran down the red scratch that sliced through his face.

“Whoever says Draco Malfoy doesn’t know what’s good for him…,” he said between gasps. Then, like Harry, he picked up the flask and tipped the remaining Veritaserum into his mouth.

4. 

Harry grits his teeth as he holds on to the cup of chocolate whiskey at Draco’s lips.

Draco’s eyes, half-lidded and glassy, flicker on and off Harry’s face. But he is drinking. At first, his throat shuddered like a rusted cogwheel, but then it began to relieve Harry of the weight and the scalding heat in the cup.

Harry exhales at Draco’s first blink.

“Thank you,” Draco says to the empty cup, as he had in the interrogation room.

“I'll get some more.” Harry gestures at the cauldrons. He doesn’t know what to say. He promised he’d never ask. Not that day. Not ever.

“Wait.” Draco’s right hand emerges under Harry’s cloak, clenches like an ice-cold vice on Harry’s wrist. Harry shivers. Draco’s eyes remained on the flame. “Your half.”

The bean that has just reminded Draco of the Kiss.

“It’ll be here. More chocolate first.”

Draco tips his head and frowns, as if the flame has spoken to him. Then, he closes his eyes and his lips move. Harry hears nothing but his body reacts. His throat closes; a white flash blinds his mind and knocks the balance out from his feet. The air around him thickens and pushes him into the chair.

It is poorly executed magic, but it is magic. After three years of avoiding every reminder of it, Draco has cast three wandless, soundless spells on Harry.

Harry schools his face as if Draco’s magic has missed him. Or, as if Harry hasn’t missed Draco’s magic. He reaches out for the half-bean. “You’re right.” He smiles. “Should have my go first.”

What should he do next?

He should reveal the flavour, get the chocolate and keep Draco warm. Then, he should say goodnight.

He will say goodnight.

Harry is about to bring the white sweet to his mouth when Draco’s hand returns. This time, it lands on Harry’s palm, locking it in place with the bean between them.

“You’ll never ask me what happened on the night of the Kiss, will you?”

Harry looks up.

“Why? Is it because you promised?—”

Yes, it is...

“—Or is it because you already know?”

Not everything, but what matters.

“Both,” answers Harry. It is the truth.

Laser-sharp focus returns to Draco’s eyes and burns Harry’s skin.

“So, tell me, Potter. What do you know?”

“You survived.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s enough.”

Draco snaps at those two words. His grip, his focus, his whole presence recoils and the distance between him and Harry is suddenly immense, far wider than Harry has got used to. “Haven’t you wondered how I made it? Isn’t it why you barge in here, day in, day out, just so you’ll find out? Have me talk?” Draco is drawling, as if only with the cutting tone can Harry understand him. Then he leans forward and his voice drops to a conspiring whisper. “It's all a bit suspicious, isn't it? Any Auror worth a salt knows Expecto Patronum. I didn’t even have my wand with me. But the Dementor had its way with your Auror friends and they threw themselves into the sea. I, on the other hand, am sitting here with you, alive and kicking.”

“I believe you.”

“Believe me in what?” Draco smirks, his eyes narrow. “That I didn’t do anything to the Aurors?” A bottle drops with a thud on the tiled floor behind Harry. “That Draco Malfoy doesn’t have the guts to kill? Congrats to you on that superior insight. I reckoned the Squibs on Diagon haven't figured it out yet.” His lips curl into a vicious smile. “What about everything else? Who and what do you believe? You don’t think I have what it’s worth to get a Kiss, do you?”

“You have a soul.”

“That’s your defence?” Draco raises his voice.

“If you're accusing me of thinking otherwise.”

Draco sneers. His mouth opens, more nonsense in stock. Harry seizes his wrist on the table. The patrol cloak slips from his shoulders, revealing a body still wrecked by tremors.

“No one—" Harry looks into Draco’s eyes "—wizard or Muggle or Dementor—gets to tell me what owns a soul and who doesn’t.” He keeps his tone to his most level, most calm. “That includes you, Draco Malfoy.”

