blamebrampton

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You had a strange idea that the next morning would be a gold-tinged idyll with everything perfect and the world’s problems wholly solvable. In fact, you are sticky and have strained at least two muscles and at some point you seem to have chewed on his shoulder, if the bruising is any guide.

But the sun is up, and you can see him, and he is so much more beautiful than in your imagination. The lines you saw as slight are stronger than you’d thought, with lean muscle and pliant skin. And he is smiling. He’s holding your arm across his chest and smiling in his sleep.

You know that now would be a bad moment to shout your defiance of the world’s ills. So you do it very, very quietly, on the inside.

“Morning.” When Draco opens his eyes, there is another set looking down into them.

“Morning,” he smiles, squinting upwards. “I long suspected.”

“What?”

“Your hair does look like that all the time.”

Harry pinches him at the same time as kissing him. “It’s your fault,” he tells him.

Draco laughs. “Today, yes, but I am not taking responsibility for the previous eighteen years.”

“It’s seven. What time do you start today?” Harry is lazily tracing the path of Draco’s collarbones.

“Ten-thirty, but I need to be at the library by nine, so Slughorn doesn’t crucify me in Potions. And you need to go to work.”

“Ten minutes by floo, five minutes to get dressed. Plenty of time,” Harry assures him.

Draco can’t help laughing again. “I was so right to mock your personal grooming. You need to shower, you need clean clothes. You need a hot beverage and some breakfast. You certainly can’t go to work smelling like that.”

Harry kisses his chest. “What do I smell like?”

“Me,” Draco whispers (please don’t let that be blushing, he prays to any sundry deities).

Harry kisses his lips. “Good.”

“Shower,” Draco whispers.

With a grin of purest evil, Harry leaps from Draco’s bed, dragging Draco with him. “Cleanliness is the only sensible choice for both of us,” he declares. “You’d cause a scandal if you showed up at school like that.”

Draco realises, right at this moment, that he will have to break Harry ever so slightly.

“Is this the bathroom? No, wardrobe. How many robes do you need, Draco? This one? Brilliant. How hot do you like your water?”

“Middling, you madman. Let me go for a moment, need the loo.”

Harry slaps Draco’s bum as he turns around, Draco skips out of reach and locks the toilet door behind him. He’s not unaware of the ridiculousness of planning a whole future in the space of a minute’s pissing time. But then, he has a future because of half a second of Harry’s planning.

But Harry is also the Saviour and the Boy Who Lived Twice, and will, by the weekend, doubtless be Britain’s Most Eligible Bachelor – Fresh on the Market. And Draco Malfoy is not Ginny Weasley.

Draco is pleased with the simplicity of his plan; it reflects well on the sixty seconds of its creation. He’s even more impressed with his timing. He keeps it all to himself, until he has Harry covered in soap and come and panting, dropping in his arms.

“This is between us,” Draco whispers in his ear. “This is me and you, not for the world. I am not having any jumped-up journalist condemn you for sleeping with the son of Lucius Malfoy.”

Harry looks up at him with dawning worry. “But I want you beside me,” he says. “I want people to know.”

“They already know we’re friends,” Draco is adamant. “This is just for us. Promise me. I’m not going to be the reason behind any front-page scandals for you.”

The look of pain in Harry’s eyes almost makes Draco relent. He settles for clarification. “I’ll still be here for you. But just for you.”

Harry looks as though he wants to speak, but he settles for kissing instead. Draco takes that as a win.

.......................................

You wonder for a day if he’s right. Dawlish asks after him, and while you know it’s because your boss is not a complete idiot and is, at heart, compassionate, you also know that the nod of approval at your reassurance would be coloured with layers of meaning if the truth were known.

And in a way, you like it. He visits you on Wednesday nights now, because Thursday is a late start. You spend most weekends north, the rest at home with him. You’ve even convinced him to walk out into Muggle London with you. Once.

But you want to touch him and turn to him and talk about him, and the only place he has let you hold his hand in public is the Tate, because no one else is sappy enough to care about Pre-Raphaelites.

So you come up with your own plan.

Draco starts noticing the headlines in late November. At first they are small articles in the social pages. Harry Potter, surprise guest at party, later seen escorting eligible witch to Ministry function. The standard amicable break-up stories are run through November, and there is a small paragraph on December third, noting that Ginny Weasley and Neville Longbottom are working on their post-War issues together.

