FIC: Magic Tricks (PG-13)
Here is today's second fic. Do enjoy! ♥
Title: Magic Tricks
Author: talithan
Prompt: # 105
Summary: When Draco agreed to accompany his flatmate to a Muggle magic show, he did not expect Harry Potter to be the magician onstage. Since then, nothing has gone according to plan.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco
Warning(s): None!
Word Count: 5665
Author's Notes: For whatever reason, this fic did not want to exist. I had no idea I'd have such trouble writing something without buckets of angst and conflict. Thank you to the mods for being so wonderful and accommodating, and thank you to Natalie and Emily for looking it over for me. wendypops, this was a delightful prompt, and I hope I've come at all close to doing it justice!
Magic Tricks
This is not how Draco thought the evening would go.
Harry Potter clutches at the back of Draco’s shirt and grinds his hips forward, and their hard cocks rub against each other.
“Fuck me-oh, god, please fuck me-”
His hand reaches down to take hold of Draco’s arse, forcing Draco’s pelvis firmly against his own.
When Draco left his flat this evening, he did not have any idea that he would end up in Harry Potter’s flat, on Harry Potter’s bed, snogging Harry Potter rather desperately. He did not anticipate being in a position to fuck the saviour of the Wizarding world. Even now, he isn’t entirely sure how he got here. He meant to blackmail Potter, not dry hump him.
“Please fuck me, Andrew,” Harry Potter begs.
No, Draco thinks, swallowing hard; this was not the plan at all.
-
Six weeks prior, Draco went to see a Muggle magic show in Muggle London with a Muggle girl named Sarah, and it was a terribly strange and confusing experience.
It wasn’t that Draco was out in Muggle London. At that point, Draco had been living in his current flat in a Muggle area for six months, and had been spending time in Muggle London for two years. He liked the Muggle world. He liked Muggle contraptions and Muggle sensibilities and the way Muggles never commented on the tattoo on his arm if he had his sleeves rolled up, except perhaps to say things like, “Nice snake!” with an unaffected smile.
It wasn’t that he was there with Sarah (a girl, first of all, and a Muggle besides). That wasn’t strange because it wasn’t a date or anything, and anyway, she was his friend and flatmate. She liked his snake tattoo and gave him haircuts sometimes because she was in beauty school. It used to be strange, being out with her and her friends, back when Muggle things still surprised and baffled him sometimes and he was constantly convinced she’d find him out somehow. But now they’ve been sharing a flat for half a year, and Draco has grown quite good at passing for a Muggle.
It wasn’t even strange that the “Muggle magic” was clearly actual wandless magic. Draco had rather expected that it would be; he really didn’t think Muggle illusions had any hopes of being convincing enough to attract a paying audience. Of course some wizards violated the Statute of Secrecy and performed magic in front of Muggles. So long as the Muggles had no idea it was real, what was the harm in that?
No, the terribly strange and confusing and-to be perfectly honest-even harrowing fact of the night was this: the “magician” on the humble stage in the small, run-down old theatre was Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived and Defeater of the Dark Lord.
Harry Potter, who had vanished into obscurity in the years since the end of the war.
Harry Potter, who Draco had only seen in statue form in recent history, whenever he came through Diagon Alley on brief visits to Wizarding London.
The curtains parted to reveal him in all of his skinny, messy-haired, bespectacled glory, and Draco jumped in his seat.
“The magic hasn’t even started yet!” Sarah said, laughing.
“But that’s-” Draco exclaimed before he could stop himself, only to cut himself off abruptly.
“That’s?” Sarah echoed.
“Never mind,” Draco said, but his voice was still high, uncertain, slightly panicked.
Harry Potter.
From what Draco had heard, in the whispered gossip he’d caught in bits and pieces during his eighth and final year at Hogwarts, Potter had become a bit of a recluse after the war. A hermit, even. Possibly an agoraphobe. After the last of the seemingly endless funerals, no one had seen him. He didn’t come back to Hogwarts, but no one had really thought he would. He also didn’t become an Auror; that, everyone had thought he’d do. No, he simply vanished, and strangely, everyone seemed to forget about him. The Boy Who Lived had lived while the Dark Lord had not, and in doing so Potter had fulfilled his purpose.