Draco grits his teeth and struggles. Harry twists his arm and pins their hands to the metal grill at the bottom of the burner. Harry’s already scalded skin screams at the heat. Draco’s eyes widen at the warmth on his pulse. “And while we’re at this. The Dementor attacked you. You won. Don’t pretend it happened otherwise.”

“I won? What is this, hearsay?” But Draco’s arm has gone limp. “Have I become fiction like the Great Harry Potter?”

“No, you lived, like me.” Harry lets go of Draco. “It’s the truth. Now live with it.”

Draco’s fingers linger on the burner. Their tips redden but like moths circling a fire, they can’t bear to leave the heat. Outside the window, the ice storm has turned to snow. A motorcycle strung with Christmas lights throttles past the deserted street.

“What about you, Harry?” Draco’s voice has drifted away with the lone rider. He drops the white half-bean, abandoned beside the saucer, into the flame. A purple flare illuminates the shop as magic escapes and burns. “When will you stop pretending and live with the truth?”

5. 

Malfoy’s Declaration was short and uneventful. Harry recorded it with his wand.

The Muggle clock ticked, ticked, ticked. Malfoy had curled into fetal position in his chair, his face hidden in Harry’s cloak. If three drops of Veritaserum could draw a confession, how much time would it take for a half-flask of Veritaserum to wear off? A day or two, Harry reckoned. Its effects are still acute. Harry could feel an insistent nudge on his lips, coaxing him to speak out a truth. Any truth.

The Auror rulebook taught a way to get around this: if Veritaserum presents an insurmountable urge to talk, ask questions.

Harry watched Malfoy’s coiled form. He had followed Malfoy under his Invisibility Cloak, on the Marauder’s Map so many times to unravel the mysteries about him. Now that Malfoy must answer the truth, and Harry must ask only for the truths he cared for, Harry realized that the past mysteries he had tried to uncover were either irrelevant, superficial. The Veritaserum was like a solvent, extracting the essence of all Harry wanted to know about Malfoy, the One Question…

It came down to this: “Why me?”

The two words had to mean why Malfoy chose him to be here. But the smoke of the potion twists in Harry’s chest again and he knew, he just knew it meant so much more. Except he had no words for it, only a strength, a power that ripples from his heart and down his arms.

His hands gave a twitch. His lips quivered but nothing more came out. His ignorance was his saving grace.

Malfoy looked up slowly as his hands balled into fists. Harry could see the smoke stirring in him too, but unlike in Harry, it couldn’t be contained. It even seethed in Malfoy’s eyes as anger. Draco shot up from his chair. His knees gave and he collapsed against the table.

The fire in his eyes burned higher.

“Why you?” he repeated, incredulous and indignant. “You made your stupid promise and now you come up with this… this thing to ask...” He struggled onto his feet. He clutched his chest, his eyes widened with alarm. The Veritaserum was forcing its way up to his mouth.

He bit on his lips, hard. They bled, grey blood mixed with red. It was no use.

“Why you, Potter? Was there, could there ever be anyone else? It—even that wretched, vile It with nothing but bones and an orifice now knows…I’m yours, Potter…my soul is yours…”

Unlike Harry, Draco had the words. He could articulate.

“It closed in on me at the bow of the boat. The sky fell... I withered …was gone, almost, when Its tattered sleeve closed around me. The stars went dark. Its mouth pulled against mine. Then this one thought came; this one vow to myself. My soul is mine. I’d fought so hard for it, no one would take it as long as I had a single breath left. I tore myself away. Who knew how far I managed... I only had this voice in my head left. ‘Go away,’ I yelled. It got angry. It dug its claw into my face and it was so cold, so awfully cold... I had died, I thought, so shouldn't I get to say whatever I want? So I did. ‘I'm not the one you want. Who you want is the guardian of my bit of soul. He's so strong you smelled him. You smelled that reflection of him in my heart even if he’s not here. But I suggest you leave me alone. He defeated the Dark Lord..."

Malfoy wailed. He pulled himself away the table and stumbled to the far side of the room, buried his face against the gray padding.