Draco doesn’t mind, he expects Harry to have a social life, and he has made it very clear what his own role will be in the public side of that. Harry has obeyed Draco’s edict. If anyone suspects the full story, it may be his landlady, but she is very keen on Galleons and he has plenty of those. Hogsmeade weekends continue much as they ever do, save for the fact that Neville indeed seems to be guiding young Miss Weasley through a number of personal issues, most involving giggling.

So when Draco steals Harry’s December 10 Prophet before Floo-ing back to Hogsmeade, he suspects nothing. He waits until he’s home before reading it, while tying up his shoes. Ten minutes later his laces are still undone and he is contemplating Floo-ing back.

“Boy Who Lived to Party” is the banner headline, followed by “Special investigation by Rita Skeeter” and “Hero Harry all hands in our exclusive photo essay, lock up your daughters – and sons!”

There follows no less than eight pages of shots of Harry at parties, in pubs, at clubs, and apparently at a Muggle rave in a field somewhere. In some of them he is just nursing a drink, in most he is dancing – enthusiastically, if not necessarily well – and in a disturbing number he has his lips locked with a witch or wizard and his hands definitely doing enough to garner editorial attention.

Draco takes it all quite well until he reaches page seven. For pages one to six he has several theories. Harry is laying a false trail. He is just being a young person. He is delivering a very round-about commentary on what he thinks of Draco’s non-disclosure policy.

On page seven he sees Harry snogging a fair-haired boy, who turns about to reveal his face. “Justin?!” Draco shouts, throwing the paper across the room.

He has his shoes done up, his notes in his bag and a good head of steam by the time he retrieves the paper and rips page seven from it. He uses his broadest quill to draw a circle around it and a giant question mark through it. He slips it into an envelope with Harry’s details on the front and sends it with his fastest owl.

Hermione is sitting with a book at the front entrance to the castle as Draco walks into Hogwarts. She smiles as he draws near. “You’ve read the news, I take it,” she says.

He sits down beside her. “I don’t know what’s more disturbing,” he says lightly. “That we harbour a serial groper in our midst or that he truly believes he looks good in that blue shirt.”

“Ron says that he’s been led astray by Justin.” Hermione’s tone indicates she thinks this unlikely.

“I should never have mentioned the yacht …” Draco plays along with a rueful grin.

“Ron also says he’s quite happy to deliver a smack to the head if you’d like.”

Draco shrugs his shoulders. “Nothing to do with me, Harry’s his own person.”

“Of course he is,” Hermione agrees equably.

“I used to call you a know-it-all,” Draco tells her after a minute.

She pats his arm. “I know you did. I used to call you much worse.”

She is there again at lunch, and in the library after Arithmancy, when Harry’s Owl appears. Draco lets her read it. She raises an eyebrow. “I can create my own front-page scandals?” she asks, reading from the parchment.

Draco sighs. “I should never have told him about my long-running fascination with Aberforth and his goats.”

Hermione pats his arm for the second time that day, and reminds him that Ron’s smacking offer still stands.

The Hog’s-Head-casual-and-not-at-all-militant collective is torn between conversation topics two days later. On the one hand there is the general need to give Harry affectionate grief. On the other, Luna is expounding her theory that the Death Eater attacks have been connected to auspicious dates and is predicting another one.

“It makes sense,” she says. “Draco’s father was attacked on the equinox, Rookwood was killed on Guy Fawkes, and now there is the Solstice, Christmas and New Year approaching. At least Hanukkah was last Monday.”

“So we’re striking Jewish wizards off the list of suspects, but Ramadan starts December nineteenth this year, so we’ll keep the Muslims in,” Hermione says, mostly jokingly. It is hard to imagine the small, devout communities ever acting in ways that are against the law.

But Theo and Draco listen to Luna in all seriousness. Draco knows that the guards around his father have been screened, but no one knows where Theo’s father is.

Justin arrives late and moves quickly to Theo’s side. Luna stops her theorising to give him a guarded look. “So, you two are back together then?” she asks.

“We never broke up,” Justin replies blithely. “I just happened to be at the same wedding as Harry two weeks ago, and we’d both had a bit too much to drink by the end of the evening. Perfectly harmless, just looked a bit dodgy from the photo.”

“Right.” Luna nods.

Theo exchanges a look with Draco, then allows himself to be led away by Justin.

