Archive of Our Own ^beta

Potter must have cursed him – that first day on the train, or before that, in Madam Malkin’s. Left him breathless. 

Or was it before that – on the day he was born? The late July heat wave rippled across the English skies, through Draco’s window and into his infant lungs.

Or maybe even before – when they were nothing but ideas in their parents’ heads. When they were stardust together, formless matter. Perhaps then, before he knew what it meant to have lungs, the breathlessness was all Draco knew. So what he feels now is just remembering what they were before. What he’d die to be again. 

Or maybe the curse never started at all, just something that’s always been. An inevitable reaction, a fact of chemicals. 

The chair is hard against his back. The faces of the Wizengamot, the hard masks of judgment, stare at him. Shackles jangle on his wrists and ankles, the ugly skull on his forearm glaring up at him in contempt. An inhale, the door swings open–

Harry Potter, scowling at his outstretched hand. Harry Potter, catching the snitch, face locked in fierce determination. Harry Potter, outsmarting a dragon and throwing an Imperius and marching through gossiping halls with his chin raised. Harry Potter, pointing a wand at his face, slicing his chest open then calling for help. Harry Potter, his face swollen and scared. Harry Potter, rising from the dead and defeating a Dark Lord with Draco’s wand firmly gripped in hand. Harry Potter, walking into the courtroom, green eyes sweeping then anchoring on grey–

And Draco, as always – breathless.

There were two instances, years apart.

Both marked by blond hair between his fingers, by grey eyes gazing up.

Once in the grass on a bright afternoon – sweat on his temples, windburn on his cheeks. A youthful indiscretion, never spoken of again. He couldn’t quite remember how it started – a seeker’s match, a sharp-tongued taunt. From time to time, he still dreamt of how it ended.

Any chance of a rekindling was swept up by the shadows of war. But then the clouds parted, and there he was – scarred and scared and slurring apologies in Harry’s ear, blinking slowly in the dim light of the pub.

There was just something irresistible about him with his knees bruised and ego wounded.

Harry only appeared in his Floo after midnight, on hard nights with upset eyes, delivering kisses with angry lips. 

The brief windows of noise – of whispers and moans and sometimes of shouting – were storms in a drought, glimpses of Heaven from Draco's earned place in Hell.

And when Harry left before morning, took his loud, fleeting love back to his uncursed life, Draco never put up a fight. He took what he could get.

Stealing from Draco was second nature. Harry’d been doing it for years.

He’d stolen snitches and glances. Robbed Draco of glory, time, and dignity. Commandeered his attention, always leaving fingerprints. 

Draco used to fight back, snatching and grabbing, leaving claw marks.

Now Harry stole the bundle of wands from his grasp, and with them, one last look. Draco stared back, face bloody, skin stabbed by chandelier shards, eyes open, hands loose. Why did he make it so easy?

“Well, this is unexpected. The elusive Potter’s at a gala?”

“Should’ve known you’d be here, you ponce.”

“Come for the free champagne, stay for the pro Quidditch players.”

“Such a starfucker.”

“Guilty, I suppose.”

“Who’s the lucky man tonight?”

“Well, you’re the most famous one here, so you tell me.”

You watch the owners of the house drink their tea and read the paper. They discuss some story in the Daily Prophet – drivel, they call it – and they laugh. Nonsensically. The bespectacled one looks close to tears as his husband performs some sort of impression. You wish you understood their references, the scope of the joke.

You lived an entire life, corporeal and on two legs, before you were affixed to their wall – or at least you’ll always feel like that was you, even if certain people insist you are merely a magical recreation, not a fit replacement for the life that passed long ago. It is quite rude, isn’t it? To remind someone of their lack of humanity – as if you want to be this way! A body of smudged oil, your personality a stagnant stereotype of what it once was…

The owners of the house are nice, though. So nice, it almost feels like you are a part of their family rather than a portrait on their wall. They have you in the hall by the kitchen, so you can watch the world out the window.

They are family, in a sense. The blond one is a relative; you remember him from the last house, when you were hung in the back of a shadowed library. He talked to you often, when he was a boy, before all that dreadful screaming started downstairs. 

You always enjoyed speaking to him. He told you about the world outside and what it became. 

So much seemed different, but so much still the same. He recalled a Yule celebration, his days at Hogwarts. Memories flashed at you like lightning – a tiara on your head, spinning under Yuletide lights, the swish of green robes as you skipped down stone hallways with your school friends.

Then a stretch of time passed – it’s hard to say how much; time hardly seems to move at all anymore – and the boy returned to the house with hollowed cheeks and shadowed eyes.

It’s not hard to say what happened to him, though; you’ve witnessed the ebb and flow of history. You know the plight of the unwilling soldier, the way war rips apart their spirit. 

Since he moved you to the new house, though, he’s been quite full of life. Bright smiles in the living room, evenings by the hearth with his lover. A half-blood man – now, that took some getting used to! But you were always quite the liberal one in your family. And the half-blood makes him happy, that much is obvious. 

It’s been so lovely to see your descendants, as well. The children are raucous – they come running down the stairs without an ounce of poise, their little feet like stampeding animals. Your father would have had your head in! Their fathers laugh with them. They give them awfully sweet things for breakfast and never care when they make horrible messes. 