Harry’s mind was a maelstrom. The guardian of Malfoy’s soul… in Malfoy’s heart… defeated the Dark Lord. That could only mean one thing. And this one thing, the words that'd come with it, had intertwined with the Veritaserum in Harry's system. The smoke gathered. Glimpses from Harry’s memory played on it—Malfoy’s hand, clean and unblemished, in the Fiendfyre; tears in the bathroom, blood from Sectumsempra; flesh and sweat on the green Quidditch field. The words flitted among the sights and sounds, then, like film subtitles, they each found their place, spelling out the unknowable, magnificent thing Harry didn't have the words for minutes ago...

Harry reached for his wand on the table. The smoke stung his lungs and was lurching for his throat. It would come out if Harry didn’t act. There would be no going back then...

A trail of dark blood painted the padding on the far wall. Malfoy's broken lips had left it there; he didn’t deserve anymore of this... this one thing that came to light to both of them only because Harry shouldn't have asked. With all his might, Harry forced down his smoke and his truth, pointed the wand and spelled.

Silencio!
Stupefy!
Obliviate!

Malfoy fell to his knees and turned to Harry. Harry thought he might see gratitude on his face.

But all he saw was hurt.

6. 

“I’ve not pretended.”

“Of course you haven’t. Of course, only I do make-believes.” Draco sneers again, his lips thinned to a line. “Who but Saint Potter can speak for the truth—”

Draco is talking nonsense. Harry won’t have any more of it. “Look, Draco. Either you tell me what’s wrong or—”

“No, you tell me. Tell me, what exactly happened on the boat, right after It Kissed me?”

Draco shouldn’t ask, not if he wanted the memory to be under Silencio forever. It’ll be easier for him, easier for Harry. “You came back to London. You declared your innocence—”

“No. Before that.”

“You're sailing. You said that yourself.”

“One more chance.” It can be a trick from the flame's shadow, but the scar on Draco’s face darkens. Harry meets the gaze from where it begins. “I’ll be more specific. What happened in the minutes during and after The Dementor gave me the half-Kiss?”

Why you, Potter? Was there, could there ever be anyone else?...

If Draco could only admit it under Veritaserum, does it matter if it were the truth?

“I don’t know.”

“Live with the truth, Potter. Practice what you preach.”

“I won't get into this without—”

Draco explodes. He grabs the burner and throws it off the table. Harry spells the flame out half-way in its flight but cannot save the dish of oil from spilling on his cloak. “You’re repulsive, Harry Potter. I admit, I am too but unlike you, I live with it. I own it. And I’m even more repulsive, more pathetic than anyone has imagined. Not only had I refused to let go of that memory when I was offered a chance, on some days all I wanted was to shout it on the rooftops—”

Harry can’t take this any longer. He gets on his feet.

“Go do it then! No one ever asked you to forget or play a mime. It’s you who’ve made it clear you don't want to face that night again. It’s you who’ve made sure you won't face anyone who cares for you again just because they came from the same world as that night. Fine, you and I weren't friends before. What about Parkinson, Goyle, Zabini? They’ll sit here and listen to every story you tell if you'd let them. Not just about that night but every night after.” Last year, they owled Harry a birthday scroll to deliver to Draco. Somehow, they were sure Harry knew where Draco was. Draco burned it without untying the ribbon. “And if I haven’t, what you said, barged in, day in, day out,, I wouldn’t be here—”

Draco leans back in his chair and folds his arms. They still shake. “And what would be your loss, my perennial Saviour of the Year?”

Harry has enough. He grabs his wand and rucksack and marches to the door. Draco’s right, he has little to lose. His t-shirt and bare feet can take the short walk to the nearest alley for Apparition. His patrol cloak is already ruined. Those stupid boots never fit him.

He has nothing to lose.

The menagerie of tables is impossible to navigate. Harry knocks one over on its side.

He has nothing to lose, not compared to what Draco has already lost.

Harry is going back home.

You know I can’t go back, said Draco, staring at the ashes of the scroll. Don’t bring me things I didn’t ask for.

But Draco can go back. The Aurors never took his wand and his manor. His exile is voluntary. Dementors haven’t shown up since that night.

