[Advent fics]: Snowmelt, H/D, PG-13
Title: Snowmelt
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Warnings: A bit of angst, a lot of fluff
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4300
Summary: Harry finds Draco being pursued by maddened icicle fairies, and takes him home for Christmas.
Author’s Notes: Another Advent fic, written for sassy_cissa, who asked for Draco being down and out and having Harry as a Christmas wish.
Snowmelt
Draco swatted at something furiously buzzing by his ear, and lost his footing in the slick snow. He promptly fell over and rolled down the slight slope beneath his feet, and heard the high-pitched, chiming laughter that meant the icicle fairies thought he was hilarious.
Why did I ever try to steal enchanted ice from them? Draco thought miserably, as he found his footing and ran on through the snowy forest, the loudest sounds his own panting and the snow creaking beneath his feet. The fairies didn’t make that much sound as they whirred behind him, brilliant white and possessed of a sting that could hurt like a needle of ice going through your skin.
But Draco knew the reason. He was living alone in a tiny flat after losing Malfoy Manor, both his parents in prison (his father for his crimes during the war and his mother for trying to break his father out of Azkaban). He didn’t have gifts. He didn’t have friends who would acknowledge him. He had wanted something small and magical, and he’d remembered his father telling him the story of enchanted ice, stolen from icicle fairies when Lucius was a child, that didn’t melt but sat there glittering in multiple colors like the Muggles’ Christmas lights.
Draco wanted something like that. He wanted anything that would make his life forgettable for the moment, something small and beautiful. And stealing from icicle fairies had sounded like a lark. How tough they could they be, anyway?
Another one stung his cheek, and Draco shrieked as he felt the skin there chilling with frostbite. He didn’t dare turn around and try to fight them, though. The Ministry had restricted the spells he could cast, and if he used violent ones, he could end up going to Azkaban. And for some reason, this forest was under a thick cloak of anti-Apparition spells. Draco couldn’t really flee until he reached the point he’d come in at.
Something moved off to the left. Draco whirled around, his heart pounding as he thought about bears and dragons, and once again stumbled. This time, he went down so heavily into the snow that he heard a popping in his foot, and grimaced. He had sprained his ankle.
The icicle fairies cheered in shrill, painful little voices, and then two of them dived at him. Draco drew his wand, prepared to go to prison rather than die here.
“What is going on?” said an irritated human voice, and then someone else drew their own wand and made the darkness sparkle with light from the end of it. The fairies abruptly stopped their dive and flew around in confusion.
Draco rolled his head over to the left and saw a wizard there. Well, of course it’s a wizard, he told himself a second later, sighing at his own stupidity. No Muggle would be out in the forest with a lighted wand, and talking to icicle fairies as if they were normal.
“But he didn’t actually manage to take anything, did he? And he was trying to leave. So leave him al-” The wizard turned his head, and Draco found himself looking into a pair of eyes that had a green color he was only going to see once in his life. The wizard’s throat seemed to have dried up abruptly.
Draco’s throat had done the same thing. He sprawled there in the snow blinking silently at Potter, and wondering what the fuck he was supposed to do next.
“Malfoy?” Harry Potter breathed. Then he shook his head and turned back to the icicle fairies. “He didn’t take anything. Leave him alone.”
One of the fairies uttered a vicious squeal that Draco couldn’t understand. Potter lifted his wand, and the light glowing from the end of it changed to a slightly warmer color. The fairies promptly fled. Potter nodded and turned around to look at Draco.
Draco felt keenly how absurd it was, him lying sprawled in the snow with a twisted ankle in front of the great Harry Potter, who had gone to live in some isolated house no one knew where. Obviously it was here. And to think that Draco had thought the anti-Apparition spells were probably put there by some do-gooder in the Ministry to protect the fairy colony.
They blinked at each other for almost a minute before Potter shook his head, sighed, conjured a stretcher, and said, “Come on, Malfoy. Let’s get you inside.”
*
Potter’s house was a wonder.
Draco lay still and looked around. Potter seemed to be occupied in brewing the potion that he said would restore Draco’s injured ankle, and Draco had no wish to call attention to himself.
It looked as though Potter had Transfigured a tree into his house. The walls and the fireplace, the floors and the ceiling and the door, were wooden, but Draco couldn’t find a break in them, a place where planks joined together or there were chinks between felled logs. Instead, everything was a smooth, glowing expanse of brown, with knots and black markings and deep whorls of amber here and there. The fire in the hearth also seemed to burn on pure magic, without consuming wood. Draco held out a hand to the warmth in silence. This was like what he had wanted, a small magical thing that could enchant him, but far better than stolen ice.
The rooms were small and crooked, the ceilings lurching from low to high, but everything Potter needed seemed to be there: herbs strung from the ceiling, cauldrons clanging on vines that could be raised or lowered, robes hanging much the same way, and a complicated wooden case off to the side that Draco had puzzled over until he realized it was a bed folded up against the wall, a bed that could be let down and would probably cover most of the floor in the main room when it was. Off to the side was a kitchen that seemed to consist mainly of cabinets and cupboards for food, and a few stump-like tables where Potter could work; he obviously did most of his cooking on the fire. Draco couldn’t see a bathroom, but he reckoned Potter would have one.
