Chapter Text
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Lock and Key
"It doesn't have to be this way." God, Draco was grasping at straws and Harry knew it. He knew it and he let Draco do it anyway.
"I can't. . .I can't be what you want me to be. I can't be what anyone wants me to be," he finished with a shake of his ink-black hair.
The ache in Draco's chest throbbed and had his breath coming in short, sharp jerks. It hurt, oh, how it hurt, and Harry looked the way Draco felt. This was why Draco kept fighting, this was why Draco kept coming back and swallowing the pride he had lost in a war that had changed everything. Everything about him. Everything about them.
"Don't do this. Please don't do this." Draco paused, staring at the space between where his hand had reached for Harry's and Harry had pulled away. "We've come so far."
Draco watched as the man before him pulled off his glasses with one hand and rubbed at worn, red eyes. His lover licked over torn, wind-chapped lips that Draco couldn't imagine not being able to kiss again. His eyes measured every movement as the man he would do anything for stepped back and rested one hand on the doorknob.
Draco's heart splintered apart, piece by piece, with each of these moves. He was losing him.
If he'd ever had Harry, anyway.
"I'm sorry." Harry's voice broke over the words but Draco didn't hear as Harry opened the door wide, Disapparating half a step over the threshold. Draco didn't feel the biting January winds whip at his face, ice disguised as snow leaving his cheeks raw. He did not hear anything but the sound of his heart, shattering like the fine glass orb Harry had knocked from the little table by the door in his hurry to escape, nor did he feel the shards slice into his skin as he sank to his knees, sobs wracking his body without sound.
Draco didn't feel anything at all.
.oO1Oo.
Night fell and rose and fell again.
Not that Draco noticed; he'd given up on time, on counting anything but the breaths that left his body. They were all he could rely on to reassure him that he was here and Harry was not. Every particle of oxygen mixed with dust motes and whatever else it was that entered his chest was just a reminder of the empty space that had once been a home. His. Theirs.
Now his, alone, once more.
It had once been a black place that had transformed into something light, so filled with the colours of their laughter, their love, their happiness. . . .
Because they had been happy. Of course they had.
Why would Harry have moved into the Manor, filled with nothing but dread for Draco and a lifetime of rules and regulations and "doing what was right" for Draco, if he hadn't wanted to? Draco knew what he was asking when he invited Harry around so soon after the war. Fuck—even Granger refused to visit, but Harry never shied away. Not before, when Lucius was still alive and rotting in Azkaban. Not when they'd returned to school and their seventh year, working together, not apart, in nearly all their classes. Not after, when Narcissa was slowly losing her mind, trapped in the past, when the Malfoy name had meant something other than the black mark it now was. Not even when Draco had set about stripping every floor, ripping up old wood and taking down the facades of the old, replacing all the dark with light butterscotches and creams and warmth.
It had been Harry who had helped. It had been Harry who had stayed and using nothing but the strength of his own hands and a rather large Muggle tool to break down the tight spaces and bring the sunshine into something that had lain dormant under so much cold. It had been Harry who had forced Draco to see there was more to his life than what he had been. It was what he could be that counted.
To Draco, now, all the good, all the positives of moving forward felt like nothing at all.
Why should he bother attempting to pull his life into some sort of order? Why should he bother trying to redeem his name, make himself a "better person", when the only other person he was doing this for was gone? Why should he try when Harry refused to try at all?
It was too hard for the "great Harry Potter" to be honest with himself and the rest of the wizarding world. Far too difficult to admit not only to them but to himself who he truly was. He had pushed Draco to come to a decision. He had pushed and prodded with kind words and subtle looks to find out who it was Draco wanted to be.
Did he want to be the son of a Death Eater who had been forced to accept the Dark Mark on his arm and take part in a war he never truly believed in? Or a man who wanted nothing to do with the Dark Arts, nothing to do with anything that would cause hurt and harm to those he loved? A man whose attitudes had changed with all the hurt he'd seen caused, and been a part of without choice? Draco embraced the world Potter had shown him, a world where forgiveness was key to moving forward. Where being something to someone didn't have to be because of the name you had, or the amount of Galleons in your Gringotts vault.
Harry had shown him friendship, pure and true, like nothing Draco had ever known. It was through days and nights of redecorating the Manor that Draco found—albeit begrudgingly—they had a lot more in common than he had previously thought. They laughed over memories of their youth, stupid things said and hexes made. They argued over broomstick upgrades and Quidditch scores. They were solemn and supportive in the dark times when one or the other needed to explore the things that had changed them the most. Draco could pinpoint the day he'd noticed his feelings had changed, that the friendship between two men who had been through it all had morphed into wanting and needing to be near each other.
Harry had been away for a week; there were Ministry things that needed his notice. But his face on the front of the Daily Prophet was a familiar and soothing reminder that all was well in their world. A new world, Granger had said when she stuck her head through the Floo. A new world needed a new order and a face the people would listen to. Someone strong who they already believed in. Draco's chest ached and his hand needed to rub hard on the area several times a day just to take away the burn, but it never really did. The only time the throb dissipated was when Harry walked through his front door.