But still…

Who with a shred of pride will endure the nickname “Dementor’s leftover”? On the other side of the Leaky, Draco Malfoy will always be a soul-less ex-convict, or, as the Knockturn denizens whisper, a Dark prince born at the wrong time. Who will believe the story that not only does Draco Malfoy have a soul, but that he fought for it and won? Who will believe that he, too, is a Man Who Lived?

Kissed is Draco’s prison after Azkaban. The only people he connects with are the troubled who can’t sleep, who take comfort in his chocolate. He only sleeps when the sun is up. He doesn't leave the shop except to go to the market and the used bookstore around the corner. Harry even buys his clothes for him, after he chose them from catalogues. All he has left from the past are the heirlooms he asks Harry to bring from the manor, the same things he mistreats once they're here.

As for Harry, what has he to lose?

Nothing. Just having Draco face-to-face for himself. Picking door grease and fussing over Draco’s carelessness with the shop’s upkeep. Bringing in new clothes, only to have a few thrown back at him to wear because his own clothes, Draco declares, are atrocities to mankind. Watching Draco transform into a peacock when he lays down the silverware and napkins with the Malfoy emblem. Deciphering Draco's every expression in the light of the blue flame.

Harry’s fingers have curled around the doorknob when the placard with Draco’s handwriting falls to his feet again.

Harry picks it up. This time, the ink is ruined. Faded grey courses through the fibers of the parchment, carrying Harry’s ire away with it. “Have the new one laminated,” he says, placing the card on the nearest table. “And for the last time, do you want your friends to know you’re here?”

Silence. Harry waits.

The sadness in the answer that finally comes strikes Harry. He refuses to look back. All of this will be behind him when he returns to the Aurors. “You’re going to walk out like this, barefoot in the snow. Am I not even worth a hex any more? And if I invite you to listen to my story while I tell my friends, will you stay and listen?”

“We’re not kids any more." Harry pulls on the doorknob. The door jams. The screws clack and the knob threatens to separate from the wood. “And no, not after tonight.”

Draco doesn't seem to hear him. Gone is the clarity in his diction, like the glass panes covered with dust. “And when you do listen, Harry —” A chair scratches the floor. Draco has got up. “—will you cast Silencio, Obliviate, Stupefy on me again when I say things you’re too scared to hear?”

Harry’s fingers slip off the brass knob. Slowly, he turns to Draco, who stands with his hand resting on a leg of knocked down table. The sparks in his eyes are too many and too bright.

More than three years later, Draco has got back the few minutes Harry had removed from his memory.

7. 

Malfoy was still asleep on Harry’s bed when the sun rose. Only his hair and closed eyes were visible from the cocoon Harry had built for him. A cocoon of blankets, throws, sheets, towels, everything in Harry’s flat that could keep warm.

He had taken Malfoy home without magic, along with the wands of Malfoy and Mad-Eye Moody, the latter on display in the lobby of MLE. He’d put a glamour on Malfoy’s face, placed him under a perpetual but gentle Stupefy and carried him on his back. “Drunk friend,” Harry had told the Muggle cab driver who would’ve refused fare if not for the soft Imperious from Mad-Eye’s wand.

Stripes of neon flew across Malfoy’s face as the cab drove through the busy intersections near Trafalgar Square. It had been in this flowing stream of light that Harry'd tallied the laws he'd just violated.

Harry pushed away the chair he’d spent the past hours on watching over Malfoy. The bedroom was itself in a cocoon of chocolate smell. Harry had chocolate warming in the kitchen; the heat and chocolate should soothe Malfoy in his sleep. The chocolate was from a 24-hour Muggle store, plebian but the best he could find. He pried open Draco’s still clenched fist, removed the hawthorne wand from his own pocket and tucked it inside. Malfoy would feel safer with it when he’d wake—after sunset, when all traces of Veritaserum would be gone. Harry had dabbed vials of sleeping draught onto Malfoy’s lips, watching it seep through the dark grey into his mouth.