He turned back to the fire in time to meet Potter’s thoughtful eyes resting on him as he stirred his potion.
“I don’t think you had any idea I was here,” Potter said abruptly. “Since I can’t imagine you coming near me willingly. Why did you come here?”
Now Draco would have to speak, and ruin the silence that had done so well for him so far. He was gloomily certain Potter would throw him out before the potion was done, if his usual luck followed.
“I didn’t know you were here,” he admitted. “I don’t think anyone knows.” He paused, but Potter didn’t seem inclined to throw him out, instead taking the stirring rod out of the potion and throwing a handful of what looked like crocus petals into it. “I did want to take some ice from the fairies.”
“Why?” Potter stared at him.
“Because,” said Draco, and he closed his eyes, because he couldn’t bear it if he cried in front of Harry Potter, “my father is in prison, and my mother tried to break him out and now she’s in prison for the next six months, and I barely have any money because no one will hire me because I can hardly do magic, and I can’t cast any spells that have violent intent-I barely got permission to Apparate, and that was only because they wouldn’t give me permission to have a Floo connection-and I’m lonely, and I wanted something pretty to look at. Something that would make me feel less alone for Christmas.”
For long moments, Potter was silent except for the rhythmic motions of his stirring. Then he murmured, “I didn’t know your mother was in prison, too. That’s hard.”
“How should you know?” Draco asked tiredly, and pressed his arm over his eyes. He was lying on a bed made of goosedown that Potter had conjured for him, and it hurt him, how much more comfortable it was than his own Transfigurations. “You probably don’t read the Daily Prophet.”
“I owe her a life-debt,” Potter said, his voice still as gentle as the crackling of the fire. “I’m surprised she didn’t call on me for it.”
“No one knew where you were.”
Silence, and Draco almost fell asleep, warm for the first time in too long a time. Professor Snape had always said a Slytherin should be self-reliant, able to defend himself no matter what, but Draco knew he needed company. It was stupid, but that was the way he was. He jumped and opened his eyes hastily when Potter touched his forehead.
“The potion’s ready,” said Potter, looking at him with calm, compassionate eyes.
Draco sighed and sat up. He knew he would have to leave the minute his ankle was cured. He reached for the flask, but Potter held it out of his reach. Draco looked at him, confused. Potter hadn’t seemed like someone who wanted him to suffer.
Their eyes met for long minutes before Potter abruptly sighed and bowed his head. “Listen, Malfoy,” he murmured. “I get lonely sometimes, too, and it isn’t-it isn’t right for you to be so alone. Why don’t you stay with me? Just for this Christmas? Merlin knows that I had enough Christmases where I felt left out. I don’t want you to feel the same way.”
Draco looked quickly at the mattress. He swallowed. “I don’t want to impose on you.”
“If I was worried about that, I wouldn’t have made a potion that would cure the ankle, so I could keep you off your feet and out of the way for a while,” Potter said dryly. Draco looked up. Yes, he was laughing, and it wasn’t at Draco. “There are some things you can help me with. And who knows.” He sat back and studied Draco thoughtfully. “Maybe something I can do for you.” He extended the potion flask.
Draco swallowed it, and watched as the swelling in his ankle visibly shrank, and said when he thought his voice wouldn’t shake, “I’d like that.”
*
Harry Potter’s life was so simple that Draco was surprised he didn’t go mad.
Well, some of the things he did weren’t simple. For example, he had to cast all sorts of spells to hold back the winter from his garden. He had explained to Draco that he sometimes did go on collecting expeditions in the forest, which was where he had been when he found Draco and the fairies, but there were many plants he needed that wouldn’t grow wild.
Draco was still allowed to cast Warming Charms and other small spells like that. He could also lift stones into the fascinating protective configurations that Potter built around his flowerbeds and herb beds, half-rune and half-ward. The rocks themselves were the anchors, and Draco learned more about Ancient Runes, in a strange way, than he had since Hogwarts, watching Potter arrange and re-arrange those stones. Volunteering to help move them into the precise patterns Potter needed was the least he could do in return for the care and the knowledge.
And the company. Potter seemed to have got used to not speaking, living by himself in the forest and mostly associating with wild creatures like the fairies, but he spoke in a soft, constant undertone to Draco. Draco had at first wanted to retort he wasn’t a wounded animal, but then had reconsidered the ways in which he was.
Potter cooked and brewed potions and let Draco take the bed that folded down from the wall, while he slept himself on the goosefeather mattress he had conjured for Draco that first day. Draco had thought about objecting, but he wasn’t that much of a gentleman.
He was being taken care of again. He had thought that day would never return.
He and Potter lay side-by-side-the bed and mattress were on a level-on a night when Draco had been there almost a week. It would be Christmas in two days. Potter had curled up in the middle of his feathers and his thick, fuzzy green robe, which he never seemed to take off. He was already half-asleep.