Draco had asked him to stay that night.
And Harry had.
There had been nothing to it. Just a "you're always here anyway and there are so many rooms". An added "it would be nice not to have to worry about splinching myself on the way home".
Then that was that.
Harry lived at the Manor; his mail was brought by owl, his friends Floo'd in to check on him, and his things were in the spare room opposite Draco's. They cooked—or attempted to—together at night. They painted and stripped and used hammer and saw from dusk to dawn, always together, always alone, lost in a sea of their own company. Harry never talked about his life outside the Manor, and Draco gave up asking. He didn't want to know about the dates with the Weaselette that were gradually decreasing in frequency. He didn't want to know about Granger already making waves at the Ministry over the treatment of Magical Creatures. He didn't want to know about Weaselby attending Auror training classes and begging Harry to come along.
He never asked, and Harry never offered information, either.
Instead, they fixed the house, decided on colour schemes, and fought over whether they should listen to the Puddlemere game or the Chudley Cannons' that was on at the same time. Draco tried to ignore Harry's hand on his skin for longer than most people would deem necessary. He tried not to feel Harry's green eyes lingering on his body when he'd come downstairs for breakfast in just his pyjama pants.
Draco tried to ignore all these things, but he couldn't disregard the way his own feelings had changed. He found himself licking his lips while blatantly staring at Harry as he licked every morsel of the yoghurt he loved from one shiny heirloom silver spoon. He found himself "just being" out in the corridor when Harry was showering, absorbed in the sound of water cascading over a well-toned body that came from years of school Quidditch and, lately, Harry's occasional friendly games with Weasley at Ron's local club.
Draco knew what that body looked like—for the most part—because Harry had a habit of stripping off his shirt whenever he was working with wood. And there was a lot of wood in the Manor that had required Harry's attention. Not to mention the one Draco sported in his trousers the moment Harry's fingers grasped the hem of whatever shirt he was wearing.
The tension between them grew and grew while they both evaded actually putting their emotions into words. The innocent touches slowly turned more intimate. A misplaced curl brushed from a forehead when they discussed their plans for the next day over dinner. A leg resting against another from ankle to thigh when they ventured out of their usual space and had a few pints at a Muggle pub Harry was fond of.
Then it was the slightly awkward goodbyes and hellos—the air filled with anticipation that one of them might break the stalemate, the unspoken finally brought out from the hidden corners of each other's mind. Eyes looked everywhere but at the man in front of him, twitching fingers and cleared throats. Words that could disrupt everything their friendship had grown into, destroyed by voicing a desire for something more.
It wasn't exactly words that changed everything between them. It was touches and a concerned brow: eyes checking the other's body for injury, near tears over the thought that the other may be hurt. Draco had told Harry to wait for him to knock out the rather large patch of wall between the sitting and living rooms. Harry had been keen to open up the space; the windows were large in both rooms and both had a view of the pond Draco loved. Draco had been sent away with colour swatches in hand to pick up new paint from the Muggle hardware store Harry used for all their decorating needs.
Draco had whined and complained. He hated going out in public—even he could see he was becoming a slight recluse—and it was for that very reason alone that the scruffy sable-haired man had forced him to go in the first place. It was the pleading and the pout of those luscious lips that had changed Draco's mind. It also helped that Harry had said "please" and stroked the blond man's cheek, his work-roughened thumb sliding back and forth across Draco's jaw.
The anecdote Draco had been dying to share with Harry on his return had fallen silent from his lips as the paint cans in his hands clattered to the floor. Draco barely acknowledged the swirl of mint green rupturing over the recently stained cherry-wood flooring, his eyes on nothing but the crumble of stone and wallpaper pieces covering a familiar body. He rushed to brush Harry free of the rubble, only satisfied when his ex-enemy had but the barest layer of dust on his body.
Draco's hands moved over Harry's body without second thought, words of concern falling from his lips like a mantra: "Please be all right," and "Don't leave me," and "Why didn't you wait for me, you bastard?"
It was during one of the last that still lashes fluttered and bright green eyes blinked up at red-rimmed silver. "I wanted to surprise you," he said. "Suprised?" The prat attempted a smile and failed, a wheeze of coughs interrupting the moment, and before Draco knew what he was doing he was kissing every inch of Harry's face.
His brow. That scar. The tip of his nose, the round of his cheek, and then his lips. . . .
It was only when Draco realised Harry was indeed returning the pressure he was placing there that Draco pulled back, his hand cracking on Harry's pale skin and echoing loudly in the room. "You bastard! Do you realise you could have died? All to surprise me? You utter bas—"
But Draco's rant went unnoticed as Harry reached up and pulled his face back down. They were the last words Draco uttered for a long while.