None of the things Harry had done could wait till morning. Once the sun was up, the Aurors would find Malfoy missing from his remand cell. They would find Harry’s wand, with Malfoy’s successful Declaration of Innocence, in the interrogation room. They would examine the trace magic trapped in the paddings and deduce, correctly, that Harry had stolen Draco Malfoy from custody.

The Aurors would come and storm Harry’s flat. They would arrest Harry, the rogue Auror guilty of … everything. As for Malfoy, they’d neither spend time nor effort to wake him as long as Harry put up a good show and resist arrest. All Malfoy had left to do was the official release papers; he didn’t even have possessions to pick up. The Aurors would be too eager to get Harry back to the Ministry while they had the upper hand.

Harry had fulfilled his promise that no one, himself included, could make Draco Malfoy talk.

Quick raps broke the silence. If Harry had gone by other surnames, his colleagues would have Reductoed their way in. Harry should be content with such courtesy. He draped his Auror robe on his arms—no use to wear what would be stripped off in a minute—stood and looked over Malfoy the last time. Strands of blond hair had veiled his eyes; Harry brushed them aside, leaned over and mouthed good luck on the exposed skin. It was warm beneath his lips.

Malfoy didn’t stir. Harry left the room and closed the door behind him.

8.

“You asked 'Why me', Potter, then you Obliviated your question from my memory. And my answer.”

Harry closes his eyes and nods.

“How dare you. How dare you denying them from me.” Draco resumes his advance towards Harry, his steps still quiet. “Those three spells… do you know how cruel they were? They make you cruel too, Potter, cruel like the Dementor. True, the Kiss was torture. But I’d tasted cold. I’d tasted misery.”

He shoves Harry against the wall. Harry’s rucksack digs into his skin but he doesn’t fight back. He has no right to.

“You must think, the worst hours of my life happened on the boat, or in Azkaban, or when Voldemort was at the manor. You’re wrong. My worst hours were spent in your flat.”

Harry has never asked what Malfoy did or felt after he'd found himself on Harry’s bed. By the time he'd posted bail with the Aurors, Malfoy was long gone. The cocoon had disintegrated, the stasis charm on the molten chocolate evanesced and the pot gone dry. Malfoy must have found his way out, hopefully from the Ministry and also Wizarding Britain, if he so wanted.

Malfoy was free. His innocence had been confirmed. Harry had also confessed, still under Veritaserum, that every crime committed on the night of the Declaration had been his own.

“Surprising, isn’t it? Not if you know that horrible, sickening feeling of being totally, irrevocably rejected. Maybe you do know that, Potter, but I’m not you. Rejection and I don’t get along. And it’s not just rejection. I couldn't make my case; I'd been deemed unworthy to do so and whoever had decided that... whoever had that kind of great power over me ... I thought he'd known me. I thought I could trust him. Instead, he'd stifled me, from my head to my limbs to my mouth. He took away my voice when even the Dementor had had the mercy to let me keep it. But the cruelest deed of whoever was this: he'd spared me not even one clue where those thoughts, those feelings came from. They just rolled into my head when I opened my eyes. I even considered the Dementor had returned but I knew it couldn’t be. I'd survived the first Kiss not because I'd won anything, but because in the end, the Dementor fed me strength and elation in its cold and misery. It confirmed I had a soul, you see? That’s precious to me. That’s everything to me. I would’ve lived again if it'd come back.”

The brightness in Draco’s eyes has trickled down along his scar. Clear crystals gathered at the corner of his lip.

“I paced in your kitchen, praying for you to show up. Only you could answer my questions; only you could lift me out of my sinkhole. But you never did. Instead, your owl showed up with the evening Prophet. Its headline was shouting you'd been suspended from Ministry duties, arrested for compromising Wizarding Britain's security. I broke down, Potter. I fell on that hideous carpet of yours and cried. By dawn I was thoroughly convinced that I’d lost my soul after all, or it was too foul even for a Dementor to take. I got the release papers and left Wizarding Britain the next day.”