At first, the Daily Prophet spun a tale of intrigue, raising suspicions as to the potentially scandalous motivations behind his disappearance. But his friends didn’t seem concerned, nor did anyone else who’d known him well, and their strange nonchalance toward his absence grew contagious. The Ministry erected a statue of him in Diagon Alley, where he’d first crossed into the Wizarding world, and a second in Hogsmeade. Statues that immortalised him as forever seventeen. In his absence, there was nothing to tarnish that memory.
But now-now, here he was, a little taller and a little older and a little more on stage in front of a theatre of Muggles, with his stupid hair and his stupid glasses and an undeniable lightning-bolt-shaped scar on his forehead, not even covered up. Harry Potter, Muggle magician. It was absurd.
But then, so was Draco Malfoy, Muggle.
He thought of his wand, tucked away in his bedside table in his room in his Muggle flat. He hadn’t touched it in days. He didn’t have to much anymore, not when he spent so much of his time pretending not to be able to do magic. He used to carry it with him all the time, until it started to seem a bit of a hassle, and now it only came out when he knew Sarah wasn’t around and there was something that he didn’t want to do by hand. And when he visited home, of course. Or friends. He did do that, every now and again.
“You aren’t even paying attention,” Sarah whispered scoldingly.
“Hmm?”
“It’s started, or couldn’t you tell.”
Draco wanted to explain that he was too busy having his entire universe rocked to pay attention to a bit of wandless magic, but first of all, there was no justifiable explanation as to Potter’s significance that didn’t require Draco to telling her all about a large number of things that he categorically could not tell her. Second, he also couldn’t explain how unimpressive this magic was without informing her as to the existence of wizards and the fact that Draco, as it turned out, was one of them. And really, the idea that Potter could rock his entire universe was a bit overdramatic.
It was hard to feign delight in these ‘magic tricks’, though. Not only because Potter’s very presence and involvement were incredibly distracting, but also because there was absolutely no mystery to it. Draco imagined that for Sarah and all of the other Muggles, the sense of wonder likely came from not knowing how any of it was done. Nobody was watching this and believing it was real; they were all watching and thinking, whether at the forefront or the back of their minds, that it was a trick, that the man onstage was not actually conjuring flowers but had, rather, devised a complicated mechanism that made it look like he was conjuring flowers.
No, he was merely conjuring flowers, something Draco had seen on countless occasions and even done himself every now and again, when the situation called for it. This was why he’d hoped he’d be witness to Muggle magic tonight, or at least magic from a person he could tell was a Muggle. He’d thought that Muggle magic might be just as inexplicable and fascinating as all of their other inventions, like lamps and cars and stereos and refrigerators.
Instead, there was Harry Potter, doing something very silly with several copies of a ball, some of which intermittently changed colour or disappeared. Draco crossed his arms and pouted, just a little.
Each trick was met with applause, and Draco tried to imagine what his reaction would have been if he were a real Muggle, or if he believed Potter to be one. What delighted him about Muggle inventions is their cleverness, their resourceful ability to make do without magic. Draco would have clapped for the Muggle magician’s pure tenacity, and his blind determination to mimic something he could never actually accomplish.
Draco had been trying to see Muggles as equals. That was the point. But there were moments like this that came unbidden, moments when he couldn’t help thinking of them as fundamentally deficient, in a sense. These were things a Muggle could never actually do, and there wasn’t any getting around that.
He also couldn’t help thinking that if any of them saw these things in any other context, they wouldn’t be clapping. They’d be horrified. He thought of how careful he was to never do magic around Sarah, or any of their other friends, and he knew it wasn’t because of the Statute of Secrecy. It was because he was convinced, justifiably or not, that they’d hate him if they knew.