“Are you going to spend Christmas with the Weasleys?” Draco whispered. He didn’t want to ask and disrupt this little idyll of theirs, but he felt he had to know. He would have to prepare himself to be left alone again, if so.
Potter blinked his eyes lazily open. “No,” he responded. “I love them, and I do spend an afternoon with them here and there, but they can’t be quiet to save their lives, especially since Bill and Fleur have kids now. And I don’t want to tell them constantly to be quiet, or have my nerves rattled. So I spend a few hours with each individual part of the family.” He smiled, an expression that still seemed to come easily to him, out of the great silence that followed him around. “I mostly spend time with Bill and Fleur after their kids are in bed.”
“I thought you’d want that,” Draco murmured, honestly confused. “The loud kids and the big family.”
“I got enough noise in the war,” was all Potter would say, and he shut his eyes. “Good night, Draco.”
It was the first time he had used Draco’s name. Draco caught his breath in response, and had to swallow several times before he worked enough wetness into his throat to reply.
“Good night, Harry.”
Harry was lying with his mouth and his hair almost smothered in feathers, but Draco didn’t think he was wrong when he saw that mouth move into a smile.
*
Draco had assumed that Harry wasn’t going to celebrate the holidays at all, since he wouldn’t be celebrating them with the Weasleys. So when he woke up on the morning of Christmas to find Harry threading green vines around the walls with his wand, he stared and blinked.
Harry turned and smiled at him. “I don’t have any mistletoe or holly growing around here, but I did think that some greenery might cheer it up in here.”
Draco wondered how to tell him that he thought Harry’s house was perfect, growing and alive as it was. Draco had discovered that the rooms would alter their proportions, or seemed to, and that a few of the pillows and cushions were packed with dead leaves that Harry had harvested from the house and magically preserved. This was right in the middle of magic.
But he could still cast charms that would trail the vines around the grain in the wood and up and down around the fireplace, the way Harry wanted done, and he joined in with a will. By the time Harry broke off to prepare breakfast-a much heartier meal than he usually cooked-Draco was sitting in the middle of what felt like a warm and friendly forest.
As Harry set an omelet in front of him and small slices of meat that Draco thought were venison instead of pork or any other domestic meat, Draco finally asked. “How did you become this master of Transfiguration and Potions you are now? I know you didn’t like Potions in school.” He had never paid much attention to how Harry did in Transfiguration.
Harry paused and squinted at him. “It’s a pretty boring story. Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“Yes.” Draco tried to convey in that one word how eager he was to hear more of Harry, how nothing Harry did could ever be boring to him, without saying it aloud. He had had enough of humiliating confessions after he had told his story to Harry.
Harry nodded and turned away to gather another plate and lay it on the low wooden table that Draco thought was a root coaxed to grow up through the center of the tree. “Well, after the war I was tired of noise. I told you that. Tired of fame. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the dead and all the parts that I’d played in failing them, or just didn’t play at all. I found it hard to sleep at night.”
Draco nodded and shuddered a little, knowing what that was like. At least now, three years after the war, it wasn’t as intense as it had been right after, but it could still be bad.
“I needed to fill my head with something else it could obsess about,” said Harry, and took a bite of his own hard-boiled egg. “I started studying Transfiguration, because-I don’t know. I wanted to feel closer to Dumbledore, I suppose, since that was his subject.”
A shadow moved across Harry’s face at the mention of Dumbledore. Draco ate in silence, watching him.
“And I discovered that I had a talent for what’s called continuous Transfiguration,” said Harry, and gestured around them at the smooth wooden walls. “Not the little spells we did in class, where we would enchant all sorts of disconnected objects into other disconnected objects, but enchanting a carpet of leaves into an actual carpet. Or convincing a stone to shape itself into a bench for me to sit on.”
“Or a tree into a house,” Draco murmured.
“Exactly.” Harry smiled at him and went on eating.
“And the Potions?” Draco supposed he could have guessed, could have left Harry to finish his breakfast in peace, but he wanted to know everything Harry would tell him. It felt like he was parched ground absorbing the rain.
Harry shrugged. “They started out as an attempt to brew Dreamless Sleep when I’d got so good at Transfiguration that the books didn’t bore me into falling asleep anymore. And I discovered I liked brewing potions, too, if I could do the same one over and over again, not have to make one and then move on like we did in class. So I did Dreamless Sleep until I got good at it, and then the Draught of Peace, and then all of these other things.”
“You’re very good,” Draco said honestly. Not only did Harry’s potions work the way they were supposed to, not only were his brewing motions smooth, but his draughts tasted sweeter than most Draco were accustomed to.
To his astonishment, Harry flushed, mumbled, “Thanks,” and buried himself in his meal.
Draco blinked. Then he reckoned that, except for Harry’s friends, Harry had probably had no one to praise him for these accomplishments he had learned outside of school.
Maybe that was a gift he could give Harry. He had racked his brains trying to decide how he would pay Harry back, or at least get him a Christmas gift, with no money. This was a different way.