“Draco, I hadn’t thought—”

Draco snorts. “Of course not. How could you have? You go about, wave your wand, save people and things along the way. You don’t think. When I’d first offered to cross the Leaky and never return, all I'd wanted was to keep what I'd said to the Dementor to myself, and hopefully, to you one day. Do you think I hadn’t expected that night's details to come out with the Veritaserum? That potion puts the most obscure truth into light. Our souls are the most obscure; the Kiss is the most devastating, obscure truth for its survivors. You happen to appear in this truth of mine, this one detail I don't know if I want to forget or shout on the rooftops. I’m proud, Potter. I'm proud my soul chooses you. But I'm also too proud to have you toss my soul aside. So I let the Veritaserum do my talking. I’d insisted on you to witness my Declaration for a reason. Have it ever occurred to you?”

No.

But it did occur to somebody else.

9. 

“What I'm the most disappointed about what happened, Harry, is this: you forgot you're walking into that Declaration not only as the Ministry's representative, but also as our department's and our reforms'.” Harry wished Shacklebolt had yelled. His strained voice was not helping. On the desk between them, Harry’s chocolate-stained Auror issue lay in a crumble, beside a neatly folded but equally soiled patrol cloak. “You’d assumed just because Malfoy had rejected MLE's offer, I’d let the Wizengamot do whatever it wanted with him? The world isn't everyone versus Draco Malfoy, Harry. I put you in that room, at that hour, with extra Veritaserum because with you two anything could happen. Declarations of Innocence demand the most skeptical of Auror witnesses and you're not one of them—especially not for him. I'd tried to change his mind, told him he didn’t know what’s good for him but he still wanted you. I even considered if he had a motivation to hurt you, but this is someone who'd had a chance to offer you to Voldemort and didn’t take it. Nothing added up, Harry. Eventually, I could only conclude that Malfoy hadn’t got out of his habit of doing stupid things—silly, school-boyish things—when it comes to you. I assumed you hadn't got entirely out of your habit either when it comes to him, but you had yet to show me how long a way you still had to go."

"I'm sorry. I have no excuse. I wasn't thinking."

Shackle bolt sighed. "I know." He gave the patrol cloak a pat, his voice back to his usual smooth baritone. "You'll be a fine patrol. You'll learn new things. But if you don't mind an advice from this old man, take this—life is much more than a series of actions. You need to know yourself, Harry. Know why you do the things you do."

Harry nodded.

"Know where your heart is."

10. 

At Harry’s reticence, Draco chokes out a laugh. “Never rung a bell in your thick skull, hadn’t it? Of course, my skull had a healthy thickness too. I hadn’t thought you’d take the Veritaserum. Foolish of me, right? That’s exactly the kind of heroic and stupid things only Harry Potter would do. But still, I’d never thought you'd be that despicable someone who rejected and silenced me; I never thought you have that in you. And worst, you've then tricked me into thinking I’d never offered my soul but come here to claim it anyway, piece by piece. That’s you, Potter, a prat and a bastard and as much as I wish you were different or you were anyone else, I wouldn’t have it different for a million years.”

Draco’s hold on Harry has lost power. He steps back, waves his hand and Harry’s rucksack is gone. Crystals snow from his cheek.

“The chocolate here, Harry—” Draco gestures the cauldrons and blinks away the sparks in his eyes “—is as much for your three spells as it is for the Kiss. I should be the one to ask your question. Why you, Potter? Why was it you and why is it still you, after…”

Harry cuts him off. He grabs Draco by the shoulders, turns them around and pressed Draco’s back against the wall.

Then, he kisses Draco. His Veritaserum from three years ago is finally out in the light.

Draco’s mouth is incredibly warm beyond the cool lips. Harry searches for the source of that heat with his tongue, driven deep by the frozen scar against his face. Draco closes his fists against Harry’s T-shirt. You prat… bastard, he whispers over and over again, pulls out Harry's shirt from his jeans and nurses Harry’s waist with his cold hands.

A shiver runs up Harry’s spine and down to his crotch. He pushes his hips forward and grinds; the friction and heat make them moan together. Draco takes the opportunity to push his tongue into Harry’s mouth…

“God, Harry. You’re chocolate...”