Draco wasn’t fully aware of the show ending, only that the people around him seemed to be standing to clap, and clapping quite a bit more enthusiastically than before. He stood too, and clapped enthusiastically too, but he was in a distracted haze as he did so, and as he and Sarah left the little theatre and began the walk to the Underground. The theatre was so neglected that it didn’t appear to have any indoor heating system, and so they were already wearing their coats; Draco looped his scarf around his neck as well, and Sarah pulled a hat on over her short hair.
What was he doing there? What on earth had compelled Harry Potter to disappear from the Wizarding world and start performing magic for the entertainment of Muggles?
“Are you all right?” Sarah asked, perturbed.
Draco shrugged. “Sure, I’m all right.”
But he wasn’t.
-
It wasn’t a plan, at first. Draco didn’t think it through much at all. Later, he would tell himself he’d intended all of it from the start, but he really did not think it through. His only rational thought that even remotely approached planning was his consciousness that Potter would probably recognise him, if he hadn’t the first time, and that while going as himself was excusable when he didn’t know it was Potter, it would be pure idiocy now that he did know.
So he charmed his eyes brown, his hair sandier, his nose wider, his skin a little warmer and a little bit freckled. He didn’t have the resources to get Polyjuice or the time to brew it himself, but glamours were better anyway-they lasted longer and were easier to reinforce, with no concerns about drinking a potion surreptitiously every hour.
And he went to Potter’s magic show a second time, sitting slouched in the fourth row with his coat collar flipped up, paranoid that Potter might recognise him despite the glamours. He came alone, as there would be no way to explain the change in his appearance to any of his Muggle friends. And he tried to actually watch the show this time.
He did watch the show, in a way. He didn’t watch the tricks, though; he watched Potter.
What was most confusing about the whole situation was how very normal Potter seemed. Draco hadn’t given him much thought at all in the time since he’d last seen him in person, but if anyone had asked him, he would have guessed that Potter was miserable. There were things he was supposed to do-become an Auror and a protector of innocents, and a symbol of hope for the Wizarding world, and all of that-and he had not done those things, so clearly he was not happy.
But here he was, being-dare Draco even think it-happy. There was an ease and naturalness to his performance that made it seem not a performance at all. He could see how Potter was able to fill this small theatre for five performances a week. It was wonderful to watch, really. He seemed to delight in the magic, even though it was obviously old hat to him, both for the show and in his actual life. And the delight was infectious. Draco could feel it spreading throughout the audience, so that even the grumpy middle-aged couple to his left was grinning and applauding by the end of it.
Draco didn’t mean to come that second time. He also didn’t mean to come the third time, or the fourth. But it seemed important that he do so, for some reason. It seemed very important that he watch Harry Potter perform real magic disguised as fake magic as a form of Muggle entertainment, and so he came back every Thursday night for a month. Always in disguise, and always alone.
By the fifth time, he constructed a why. He was investigating, of course. Harry Potter had been mysteriously missing and Draco had found him, so naturally he had to gather all of the information that he could. He had no reason to believe that Potter was in contact with anyone from the Wizarding world, and this meant that it was up to Draco, and Draco alone, to learn as much about what Potter was doing as possible. And find a way to use the knowledge to his advantage, obviously. The warmth that spread through him every time Potter smiled, he told himself, was incidental.
The sixth time, he decided that proper investigation would require more than merely sitting in the audience while Potter was onstage. He was going to have to follow him after the show. He’d find out where he lived, or maybe what he did in his free time, and use that information to learn a little more and perhaps formulate a real plan. The thought came to him as he was on his way to the show, and throughout it he kept thinking of how afterwards would go.
He’d wait near the stage door, where some of the magic enthusiasts lurked after the show each night to sing Potter’s praises and try to learn his secrets. Draco had noticed them the third time and witnessed a bit of their worship; it was almost as bad as what he’d seen aimed at Potter during school, and just as embarrassing for all involved. Once Potter had made it through those folks, Draco would tail him. He would see the outside of Potter’s nondescript flat, or townhouse, or mysteriously expensive condominium, or worryingly run-down single-room shithole, even-Draco would see wherever it was that he lived, and he would…‘surveil’ it, or something. He knew things. He could observe stealthily. He had plenty of tricks up his sleeve.