“That boy is a sore disappointment,” Luna observes.

“Hasn’t let you see the yacht?” Draco asks.

She gives him a quick flash of a smile. “Why is it that every time you say yacht, I hear euphemism?”

Draco is still laughing when Neville and Ginny join them. “Hello, you two,” Neville says by way of greeting.

“Hello you two, too,” Luna replies. “How are you both?”

“Great,” Neville grins.

Ginny smiles up at him. “Great,” she agrees.

“And what do you think about the European Treaty discussions?” Luna asks Neville, who answers in detail.

Draco is looking at Ginny closely. “Really?” he asks quietly, knowing it’s only been six weeks.

She nods. She leans nearer to him and speaks quietly. “The thing is, I don’t fight battles that I have no hope of winning. So I quit now. And the funny thing is, Harry was right. Who he is and who I had in my head didn’t have that much in common.”

“Who did you have in your head, Ginny?” Draco is curious.

“Prince on a white horse with a shiny sword,” she grins. “Which is why a conflicted Seeker with more than a few abandonment issues was never really going to work out.” And she glances to her left, then looks back at Draco with an even broader grin. “Neville’s fitting the bill pretty well, so far, though.”

Something behind Draco catches her eye, and he turns to see Katie Bell holding a piece of mistletoe over Harry’s head and kissing him. She finishes and, laughing, hands the plant to Justin, who takes her place.

“Neville is also not completely bonkers,” Ginny tells Draco seriously. “I am starting to see the attractiveness of this quality in a man.”

Theo Nott appears at their side. “Can I borrow him?” he asks Ginny, indicating Draco.

“By all means,” she replies graciously.

“I need a favour,” Theo tells him.

“Sure …” Draco says, suspiciously. And then he is being dragged over to the far corner of the counter and pushed up against the wall and Theo’s thumbs are in the belt loops of his trousers and Draco is making a noise that sounds something like a small frog faced with the decimation of the Amazonian rainforest.

After three or four sweaty moments, Theo stands back and pushes back his hair. “Thanks,” he says, and spins on his heel, off to collect Justin who is frankly staring at them.

Harry is looking at him, too. Draco shrugs in bewilderment, and Harry has that poised for action look that Draco has learned to dread. Before he does anything, though, Hermione throws a packet of crisps at the back of his head and follows them up with an arm around his waist and dragging him into her conversation with Ron.

When everyone else is gone that night, back to school or back to London, Harry quietly asks Draco why he kissed Theodore Nott.

“Didn’t,” Draco replies. “He kissed me. Apparently you’ve started quite the trend for wayward snogging.”

He is happy to see the shadow of guilt that moves across Harry’s face.

“It keeps the press away from you,” Harry tells him. “ I thought you’d appreciate it.”

Draco purses his lips. But that night he leaves a trail of teeth and nail and fingerprint marks that brand Harry’s body from neck to hip.

...................................

You wish he’d talk about it. But he pretends that he isn’t reading the papers at the moment, despite the fact that the whole Wizarding press is now stalking your every public appearance. You do convince him to be outside with you, though. In the first week of his holidays you manage a concerto and a lecture on the History of Transfiguration Spells.

And people see you bid him goodbye decorously in public places.

And no one sees you late at night when his legs are clenched around your waist and you are sure that this is the single most vital thing that you will ever do.

You just hope, desperately, that you are not about to cock it all up irredeemably.

Draco is an earlier riser than Harry, so he is the one who is organising breakfast on Midwinter’s morning when the DA Galleon Neville gave him months ago starts steaming gently on the cold windowsill. Draco deserts the house-elves and their toast and walks quickly over to read it. The serial numbers are gone. “Nott home attack” has taken their place.

He grabs Harry’s jeans and shirt as he runs into his bedroom. “Wake up. Theo’s house, they’re under attack, we need you now!” he shouts.

Harry catches the thrown clothing in mid-air and has already snatched up his wand and glasses from the bedside table before he suddenly looks up, hearing what Draco has gone on to say. “No, wait!” he yells, but Draco has already Disapparated.

Theo’s house is on fire. Draco recognises the burning section as the new kitchen, which Theo’s late mother had been so thrilled to add to the old farm house. “Aguamenti,” he casts and attempts to at least slow the flames’ progression. He sees figures moving at the back of the building – they are familiar, Neville, Ginny, Katie and Hermione are running through the early morning light.