*
Harry had been giving him secretive looks throughout the day, and by the time they settled in front of the fire on Christmas evening, Draco had had enough of it. “Why do you keep staring at me like that?” he finally demanded, leaning back against the side of the folded bed. He stretched his legs out in front of him with a groan. He hadn’t engaged in any heavy lifting today, but Harry had been showing him-without Draco actually casting the spells-the sorts of wand motions and incantations he would need for continuous Transfiguration, and spending so much time practicing something intensely was its own kind of exertion.
Harry hesitated, then said, “I should have wrapped it and put it under a tree.”
Draco’s heart pounded fast enough that it seemed to dry his mouth out all by itself. He shook his head. “You got me a gift? You didn’t have to do that.” And that was true, but that didn’t mean his hands didn’t itch with the longing to find out what it was.
Harry gave him a half-mysterious smile and said, “Well, at first, I wasn’t sure it would come in time for Christmas. And then I didn’t know how to present it. But-Happy Christmas, Draco.” He held out a thick, cream-colored envelope.
Draco took it, and turned it over. He saw the Ministry seal on it, and had to blink very fast. Was Harry going to turn him into the Ministry for trying to steal ice from the fairies?
But a look at Harry convinced him it wasn’t that, it couldn’t be that. For one thing, Harry would never sit there so calmly if it was. And for another, Draco thought Harry would have told him from the first that he planned to do that.
So he ripped it open, and scanned the letter inside.
Dear Draco Malfoy,
On the representations of Harry Potter, who assures us that even under the extreme provocation of staying with an old rival you used no violent spells, the Ministry is pleased to lift the restrictions on your wand. Legal penalties will still apply for illegal spells, but you may perform the following without restriction…
And after that came a long list of the household charms, hexes, defensive measures, and others that Draco hadn’t been able to use for three years because they might be “used to hurt someone.”
Draco’s hands were shaking, his eyes blurring with tears. He looked at Harry and asked the first thing that came into his mind. “Why did you do this for me?”
Harry met his eyes. “Because three years is enough,” he said quietly. “It shouldn’t be an indefinite punishment, which is what they’d made it. And because you’ve changed. Everything about the way you’ve acted while you’re here proclaims that.”
“I came to steal ice from the fairies.” Draco didn’t even know why he was implicating himself, except that it had to be said. He couldn’t believe Harry had forgotten that, although he might have forgotten to report it to the Ministry. But why should he?
“You didn’t complete the theft.” Harry reached out and took Draco’s hand, hard enough to squeeze his fingers a little. “And you’re not going to do it again, are you? Because you were trying to steal something that would bring a little enchantment back into your life, and you have that now.”
Draco swallowed. How had Harry known that? It wasn’t like Draco would ever have the courage to say it aloud.
Harry half-smiled. “It was on your face when you said that I’d become-good at Transfiguration and Potions.” It was hard for him to speak the words, Draco thought, as hard as it would have once been for him to offer the praise, and Harry looked back at the fire as if he hoped Draco would think the heat in his cheeks was from that. “I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear that. You could offer that to me, freely. I-must have done something for you. Even if it was only to heal your loneliness.”
Draco shook his head. He wondered how he could say what was bubbling in the back of his mouth, behind his tongue, how he was supposed to say that Harry had done more than heal him. He had offered Draco his freedom back. His life.
But maybe Harry thought it was loneliness because he was lonely. Whatever he said about visiting the Weasleys and liking a quiet life, Draco knew Harry had probably let Draco stay because he was lonely.
I can’t say that. I could only tell him what had happened to me at all because I was blurting it out in a moment of weakness.
But if he couldn’t say it, there was no reason Draco couldn’t find a gesture to express it. And so he leaned forwards and kissed Harry on the lips.
It was the perfect gesture, he was sure a second later, because Harry’s eyes flashed over to him, full of the same uncertainty and gentleness that he had showed in reaction to Draco’s compliments. His hand tightened as if he didn’t know what Draco would do next and was considering pulling away.
But he didn’t do it.
Instead, he leaned in and returned the kiss with all the deep calm that seemed rooted in him, rooted like his house, like the patience he had used in showing Draco how to construct the stone wards around the garden, and Draco, dizzy with freedom and taking a risk that hadn’t resulted in immediate rejection and punishment, grabbed the back of Harry’s neck and kissed him harder.
They pulled apart only when Draco’s lips were feeling uncomfortably mashed and Harry probably felt the same way. “I didn’t get you a gift like the one you got me,” Draco whispered, his head buzzing with light that temporarily removed some of the restraints on his tongue. “I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t?” Harry smiled at him, dazzlingly. “You’re not the only one whose life changed today.”
Draco blinked several times and grabbed Harry’s hand, holding it so he couldn’t draw away. Harry turned so he was sitting beside him, and together they looked into the fire.
Draco thought about it. Life in this peaceful house. A job, now that he could perform the right kinds of spells. Being a center of peace for Harry if he did decide to venture back into the world, teaching him not to mind chaos, maybe, or at least enabling him to live in it.
And he looked at Harry’s profile in the firelight, the lingering smile on his kiss-marked lips, and thought of other things.
He had the shining prize he had sought. His wish had been answered.
The End.