Or, not tricks, he thought, as Potter pretended to pretend to levitate a playing card. Spells. All sorts of spells.
He had his collar up as he left the theatre and went to stand a discreet distance from the door, and he rearranged his scarf and knit cap so as to obscure his features even more. He then reached into his pocket for his wand and reinforced his glamours. These weekly excursions had meant that he carried his wand with him more often than he had in months, and it was uncomfortable to realise that doing so now felt uncomfortable. Part of him was convinced someone would notice; someone would detect his wand’s presence in his pocket and it would all be over. Worse than that, though, was the bizarre sensation of the magic as an auxiliary, rather than an integral part of him. Every day he went without it felt awkward and inconvenient, and visiting the magical world always brought him a sense of relief, but there was an incongruity to using magic in the presence of Muggles that made him feel uneasy. He didn’t know how Potter could do it.
That was what he was thinking about when Potter approached him. He was thinking that Potter should not have looked so comfortable, so natural, doing magic in front of Muggles. Because he was supposed to like Muggles, wasn’t he? His whole side had taken offence at the idea that Muggles were less than Wizards. Draco could only understand taunting Muggles with magic if you thought they were indeed lesser creatures. (Muggles were too stupid to know what they were seeing. Muggles couldn’t even recognise what was right in front of them. Those were the sorts of things Draco’s father would have said.) But Potter wasn’t taunting them, nor was he afraid of being found out. He was-
Standing right in front of Draco, smiling.
“Hello,” Potter said, as though it were a question.
“Hello,” Draco said, matching his uncertain tone and speaking in a slightly lower pitch than his natural voice.
“Did you-” Potter gestured vaguely. Draco looked around and realised the others were gone, having praised and interrogated Potter to their satisfaction. Draco was the only one left.
“No,” Draco started, because he hadn’t meant to talk to Potter; he’d meant to tail him. Sneakily. Which was all spoiled now. “I didn’t-”
“Oh.” Potter looked somewhat sheepish. “I thought because you-never mind.”
“I what?”
Potter licked his lips, seeming nervous. “I mean. You come to my show a lot.”
He’d noticed?
Draco instinctively hunched slightly, as though to make himself less visible, despite the twenty-odd reasons that immediately came to mind as to why that was completely ridiculous. He crossed his arms, and raised his chin only to drop it again.
“I like magic,” he said after far too long a pause.
“I bet you do.” Potter was grinning again, for some reason.
“I do,” Draco insisted. “It’s-it’s quite amazing, really.”
Potter crossed his own arms and raised his own chin, slightly. “Well?”
“Well?” Draco echoed.
“Aren’t you going to ask after all of my secrets, then?”
Yes, Draco thought, that’s the hope. “Are you suggesting you’ll share them?”
“Join me for a drink, and we’ll see.”
Draco couldn’t believe his luck. He’d set out to (or rather, decided belatedly to, but what difference did it make?) find out what Potter was up to, and now Potter was as good as offering that information up on a platter? Draco could do all of his investigating from a much closer vantage point than he’d dared to even dream.
“I’d love to,” Draco said, smiling genuinely.
“Excellent! I’m Harry,” Potter said, and held out his hand to Draco.
“I’m-” Draco searched his mind and said the first name he could think of: the last bloke he’d taken home. “I’m Andrew.”
“Good to meet you,” Harry Potter said, as Draco Malfoy shook his hand.
-
A drink became four; ‘investigating’ became nearly three hours of conversation. Draco hadn’t anticipated actually talking to Potter, and he didn’t have any prepared backstory. Instead, he told Potter things that were mostly true but which-hopefully-wouldn’t tip him off as to Draco’s identity. Potter seemed to be doing the same. He said he’d loved magic since the first time he saw it performed, when he was eleven, and that he’d practised all through his teenage years. Draco supposed the fond look in his eyes as he thought of Hogwarts would not have been as glaringly obvious to someone who didn’t know what Potter was really thinking of, but it struck Draco as terribly unsubtle of Potter all the same.