The next moment, Harry finds himself on the floor. The molten water from his boots imprints another kind of cold on his back but Harry doesn’t care. Draco is on top of him, his mouth everywhere, his tongue licking a path from Harry’s scar to his ears, down his earlobes and jawline …

Then there’s teeth, a ruthless bite below Harry’s Adam’s apple. Harry coughs, his eyes water as cool lips land on the wound and soothe the pain away.

Harry’s vision clears to Draco’s eyes, dark with lust and hunger. “This one's for not telling me you taste like chocolate.”

The assault is on again. Draco’s hands take the lead this time to explore Harry’s body. Harry’s shirt has vanished with a wandless spell—maybe his, maybe Draco’s. Goosebumps rise everywhere Draco touches, his nipples perk higher when the old callouses on Draco’s fingers brush again them. Draco’s tongue then swipes in to pacify, to lap on the one flavor only Draco can taste.

He stops just above the waist of Harry’s jeans. He pulls at the buckle and folds the loop of the belt. The fabric below creases as the belt tightens, further constraining Harry's maddening hardness underneath.

“Harry,” Draco gives a lick below Harry’s navel and whispers. His eyelashes fan up. “I want us to come.”

Harry is happy to make it happen. He pulls Draco up to straddle him, using his belt for rein. A hip roll by Harry and Draco spreads his knees further, showcasing the strain of his wool trousers between his thighs. "Feel it", he whispers and Harry accedes, runs his palms back and forth along the outline of the swollen length.

Draco’s hips are buckling with Harry’s, faster and faster. He’s almost there. Harry’s orgasm is imminent too, detained only by the impending groan and release of the soul ablaze in his arms.

But the force, the urgency isn’t quite enough. Draco grits his teeth and shutters his eyelids, determined to rock himself to completion.

A dark spot appears and spreads on the wool trousers. Harry rubs it with his fingers.

It is cold.

Harry realises what's missing then. He slows and stills as he searches for the pull tab of the zip on Draco's trousers. He lets his thumb linger there, demanding access with a gentle rub. Draco opens his eyes and looks at him, their mix of pride and surrender both beautiful and unbearable.

“Let me,” Harry says. “Please.”

Draco closes his eyes once more. “I haven’t…” he mutters.

“Makes two.” Harry smiles and pulls down a notch of the zip. Draco hitches his breath. Harry pulls down one more notch and Draco’s breath catches again. They keep on slowly, one notch after another.

He was half way through when Draco’s hand joins his. It pulls down the rest of the zip in one go.

Their bodies have switched positions. Draco is lying on the floor while Harry kneels between his thighs. Viewing from above, Harry is overcome by his urge to show how he, too, is lost to lust. He unclasps his belt and pulls the fly of his jeans apart, takes Draco’s hand and presses it against his revealed bulge. Draco swallows and acknowledges Harry’s display with a squeeze. Harry groans; his hands are back on Draco again, exploring the fullness once more before diving into the opening they’ve made together.

The flesh is swollen but cold. Harry closes his fists around it. Draco hisses.

“All right?” asks Harry. Draco nods.

Harry wastes no time providing what they need. He bows, leaves a kiss at the tip and wraps his lips around the pale pink crown. Draco sobs at the heat and digs his nails into Harry’s back, urging Harry to take it further. Harry complies, sliding his mouth slowly downwards as their body temperatures find equilibrium. Draco's length is too much for him; half-way to the base, his throat closes and his mind blanks again but it feels so different from earlier this evening. His mouth, his mind, his heart are making space for someone who has been there since long ago. Draco chuckles lightly, nudges Harry back upward until his mouth is back at the crown.

Harry uses his hands to nurse the base and balls his mouth couldn’t reach. His mouth ventures down again several times, sucking deeper at every turn, fueled by his own desires and by Draco’s writhing underneath him. The length is now hot on his tongue. The friction of Draco's wool trousers against Harry’s lips adds to the fire between them. They won't last long.