Kingdom in the Waste.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/708324.html. Comment wherever you like.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Warnings: A bit of angst, a lot of fluff
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4300
Summary: Harry finds Draco being pursued by maddened icicle fairies, and takes him home for Christmas.
Author’s Notes: Another Advent fic, written for sassy_cissa, who asked for Draco being down and out and having Harry as a Christmas wish.
Snowmelt
Draco swatted at something furiously buzzing by his ear, and lost his footing in the slick snow. He promptly fell over and rolled down the slight slope beneath his feet, and heard the high-pitched, chiming laughter that meant the icicle fairies thought he was hilarious.
Why did I ever try to steal enchanted ice from them? Draco thought miserably, as he found his footing and ran on through the snowy forest, the loudest sounds his own panting and the snow creaking beneath his feet. The fairies didn’t make that much sound as they whirred behind him, brilliant white and possessed of a sting that could hurt like a needle of ice going through your skin.
But Draco knew the reason. He was living alone in a tiny flat after losing Malfoy Manor, both his parents in prison (his father for his crimes during the war and his mother for trying to break his father out of Azkaban). He didn’t have gifts. He didn’t have friends who would acknowledge him. He had wanted something small and magical, and he’d remembered his father telling him the story of enchanted ice, stolen from icicle fairies when Lucius was a child, that didn’t melt but sat there glittering in multiple colors like the Muggles’ Christmas lights.
Draco wanted something like that. He wanted anything that would make his life forgettable for the moment, something small and beautiful. And stealing from icicle fairies had sounded like a lark. How tough they could they be, anyway?
Another one stung his cheek, and Draco shrieked as he felt the skin there chilling with frostbite. He didn’t dare turn around and try to fight them, though. The Ministry had restricted the spells he could cast, and if he used violent ones, he could end up going to Azkaban. And for some reason, this forest was under a thick cloak of anti-Apparition spells. Draco couldn’t really flee until he reached the point he’d come in at.
Something moved off to the left. Draco whirled around, his heart pounding as he thought about bears and dragons, and once again stumbled. This time, he went down so heavily into the snow that he heard a popping in his foot, and grimaced. He had sprained his ankle.
The icicle fairies cheered in shrill, painful little voices, and then two of them dived at him. Draco drew his wand, prepared to go to prison rather than die here.
“What is going on?” said an irritated human voice, and then someone else drew their own wand and made the darkness sparkle with light from the end of it. The fairies abruptly stopped their dive and flew around in confusion.
Draco rolled his head over to the left and saw a wizard there. Well, of course it’s a wizard, he told himself a second later, sighing at his own stupidity. No Muggle would be out in the forest with a lighted wand, and talking to icicle fairies as if they were normal.
“But he didn’t actually manage to take anything, did he? And he was trying to leave. So leave him al-” The wizard turned his head, and Draco found himself looking into a pair of eyes that had a green color he was only going to see once in his life. The wizard’s throat seemed to have dried up abruptly.
Draco’s throat had done the same thing. He sprawled there in the snow blinking silently at Potter, and wondering what the fuck he was supposed to do next.
“Malfoy?” Harry Potter breathed. Then he shook his head and turned back to the icicle fairies. “He didn’t take anything. Leave him alone.”
One of the fairies uttered a vicious squeal that Draco couldn’t understand. Potter lifted his wand, and the light glowing from the end of it changed to a slightly warmer color. The fairies promptly fled. Potter nodded and turned around to look at Draco.
Draco felt keenly how absurd it was, him lying sprawled in the snow with a twisted ankle in front of the great Harry Potter, who had gone to live in some isolated house no one knew where. Obviously it was here. And to think that Draco had thought the anti-Apparition spells were probably put there by some do-gooder in the Ministry to protect the fairy colony.
They blinked at each other for almost a minute before Potter shook his head, sighed, conjured a stretcher, and said, “Come on, Malfoy. Let’s get you inside.”
*
Potter’s house was a wonder.
Draco lay still and looked around. Potter seemed to be occupied in brewing the potion that he said would restore Draco’s injured ankle, and Draco had no wish to call attention to himself.
It looked as though Potter had Transfigured a tree into his house. The walls and the fireplace, the floors and the ceiling and the door, were wooden, but Draco couldn’t find a break in them, a place where planks joined together or there were chinks between felled logs. Instead, everything was a smooth, glowing expanse of brown, with knots and black markings and deep whorls of amber here and there. The fire in the hearth also seemed to burn on pure magic, without consuming wood. Draco held out a hand to the warmth in silence. This was like what he had wanted, a small magical thing that could enchant him, but far better than stolen ice.
The rooms were small and crooked, the ceilings lurching from low to high, but everything Potter needed seemed to be there: herbs strung from the ceiling, cauldrons clanging on vines that could be raised or lowered, robes hanging much the same way, and a complicated wooden case off to the side that Draco had puzzled over until he realized it was a bed folded up against the wall, a bed that could be let down and would probably cover most of the floor in the main room when it was. Off to the side was a kitchen that seemed to consist mainly of cabinets and cupboards for food, and a few stump-like tables where Potter could work; he obviously did most of his cooking on the fire. Draco couldn’t see a bathroom, but he reckoned Potter would have one.