The strange magnetic quality he had onstage remained, even as they sat in a dimly lit booth in a noisy pub. Draco felt the inexplicable urge to pay very close attention to every one of Potter’s words-not because he wanted to catch any scraps of important information that Potter revealed, but because Potter’s speech itself seemed hugely important. Potter was smiling and sharing part of himself with Draco, and he’d bought Draco’s drinks, and he was asking Draco questions about himself, too. It felt very friendly, and after an hour or so, Draco forgot that he was supposed to be investigating.
“It’s getting late,” Potter said eventually, with a weird sort of look in his eyes. Draco suddenly remembered his initial intention to find out where Potter lived.
“I’ll walk you home,” Draco said, which elicited a wide grin from Potter, and Draco rather enjoyed that.
And that was how they got-here.
“Please fuck me, Andrew,” Potter says, and reaches up to cup Draco’s jaw, holding him in place for a hard kiss.
There are many things wrong with this. For one, Potter is apparently gay, which is giving Draco a whole host of new theories as to the reason behind his disappearance from the Wizarding world. For another, this came out of nowhere, which is making Draco a little concerned as to Potter’s well-being; he seems to be a bit of a sex-crazed slut. Draco’s own erection aside, Potter’s present enthusiasm is a little concerning. What sort of person launches themselves at someone else immediately upon arriving home, mouth-first, and takes things directly to the bedroom?
A person on a date, Draco’s mind offers unhelpfully, as he considers his own past behaviour. A person who thinks he’s pulled.
Potter gives Draco some breathing room, but only for a moment; he’s trying to get as much of their clothing off with as little physical separation as possible, it seems. The first offender is Potter’s own shirt; he then gets started on unbuttoning Draco’s.
That wasn’t-was that a date, just now? They did talk an awful lot about themselves and ask a good many questions about each other, and that has always been one of those inconveniences of going on dates. Draco has suffered through it in the hope of eventually getting to the sex. Tonight, on the other hand, it was all he wanted to do, and this offer of sex has caught him completely off guard.
Which is odd, when he thinks about it.
He should be stopping this, he thinks, if he doesn’t want it. He certainly didn’t mean to end up in bed with Potter, and he doesn’t fully understand what made this possible, but-he could take the opportunity now that it has presented itself, couldn’t he?
He’s in the middle of kissing Potter as this occurs to him, in the middle of grinding down against him and sucking on his tongue, which seems to indicate that yes, this is an opportunity he’d like to seize.
The second he decides he wants it, he realises rather forcefully that he can’t.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, much more loudly than necessary. He separates their bodies and moves backwards, all the way to the edge of the bed. “I’m so sorry, Harry, but-we can’t. I can’t.”
Curiously, Potter appears unruffled by this. “Why not?”
“I-I’m not-” Draco takes a deep breath. “I’m not who you think I am.”
Potter grins, of all things. “And who are you, then?”
Draco stands and moves to where Potter tossed his coat over the top of the dresser. He removes his wand from his coat pocket. Potter doesn’t react to that, but then, he is probably too shocked that ‘Andrew’ is a wizard to speak. Draco removes the glamours, all at once. In the mirror above the dresser, he watches as his hair and eyes lighten, his nose returns to its normal shape, and his skin regains its natural pallor. He turns to face Potter, Draco Malfoy once more.
Potter is still grinning.
Which is…odd.
“You aren’t-you don’t seem surprised,” Draco says, after a silence that Potter doesn’t seem inclined to fill.
“I’m not.”
“And…why is that, exactly?”
“You’re a much worse spy than you think you are,” Potter answers, and laughs.
Draco crosses his arms, which makes him realise his shirt is open. He buttons it hurriedly. “I’m an excellent spy,” he counters, and feels his face heat as he hears how ridiculous that sounds aloud.
“I saw you the first time you came to the show,” Potter says, leaning back to rest on his elbows and stretching out his legs. He’s still clearly hard, Draco notices, which makes his face heat further.