The children like to tell you jokes – scandalous ones even! I think they enjoy watching you sputter and proclaim their words filth. You enjoy making them laugh, so the trade is fair.

Tonight, the family is gathered around the dining table. They are playing some sort of game, shouting over each other. But they yell with love, not malice. That was novel once, but they do it so often. A competitive family – that much has continued through the generations – but so loudly enthralled by one another’s presence. In doing this, they have torn down your understanding of family. Meal by meal, together, they rebuild it.

You breathe in the smell of their supper. A bird flies past the window. The sunset light warms your canvas.

“What do you see?”

The gold frame on the mirror was charred, its crevices filled with soot, but the glass remained clear as a still lake. How it survived the fire was anyone’s guess, but the mirror stood, tall and proud, in the room of ash.

“I…” Draco blinked at the reflection, the wrong image within. “I see us.”

Harry froze, eyes tracing over Draco’s tense stance, the confused longing in his wide-eyes. “Us?”

Draco nodded. Inside the glass, he was small. His round face was pink. Eleven, precocious, hair slicked back like a little politician. The Harry Potter beside him, too, had shrunk. “Do you remember when we met?”

“Yeah, on the train,” Harry said, adding with a wry smirk, “...you were a dick.”

Draco rolled his eyes half-heartedly. “No, before that.”

“Wait,” Harry remembered, “you’re right. We first met in–”

“Madame Malkins…” Draco finished. “Yeah. I was...”

The Draco-and-Harry of eight years prior stood side by side, draped in black fabric. Draco watched himself, his small body and its perfect posture, the eager gleam in his eyes as he peeked incessantly at the boy beside him, gaze snagging on little Potter’s messy hair, broken glasses, and too-bright eyes. Merlin, he’d been infatuated immediately. Before he’d even known who the other boy was. And he’d bragged, he’d lorded, he’d made himself oh, so impressive – anything to win over the beautiful boy in the robes shop.

In the mirror, though, Draco didn’t brag. Instead, he seemed to ask questions, to listen to the responses. He said the right things, put all the words in the right order to unlock a smile from the shy, uncertain boy beside him. He got Harry to laugh, to reach out and shake his hand. 

Draco tore his eyes away from the glass – squeezing them shut against the sudden, pathetic prickling in his eyes. He’d survived a war, and here he was now, crying over a fantasy. And not even a particularly good one. How the mighty fell. 

“Hey, hey,” Harry said softly, a gentle hand hovering over Draco’s shoulder. Unsure. “What’s…what’s wrong?”

“I just wish I’d been…” Draco swallowed, shook his head.

Harry looked to the mirror – his parents now joined by their closest friends, all smiling happily out at him. He stepped toward the mirror and pulled the sheet over the glass.

Draco drives like a psychopath.

Like the road is something to conquer, the car his weapon, the other drivers his enemies in battle.

He road rages—that sharp, posh voice punctuating each consonant when he rolls down the window to call the old man in the Bentley a cunt.

His foot slams on the pedal, both gas and brakes. The man has never heard the word ease. 

In the passenger’s seat, Harry sports white knuckles and squeezed-shut eyes as Draco, yet again, cuts someone off, weaving through traffic, muttering to himself about the state of muggle transit. 

Whenever Harry makes a suggestion, Draco just scoffs. “I know how to drive, Potter.”

“Clearly not,” Harry sometimes bites back. 

They argue on the M25 until their faces are red and the car’s low on petrol.

Harry thanks every god when they’ve finally parked.

Then a day later, Draco grins and says, “Can I drive today?”

And Harry just throws him the keys.

“Do you want to, er, come back to mine?” Potter asked with a shrug, as if he didn’t care one way or the other. But he chewed his lower lip like he cared a bit. His hand hovered by Draco’s hip like he cared a lot.

Draco had fought hard for balance in his life — a good job at the Ministry, regular outings with his coworkers, a small group of friends even. His reputation, while forever scuffed, was otherwise clean; people hardly accosted him in the streets anymore. On top of it all, he’d managed to secure a perfectly tentative truce with the Savior of the Wizarding World. Insults were no longer hurled back and forth; words hardly passed between them at all. When they did cross paths, they exchanged cordial nods then kept moving forward.

Wasn’t that good enough? To know where he stood?

It had been. Until two and a half hours ago when he’d ended up next to Potter at the bar. Until they’d exchanged awkward pleasantries while they waited for their drinks, then neglected to leave once they got them. Until Draco bought Potter a second, then Potter bought him a third. Until Potter started talking with his hands and smiling with that dimple, words uninhibited and Firewhiskey-flirty. Until the pub got louder and their bodies got closer and Potter’s mouth came right up to speak into Draco’s ear. 

Come back to mine? 

The words were mostly breath, warm on his skin; Draco still shivered, intoxicated more by Potter’s attention than the alcohol. He was dizzy with it, completely off-kilter. The tightrope beneath him wobbled, and Draco knew it was a long way down, a terrifying drop and an inevitable, painful crash at the bottom.

Even so…

Potter raised a brow. The hand on Draco’s hip tightened, as if Potter needed to balance himself, fingers twitching toward the skin above Draco's belt. Draco nodded and let himself fall.