He abandons his efforts and runs towards them. “How many?” he asks.

“Just arrived,” Neville pants. “Couldn’t see anyone from the back. What about from the front?”

Draco shakes his head.

“Where’s Harry?” Hermione hisses.

“He’s coming,” Draco replies.

Neville has already begun to run around the house. Wands drawn, the others follow him. As they reach the front, they hear Theo shouting inside. Neville blows the door away from its hinges just as Harry arrives. The two of them lead the charge inside, with Draco and Hermione close on their heels and Ginny and Katie trying to follow and direct the new arrivals they can hear outside at the same time.

The inside of the house is a disaster. The furniture is pulled away from walls and parts of the ceiling have been torn down. They hear Theo yell “At the back!” and run towards his voice.

There are five strange figures in the rear hallway. One of them is holding Theo’s aunt and younger sister, another has just pushed Theo to the ground. The four young people send Stunners directly to those two, and are grimly satisfied when their victims are thrown back. The three remaining figures raise their wands, one is determined to fight, and Harry leaps in front of Draco and Hermione, but the other two assailants have broader plans. They grab handfuls of their comrade’s garb and Disapparate before another spell can be spoken.

Hermione rushes forward to check on Theo’s aunt and sister, Draco picks Theo up from the ground. “Good thinking,” he tells him. “Are you hurt?”

“Few bruises,” Theo shrugs. “Who made it?”

“I only saw the first six, but I could hear more pooling in after us. Everyone who’s awake, I think.”

Theo smiles, and turns to join Hermione, reassuring young Josephine, thanking his Aunt Lettice for her bravery.

“They got away,” Harry mutters beside Draco.

“But we know more about them now,” Draco tells him. “They know the Notts. That kitchen was his mum’s pride and joy. It’s the last thing she made before she died. You’d have to know them pretty well to know where to start like that.”

Theo is back. “They were looking for my dad,” he says. “We should call the Aurors.”

“Already done,” Harry admits.

They are all outside watching the latecomers put out the last of the fire (Draco is surprised at how relieved he is to see it is mostly cosmetic damage) when Robards himself shows up, with Dawlish and Williamson leading his support.

“What’s going on?” Robards demands. “We were told you were under attack.”

“They were, sir,” Harry answers. “We arrived just in time to stop the attack and put the fire out, but the culprits escaped.”

“You arrived, Potter? Why are there thirty children here at the scene of my crime?”

And Draco is genuinely interested to hear Harry’s explanation. But Dawlish speaks, instead.

“Looks obvious, sir. This lot were all friends at Hogwarts, half of them are still in their nightclothes. I’d say that it’s a house party. Did they put you all up in the stables, or is that just Potter’s hair?”

Draco’s amazement abates not a drop when Theo’s grim and forbidding aunt declares, “Of course I made them sleep in the stables. How would decent people have a moment’s rest with all these giggling fools in the house?”

Robards misses the slight nod that Harry and Dawlish exchange. Draco doesn’t.

Theo is chuckling quietly behind Draco. “She can scare the bejesus out of out of anyone,” he says, as Robards begins to apologise for the time it took his Aurors to arrive. “You all came,” he adds, smiling. “I thought Potter’s plan was mad, but, you all came.”

And then Justin comes barrelling from around the back of the house where he has been on fire duty and grabs Theo, and Draco, Ron and Luna step away from the two boys since it’s clear that their personal moment will take a little time.

Michael Corner makes a valiant late bid for the collective acting award for 1998. “Do you need us here, sir?” he asks Robards. “Only since the party is clearly over now, we may as well all trek back to my place for breakfast, before we need to be back with our parents.”

“Did any of you see anything that would identify the culprits?” Robards asks. There is general head shaking. “Just the family, then. And well done, the lot of you.”

“Excellent,” Draco speaks loudly, having spotted the one small flaw in the plan. “We’ll just head back to the stables at the right rear of the house to pick up our belongings, then, before we Apparate off.”

They have walked out of earshot before Luna starts the giggling. “No, really, Draco, it’s just my nerves,” she insists. “That was very helpful and I’m sure that it fooled them completely.”

“Shut up, Luna,” Draco says without malice.

“I can’t believe we missed them,” Neville grumbles.

“We’re getting closer,” Harry points out. “Luna’s date connection was right and Draco thinks that there are personal elements to this that mean they must know the Notts.”