“I saw you as well,” Draco says, again before he can consider how incredibly stupid it sounds.
“You wore that exact coat.”
Draco looks at his coat, tossed across Potter’s dresser. “What’s wrong with my coat?” It’s a handsome forest green herringbone, and Draco likes it a lot, thank you very much.
“It stands out a bit in a sea of black and grey; that’s all I’m saying.”
Draco blinks. It does, a bit.
“You knew it was me all along,” he says, wondering if saying it aloud will help him process this information. It doesn’t, not really.
“I knew it was you all along,” Potter confirms. “I mean, the second time you came I just thought it was you again, when I first noticed you. Then I looked a little closer and I wasn’t sure, but you kept coming back so I thought you probably were you, and then you were hanging around afterwards tonight and I thought maybe you weren’t you, but then I talked to you and I knew you were definitely you.”
“You knew I was definitely me,” Draco says dumbly.
“Yes. I was just waiting for you to admit it.”
Draco gasps. “Was that-is that why you were doing all that snogging? Were you trying to-to out-sneak me?”
“‘Out-sneak’ you?” Potter laughs. “I don’t know what you mean, saying I was doing all that snogging. You were definitely doing at least some of it.”
Draco chances a glance down at Potter’s crotch. Still hard. Well, then.
“You knew I was me because I kept coming back? That doesn’t even make sense.”
“You’ve always been obsessed with me.” That grin is at full volume, now.
“Excuse me, Potter, I believe it was you who followed me around constantly-”
“All right,” Potter concedes, “maybe I’ve been a bit obsessed with you as well.”
“A bit obsessed with me?” Draco can’t seem to stop repeating Potter’s words, but then, Potter can’t seem to stop saying very ridiculous things.
“It isn’t your nose you need to alter,” Potter says, “when you’re trying to disguise yourself.”
“My nose?”
Potter is standing, now, and stepping toward Draco. “It’s your cheekbones.”
“My cheekbones.”
“And your jaw, as well. You have a very distinctive face shape, you know.”
“Face shape,” Draco repeats.
Potter nods. “And you did a piss poor job disguising your voice, besides.”
Draco supposes he ought to be taking this as a learning experience so the next time he wants to spy on a person he can do a proper job of it, but he’s currently stuck trying to wrap his mind around Harry Potter snogging him while being completely aware of who he was.
“That was a pretty impressive pile of bullshit, though,” Potter says, somehow making it sound like a real compliment. He is very close to Draco, now, and Draco backs up a couple of steps, until he runs into the dresser. “All of that nonsense about how you’re studying English at uni-how did you even know how Muggle schooling works?”
“I am studying English at uni,” Draco says, finally snapping out of his baffled haze.
“You’re a university student,” Potter says, eyebrows raised, like it’s some sort of joke.
“Yes, I’m a university student.”
“Studying English, with Muggles.”
“I’m in my second year,” Draco says.
“With Muggles,” Potter repeats.
“Yes, with Muggles! I study with Muggles. I live with Muggles. I almost am a Muggle, functionally. How did you think I wound up at your magic show?”
“A tip from a friend who’d found me out? I dunno. I thought you came for a laugh.”
“I came with my flatmate because she thought it would be fun.”
“Your Muggle flatmate?”
“Yes, my Muggle flatmate!”
“Flatmate? Or girlfriend?”
“Flatmate, Potter. She’s gay. As am I, if that needed pointing out.”
Potter seems to consider this for a moment. Draco isn’t sure why this clarification is what has prompted the pondering, but he doesn’t want to do anything to distract from all of the effort that the pondering seems to require, and so he stands silently, waiting.
“How did that happen, then?”
“How did what happen? A pair of gays cohabiting?”
“You, living with a Muggle! And-and studying English, at a Muggle university, and practically being a Muggle, apparently.”
“The story isn’t brief,” Draco warns.
“Well, abbreviate it.”
“I needed a change of scenery.”
“Obviously I need bit more than that,” Potter says, rolling his eyes.