“Now…” Draco gasps when Harry's throat opens to a knob on his vein. He reaches between them in a frantic effort to pull himself out. Harry would have none of it. He angles his lips and scraps his teeth ever so lightly along the vein. Draco wails and submits. His clenched fists hit the floor in ecstasy as he comes, shouting Harry’s name and draining himself into Harry’s mouth.

Harry swallows as much as he can. A sticky warmth floods Harry’s own pants as Draco's flavor overwhelms him.

He waits for Draco to come to afterwards, lying by Draco’s side and playing with the blond hair. The bright red box of unfinished Bertie Bott’s catches his eye, standing by Draco’s book on the sill. He Accios it and casts a revealing charm to see the list of available flavors.

It is at the end of the list, the only one flavor that can weed out memories of old Kisses and cultivate new ones: mistletoe.

He rattles the box and drops a bean into his mouth. It tastes like a firewood of some kind. He tilts his head and chews harder, only to see the forgotten customer watching them, her eyes half-lidded and leery. She returns Harry's attention by mumbling analogies between bottles and men. "Nice body," she concludes and Harry's face is on fire. He tries to smile but she has dozed off again; she won't remember any of this tomorrow.

A hard, cold something brushes his scalp. Harry looks up. The coat hook has fallen off, tearing a large hole in the wall. A paint job, no, a renovation is in order after the New Years. Harry drums his fingers lightly on Draco's back. His post at the Berks can wait.

Finally, Draco shifts and Harry releases him gently. Eyes bright as stars, Draco leans forward, cups Harry’s face and kisses him again. But then he pushes himself up and away and tucks himself in. Soon he looks impeccable as before, his shirt and sweater in place, his trousers pleated. Their intimacy has left no marks. Without sparing Harry another glance, Draco navigates to the table closest to the stairs and blows out its flame, then heads to the adjacent one and does the same thing. Kissed is closing for the night.

Harry brings himself up from the floor. His bare torso and softened length makes him realize how cold Kissed really is, how exposed it makes him. He Scourgifys himself, his heart falling with his steps as he makes way to the furthest table from Draco. They have done this before, extinguishing the flames from opposite corners until they meet in the middle, after Harry lost track of time and stayed until the shop’s closing hours.

It is just past three. The closing time is still hours away, further than the dawn of Christmas.

Harry blows out another flame. His patrol cloak lies in a heap by a chair and he picks it up, smoothens it out. The oil stains are even more unsightly than the chocolate stains from three years ago. He puts it on and fastens every button, something he hasn’t done since it's been issued to him.

Eventually, only a fire is left burning. Harry and Draco stand, face to face, at the center of the room. “What about her?” Harry asks, nodding at the woman beside them.

Draco picks up her empty bottle from the floor. He stacks the soiled silverware and carries them to the counter. “She’ll sleep here. She's got a set of blanket and pillows in the stock room. I'll let her out tomorrow.” She looks up and squints at his voice. “Sophia …" His expression softens. "This woman is a persona non grata in her household. She's safer here.” He goes behind the counter and rummages in a drawer, his voice lost to the noise. “Maybe her guardian angel will finally come tonight.”

He comes back with a numerical padlock. He lays it down in front of Harry, by the burner between them. “The combo of this lock is 507908.” He blows out the last flame and turns. “I’ve learned to not look back, Harry, so I’m not going to do it now. If you’re leaving, leave the lock here. If not, lock the door behind you.” He reclaims his cup on the counter and treads towards the stairs, the only source of light in Kissed. “You said it’s time for me to live. I will, in time. But let me remind you what a living, breathing Malfoy is like. He takes what he wants, but nothing—no one—proffered out of pity. He has many desires, more beyond his reach, but he owns them and expects his better half to do the same. If you can’t handle that, thank you for your company but don’t come here any more.” He launches his step upward. The head of his silhouette disappears, then the body, the legs. All that is left is his voice, soft and clear like reflections on glass. “But if you can, then I hope I’ll be … followed. Like when we’re children. Your shift patrol was right about cold beds and Christmas.”

Harry picks up the lock with both hands, punches in the code for Veritaserum and hangs it on the door.

Then, he follows.