He turned back to the fire in time to meet Potter’s thoughtful eyes resting on him as he stirred his potion.
“I don’t think you had any idea I was here,” Potter said abruptly. “Since I can’t imagine you coming near me willingly. Why did you come here?”
Now Draco would have to speak, and ruin the silence that had done so well for him so far. He was gloomily certain Potter would throw him out before the potion was done, if his usual luck followed.
“I didn’t know you were here,” he admitted. “I don’t think anyone knows.” He paused, but Potter didn’t seem inclined to throw him out, instead taking the stirring rod out of the potion and throwing a handful of what looked like crocus petals into it. “I did want to take some ice from the fairies.”
“Why?” Potter stared at him.
“Because,” said Draco, and he closed his eyes, because he couldn’t bear it if he cried in front of Harry Potter, “my father is in prison, and my mother tried to break him out and now she’s in prison for the next six months, and I barely have any money because no one will hire me because I can hardly do magic, and I can’t cast any spells that have violent intent-I barely got permission to Apparate, and that was only because they wouldn’t give me permission to have a Floo connection-and I’m lonely, and I wanted something pretty to look at. Something that would make me feel less alone for Christmas.”
For long moments, Potter was silent except for the rhythmic motions of his stirring. Then he murmured, “I didn’t know your mother was in prison, too. That’s hard.”
“How should you know?” Draco asked tiredly, and pressed his arm over his eyes. He was lying on a bed made of goosedown that Potter had conjured for him, and it hurt him, how much more comfortable it was than his own Transfigurations. “You probably don’t read the Daily Prophet.”
“I owe her a life-debt,” Potter said, his voice still as gentle as the crackling of the fire. “I’m surprised she didn’t call on me for it.”
“No one knew where you were.”
Silence, and Draco almost fell asleep, warm for the first time in too long a time. Professor Snape had always said a Slytherin should be self-reliant, able to defend himself no matter what, but Draco knew he needed company. It was stupid, but that was the way he was. He jumped and opened his eyes hastily when Potter touched his forehead.
“The potion’s ready,” said Potter, looking at him with calm, compassionate eyes.
Draco sighed and sat up. He knew he would have to leave the minute his ankle was cured. He reached for the flask, but Potter held it out of his reach. Draco looked at him, confused. Potter hadn’t seemed like someone who wanted him to suffer.
Their eyes met for long minutes before Potter abruptly sighed and bowed his head. “Listen, Malfoy,” he murmured. “I get lonely sometimes, too, and it isn’t-it isn’t right for you to be so alone. Why don’t you stay with me? Just for this Christmas? Merlin knows that I had enough Christmases where I felt left out. I don’t want you to feel the same way.”
Draco looked quickly at the mattress. He swallowed. “I don’t want to impose on you.”
“If I was worried about that, I wouldn’t have made a potion that would cure the ankle, so I could keep you off your feet and out of the way for a while,” Potter said dryly. Draco looked up. Yes, he was laughing, and it wasn’t at Draco. “There are some things you can help me with. And who knows.” He sat back and studied Draco thoughtfully. “Maybe something I can do for you.” He extended the potion flask.
Draco swallowed it, and watched as the swelling in his ankle visibly shrank, and said when he thought his voice wouldn’t shake, “I’d like that.”
*
Harry Potter’s life was so simple that Draco was surprised he didn’t go mad.
Well, some of the things he did weren’t simple. For example, he had to cast all sorts of spells to hold back the winter from his garden. He had explained to Draco that he sometimes did go on collecting expeditions in the forest, which was where he had been when he found Draco and the fairies, but there were many plants he needed that wouldn’t grow wild.
Draco was still allowed to cast Warming Charms and other small spells like that. He could also lift stones into the fascinating protective configurations that Potter built around his flowerbeds and herb beds, half-rune and half-ward. The rocks themselves were the anchors, and Draco learned more about Ancient Runes, in a strange way, than he had since Hogwarts, watching Potter arrange and re-arrange those stones. Volunteering to help move them into the precise patterns Potter needed was the least he could do in return for the care and the knowledge.
And the company. Potter seemed to have got used to not speaking, living by himself in the forest and mostly associating with wild creatures like the fairies, but he spoke in a soft, constant undertone to Draco. Draco had at first wanted to retort he wasn’t a wounded animal, but then had reconsidered the ways in which he was.
Potter cooked and brewed potions and let Draco take the bed that folded down from the wall, while he slept himself on the goosefeather mattress he had conjured for Draco that first day. Draco had thought about objecting, but he wasn’t that much of a gentleman.
He was being taken care of again. He had thought that day would never return.
He and Potter lay side-by-side-the bed and mattress were on a level-on a night when Draco had been there almost a week. It would be Christmas in two days. Potter had curled up in the middle of his feathers and his thick, fuzzy green robe, which he never seemed to take off. He was already half-asleep.