“I wanted to learn.”
“About English literature,” Potter supplies.
“And the rest.”
Draco is sure Potter won’t understand what he means; Draco isn’t even sure that he understands what he means. But Potter nods, comprehension in his eyes. “All of it,” he says.
“Yes.”
“And you’re learning?”
“Every day.”
“So am I,” Potter says.
It feels as though if they say what they mean outright, if they don’t talk in code, somehow the moment will shatter, and they’ll have to take several steps backward. It also feels as though they are understanding each other, more than Draco would have thought possible.
Draco ruins it, of course. He has to.
“Did you really-” He clears his throat, and Potter’s brows knit together. “Did you really want to fuck?”
Potter smiles, and it’s not the same confident grin from earlier. He looks a little bit embarrassed, even. “It wasn’t the original plan, no.”
Draco tries to convince himself that the sinking feeling that follows isn’t disappointment.
“I was expecting you to blackmail me,” Potter continues, “not to flirt with me.”
“I wasn’t flirting,” Draco says indignantly. “I was questioning.”
“You were flirting.”
Draco thinks back to their conversation at the pub, to the way he paid close attention to Potter the whole time and the warm feeling he got when Potter smiled, and he internally concedes that, all right, he might have been flirting, a little bit.
“You were flirting,” Draco insists, aloud.
“Yeah, I was.”
Draco had adjusted to Potter’s proximity, but he feels very aware of it all over again.
“Because you’re obsessed with me,” Draco says.
Potter nods. “No more than you are with me.”
“I’m not obsessed with-”
“You paid for my show six times,” Potter points out.
“Well, yes.”
“You’re not claiming you came for the magic, are you?”
“No,” Draco admits. Potter’s eyes are very, very green.
“You didn’t come so you could report me, either. I thought, maybe-but you could have reported me after the first time, and you didn’t.”
Draco shakes his head. “I came because I wanted to understand why you did it.”
“Why I-?”
“Why you’re pretending to be a Muggle magician! Why you’ve been missing for years, and when I happen upon you, it turns out you’re performing real magic for Muggles and passing it off as illusion!”
“I suppose I wanted to find myself,” Potter says thoughtfully, “or some cliché along those lines.”
“And you thought you might be hiding in a top hat?”
“I mean, that’s why I-left. I didn’t think any of the options I had were right for me, so I selected ‘none of the above’, I suppose. If that makes any sense.”
It makes a lot of sense to Draco, actually. He’d sort of done the same thing.
“As for the magic, well. I’ve always loved it, ever since the first time I knew it was real. That was true, when I said that before. And I suppose I-it feels really nice to share it with people. Even if they don’t think it’s real. I can always see that look of wonder in their eyes, that same wonder I experienced when I was eleven, and-it feels good. I dunno. I like it. I like it a lot. For a little while there I wasn’t sure there was anything I liked anymore, and then there it was.”
Draco kisses him.
Potter is frozen for a moment, and Draco worries he might have preferred to continue talking, but then Potter presses his hips forward and starts working on unbuttoning Draco’s shirt all over again.
Draco still isn’t entirely sure how he got here, but he definitely isn’t complaining.
-
And this is how, bizarrely, Draco Malfoy comes to date Harry Potter.
Or rather, how he comes to fuck Harry Potter, the first time. The dating comes later. Talking about their visits to the Wizarding world (Draco once a month to see his mother and every now and then to see Pansy and Blaise; Harry much more frequently than Draco would have guessed, but always directly to his friends’ residences) and their reasons for leaving-that comes later. Sarah meeting Harry and immediately asking if she can ‘fix that hair’ comes later. Their first visit to the Wizarding world together, to see Narcissa Malfoy, comes later; as so does their second, to Andromeda Tonks and Teddy Lupin, and their third, to Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. The first time Harry calls Draco his boyfriend, their first shared flat, Draco’s graduation, the time Draco accidentally says ‘I love you’ and Harry chokes on a biscuit and Draco is briefly concerned he may have actually killed him-all of this comes later.