“Are you going to be in trouble at work?” Ron asks Harry, and all the others quieten down to hear his reply.

He shrugs. “Don’t know. At some point Kingsley is going to work out what is going on.”

“And what will you tell him?” asks Hermione.

“That this isn’t a threat to him. We’re not a militia.”

“Except we are,” Lee Jordan’s voice carries to all of them. “When it comes down to it, we really are.”

“No,” Harry smiles at them. “You’re thinking about this from the wrong direction. What we are is the future of the Ministry. Most of us will be working for them within two years. We are the wave of change for the good that will clear out all the crap that has been allowed to fester there.”

“So, just like a revolution, but with business dress and legislation?” Lee grins.

“You might say that,” Harry allows. “I couldn’t possibly comment.”

“What about whoever’s behind these attacks?” Neville is still angry he didn’t think fast enough to capture at least one offender.

“We’ll find them,” Harry vows, and although no one is sure exactly which ‘we’ he is referring to, they trust that he is right.

And Michael Corner’s house-elves provide a truly spectacular breakfast.

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You are nervous now. The week between Christmas and New Year’s seemed like a good time for your plan to conclude. But as the final days of the year draw in, you consider that maybe he was right and you are wrong and you should just have spent your energies on finding him an astonishingly rare gift.

And when you wake up and he is not beside you and there is no smell of breakfast cooking, you know that today is the day that The Quibbler has run the story. You walk out slowly.

“Draco?” Harry’s voice is much quieter than usual, Draco notes.

He glances up from the tabloid he is reading and beckons him over. “Sit down. Food’s late, I told the elves to take an hour for themselves so I could read uninterrupted.”

“Draco …”

“No, no, it’s all fine, I’m just astonished that you could convince Ginny to give a quote for it. And is the ‘close personal friend’ Ron or Hermione?”

“Draco!”

But Draco can’t look up yet, because he is too close to laughter, and he is not letting Harry off that easily. “I like this bit,” he says. “‘If he’d just find a nice boy or girl to settle down with,’ says Molly Weasley. But I think that my favourite is where you have – and I think it has to be Hermione, actually – say: ‘There’s only one positive influence in his life at the moment, but he’s too concerned with the PR issues to take up Harry’s offer of a relationship.’ And then the writer, and it’s definitely Luna, speculates that Harry’s very close friend is talking about Draco Malfoy, 18, son of Narcissa Malfoy, philanthropist. Mother will be weeping with laughter at that part.”

Harry kneels in front of him and wraps his arms around his waist. “Draco …” he whispers.

Draco puts the paper down and runs his hands through Harry’s hair. “I’m not angry,” he confesses.

Harry’s smile as he looks up is so broad that Draco’s cheeks ache in sympathy.

“In fact, I’m a little bit impressed at the levels of manipulation you’ve gone to here. Especially since,” he picks up the Prophet, “the other papers have run excerpts today. That’s a lot of organisation for you.”

“Let’s not forget weeks of relentless partying,” Harry adds.

Draco swats him on the head with the paper. “You will receive no sympathy for your strumpetdom.”

“So will you do it?” Harry asks.

“Do what?”

“Get me off the front pages, provide guidance from my wayward ways. Be the support that I need to stop myself going wholly off the rails,” Harry quotes the article. “Save me from myself.”

“Saving each other is practically our hobby,” Draco points out. “But if you want to make it into my job, I suppose we could always make sex our hobby instead.”

“That would be fine,” Harry agrees.

“No Church of Saint Harry for you!” Draco declares loudly. “You have ruined all of my marketing plans. The only people I could convert to Potterism now would be rampant hedonists, and I don’t fancy the sort of chapel they’d want built.”

“What are you on about?”

“Rubbish, Harry,” Draco leans down and kisses him. “I’m talking rubbish. I seem to do that a lot.”

Harry stands, lifting Draco out of his chair and onto the edge of the table. “No, you’re very clever,” he tells him between kisses along his jaw.

Draco stops him for a moment. “It’s not about the papers, you know. It’s not about who knows or what they think of me. It’s just about you. And as long as this is how you think of me, that’s enough.”

Harry tucks Draco’s hair behind his ears and smiles at him. He shakes his head. “Could never work. Any plan that relies on me being subtle? Doomed to failure.”

And with that he reaches behind Draco and pushes the papers off the table and the pair of them onto it, and Draco is forced to agree.