“Are you going to spend Christmas with the Weasleys?” Draco whispered. He didn’t want to ask and disrupt this little idyll of theirs, but he felt he had to know. He would have to prepare himself to be left alone again, if so.
Potter blinked his eyes lazily open. “No,” he responded. “I love them, and I do spend an afternoon with them here and there, but they can’t be quiet to save their lives, especially since Bill and Fleur have kids now. And I don’t want to tell them constantly to be quiet, or have my nerves rattled. So I spend a few hours with each individual part of the family.” He smiled, an expression that still seemed to come easily to him, out of the great silence that followed him around. “I mostly spend time with Bill and Fleur after their kids are in bed.”
“I thought you’d want that,” Draco murmured, honestly confused. “The loud kids and the big family.”
“I got enough noise in the war,” was all Potter would say, and he shut his eyes. “Good night, Draco.”
It was the first time he had used Draco’s name. Draco caught his breath in response, and had to swallow several times before he worked enough wetness into his throat to reply.
“Good night, Harry.”
Harry was lying with his mouth and his hair almost smothered in feathers, but Draco didn’t think he was wrong when he saw that mouth move into a smile.
*
Draco had assumed that Harry wasn’t going to celebrate the holidays at all, since he wouldn’t be celebrating them with the Weasleys. So when he woke up on the morning of Christmas to find Harry threading green vines around the walls with his wand, he stared and blinked.
Harry turned and smiled at him. “I don’t have any mistletoe or holly growing around here, but I did think that some greenery might cheer it up in here.”
Draco wondered how to tell him that he thought Harry’s house was perfect, growing and alive as it was. Draco had discovered that the rooms would alter their proportions, or seemed to, and that a few of the pillows and cushions were packed with dead leaves that Harry had harvested from the house and magically preserved. This was right in the middle of magic.
But he could still cast charms that would trail the vines around the grain in the wood and up and down around the fireplace, the way Harry wanted done, and he joined in with a will. By the time Harry broke off to prepare breakfast-a much heartier meal than he usually cooked-Draco was sitting in the middle of what felt like a warm and friendly forest.
As Harry set an omelet in front of him and small slices of meat that Draco thought were venison instead of pork or any other domestic meat, Draco finally asked. “How did you become this master of Transfiguration and Potions you are now? I know you didn’t like Potions in school.” He had never paid much attention to how Harry did in Transfiguration.
Harry paused and squinted at him. “It’s a pretty boring story. Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“Yes.” Draco tried to convey in that one word how eager he was to hear more of Harry, how nothing Harry did could ever be boring to him, without saying it aloud. He had had enough of humiliating confessions after he had told his story to Harry.
Harry nodded and turned away to gather another plate and lay it on the low wooden table that Draco thought was a root coaxed to grow up through the center of the tree. “Well, after the war I was tired of noise. I told you that. Tired of fame. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the dead and all the parts that I’d played in failing them, or just didn’t play at all. I found it hard to sleep at night.”
Draco nodded and shuddered a little, knowing what that was like. At least now, three years after the war, it wasn’t as intense as it had been right after, but it could still be bad.
“I needed to fill my head with something else it could obsess about,” said Harry, and took a bite of his own hard-boiled egg. “I started studying Transfiguration, because-I don’t know. I wanted to feel closer to Dumbledore, I suppose, since that was his subject.”
A shadow moved across Harry’s face at the mention of Dumbledore. Draco ate in silence, watching him.
“And I discovered that I had a talent for what’s called continuous Transfiguration,” said Harry, and gestured around them at the smooth wooden walls. “Not the little spells we did in class, where we would enchant all sorts of disconnected objects into other disconnected objects, but enchanting a carpet of leaves into an actual carpet. Or convincing a stone to shape itself into a bench for me to sit on.”
“Or a tree into a house,” Draco murmured.
“Exactly.” Harry smiled at him and went on eating.
“And the Potions?” Draco supposed he could have guessed, could have left Harry to finish his breakfast in peace, but he wanted to know everything Harry would tell him. It felt like he was parched ground absorbing the rain.
Harry shrugged. “They started out as an attempt to brew Dreamless Sleep when I’d got so good at Transfiguration that the books didn’t bore me into falling asleep anymore. And I discovered I liked brewing potions, too, if I could do the same one over and over again, not have to make one and then move on like we did in class. So I did Dreamless Sleep until I got good at it, and then the Draught of Peace, and then all of these other things.”
“You’re very good,” Draco said honestly. Not only did Harry’s potions work the way they were supposed to, not only were his brewing motions smooth, but his draughts tasted sweeter than most Draco were accustomed to.
To his astonishment, Harry flushed, mumbled, “Thanks,” and buried himself in his meal.
Draco blinked. Then he reckoned that, except for Harry’s friends, Harry had probably had no one to praise him for these accomplishments he had learned outside of school.
Maybe that was a gift he could give Harry. He had racked his brains trying to decide how he would pay Harry back, or at least get him a Christmas gift, with no money. This was a different way.
*
Harry had been giving him secretive looks throughout the day, and by the time they settled in front of the fire on Christmas evening, Draco had had enough of it. “Why do you keep staring at me like that?” he finally demanded, leaning back against the side of the folded bed. He stretched his legs out in front of him with a groan. He hadn’t engaged in any heavy lifting today, but Harry had been showing him-without Draco actually casting the spells-the sorts of wand motions and incantations he would need for continuous Transfiguration, and spending so much time practicing something intensely was its own kind of exertion.
Harry hesitated, then said, “I should have wrapped it and put it under a tree.”
Draco’s heart pounded fast enough that it seemed to dry his mouth out all by itself. He shook his head. “You got me a gift? You didn’t have to do that.” And that was true, but that didn’t mean his hands didn’t itch with the longing to find out what it was.
Harry gave him a half-mysterious smile and said, “Well, at first, I wasn’t sure it would come in time for Christmas. And then I didn’t know how to present it. But-Happy Christmas, Draco.” He held out a thick, cream-colored envelope.
Draco took it, and turned it over. He saw the Ministry seal on it, and had to blink very fast. Was Harry going to turn him into the Ministry for trying to steal ice from the fairies?
But a look at Harry convinced him it wasn’t that, it couldn’t be that. For one thing, Harry would never sit there so calmly if it was. And for another, Draco thought Harry would have told him from the first that he planned to do that.
So he ripped it open, and scanned the letter inside.
Dear Draco Malfoy,
On the representations of Harry Potter, who assures us that even under the extreme provocation of staying with an old rival you used no violent spells, the Ministry is pleased to lift the restrictions on your wand. Legal penalties will still apply for illegal spells, but you may perform the following without restriction…
And after that came a long list of the household charms, hexes, defensive measures, and others that Draco hadn’t been able to use for three years because they might be “used to hurt someone.”
Draco’s hands were shaking, his eyes blurring with tears. He looked at Harry and asked the first thing that came into his mind. “Why did you do this for me?”
Harry met his eyes. “Because three years is enough,” he said quietly. “It shouldn’t be an indefinite punishment, which is what they’d made it. And because you’ve changed. Everything about the way you’ve acted while you’re here proclaims that.”
“I came to steal ice from the fairies.” Draco didn’t even know why he was implicating himself, except that it had to be said. He couldn’t believe Harry had forgotten that, although he might have forgotten to report it to the Ministry. But why should he?
“You didn’t complete the theft.” Harry reached out and took Draco’s hand, hard enough to squeeze his fingers a little. “And you’re not going to do it again, are you? Because you were trying to steal something that would bring a little enchantment back into your life, and you have that now.”
Draco swallowed. How had Harry known that? It wasn’t like Draco would ever have the courage to say it aloud.
Harry half-smiled. “It was on your face when you said that I’d become-good at Transfiguration and Potions.” It was hard for him to speak the words, Draco thought, as hard as it would have once been for him to offer the praise, and Harry looked back at the fire as if he hoped Draco would think the heat in his cheeks was from that. “I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear that. You could offer that to me, freely. I-must have done something for you. Even if it was only to heal your loneliness.”
Draco shook his head. He wondered how he could say what was bubbling in the back of his mouth, behind his tongue, how he was supposed to say that Harry had done more than heal him. He had offered Draco his freedom back. His life.
But maybe Harry thought it was loneliness because he was lonely. Whatever he said about visiting the Weasleys and liking a quiet life, Draco knew Harry had probably let Draco stay because he was lonely.
I can’t say that. I could only tell him what had happened to me at all because I was blurting it out in a moment of weakness.
But if he couldn’t say it, there was no reason Draco couldn’t find a gesture to express it. And so he leaned forwards and kissed Harry on the lips.
It was the perfect gesture, he was sure a second later, because Harry’s eyes flashed over to him, full of the same uncertainty and gentleness that he had showed in reaction to Draco’s compliments. His hand tightened as if he didn’t know what Draco would do next and was considering pulling away.
But he didn’t do it.
Instead, he leaned in and returned the kiss with all the deep calm that seemed rooted in him, rooted like his house, like the patience he had used in showing Draco how to construct the stone wards around the garden, and Draco, dizzy with freedom and taking a risk that hadn’t resulted in immediate rejection and punishment, grabbed the back of Harry’s neck and kissed him harder.
They pulled apart only when Draco’s lips were feeling uncomfortably mashed and Harry probably felt the same way. “I didn’t get you a gift like the one you got me,” Draco whispered, his head buzzing with light that temporarily removed some of the restraints on his tongue. “I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t?” Harry smiled at him, dazzlingly. “You’re not the only one whose life changed today.”
Draco blinked several times and grabbed Harry’s hand, holding it so he couldn’t draw away. Harry turned so he was sitting beside him, and together they looked into the fire.
Draco thought about it. Life in this peaceful house. A job, now that he could perform the right kinds of spells. Being a center of peace for Harry if he did decide to venture back into the world, teaching him not to mind chaos, maybe, or at least enabling him to live in it.
And he looked at Harry’s profile in the firelight, the lingering smile on his kiss-marked lips, and thought of other things.
He had the shining prize he had sought. His wish had been answered.
The End.
Kingdom in the Waste.
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