First, before any of that, Draco bends Harry over his dresser, and they have some really excellent sex. “Thank fuck you’re so obsessed with me,” Harry says afterwards, sweaty and out of breath, and Draco thinks he should act without a proper plan more often.
Title: Magic Tricks
Author: talithan
Prompt: # 105
Summary: When Draco agreed to accompany his flatmate to a Muggle magic show, he did not expect Harry Potter to be the magician onstage. Since then, nothing has gone according to plan.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco
Warning(s): None!
Word Count: 5665
Author's Notes: For whatever reason, this fic did not want to exist. I had no idea I'd have such trouble writing something without buckets of angst and conflict. Thank you to the mods for being so wonderful and accommodating, and thank you to Natalie and Emily for looking it over for me. wendypops, this was a delightful prompt, and I hope I've come at all close to doing it justice!
Magic Tricks
This is not how Draco thought the evening would go.
Harry Potter clutches at the back of Draco’s shirt and grinds his hips forward, and their hard cocks rub against each other.
“Fuck me-oh, god, please fuck me-”
His hand reaches down to take hold of Draco’s arse, forcing Draco’s pelvis firmly against his own.
When Draco left his flat this evening, he did not have any idea that he would end up in Harry Potter’s flat, on Harry Potter’s bed, snogging Harry Potter rather desperately. He did not anticipate being in a position to fuck the saviour of the Wizarding world. Even now, he isn’t entirely sure how he got here. He meant to blackmail Potter, not dry hump him.
“Please fuck me, Andrew,” Harry Potter begs.
No, Draco thinks, swallowing hard; this was not the plan at all.
-
Six weeks prior, Draco went to see a Muggle magic show in Muggle London with a Muggle girl named Sarah, and it was a terribly strange and confusing experience.
It wasn’t that Draco was out in Muggle London. At that point, Draco had been living in his current flat in a Muggle area for six months, and had been spending time in Muggle London for two years. He liked the Muggle world. He liked Muggle contraptions and Muggle sensibilities and the way Muggles never commented on the tattoo on his arm if he had his sleeves rolled up, except perhaps to say things like, “Nice snake!” with an unaffected smile.
It wasn’t that he was there with Sarah (a girl, first of all, and a Muggle besides). That wasn’t strange because it wasn’t a date or anything, and anyway, she was his friend and flatmate. She liked his snake tattoo and gave him haircuts sometimes because she was in beauty school. It used to be strange, being out with her and her friends, back when Muggle things still surprised and baffled him sometimes and he was constantly convinced she’d find him out somehow. But now they’ve been sharing a flat for half a year, and Draco has grown quite good at passing for a Muggle.
It wasn’t even strange that the “Muggle magic” was clearly actual wandless magic. Draco had rather expected that it would be; he really didn’t think Muggle illusions had any hopes of being convincing enough to attract a paying audience. Of course some wizards violated the Statute of Secrecy and performed magic in front of Muggles. So long as the Muggles had no idea it was real, what was the harm in that?
No, the terribly strange and confusing and-to be perfectly honest-even harrowing fact of the night was this: the “magician” on the humble stage in the small, run-down old theatre was Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived and Defeater of the Dark Lord.
Harry Potter, who had vanished into obscurity in the years since the end of the war.
Harry Potter, who Draco had only seen in statue form in recent history, whenever he came through Diagon Alley on brief visits to Wizarding London.
The curtains parted to reveal him in all of his skinny, messy-haired, bespectacled glory, and Draco jumped in his seat.
“The magic hasn’t even started yet!” Sarah said, laughing.
“But that’s-” Draco exclaimed before he could stop himself, only to cut himself off abruptly.
“That’s?” Sarah echoed.
“Never mind,” Draco said, but his voice was still high, uncertain, slightly panicked.
Harry Potter.
From what Draco had heard, in the whispered gossip he’d caught in bits and pieces during his eighth and final year at Hogwarts, Potter had become a bit of a recluse after the war. A hermit, even. Possibly an agoraphobe. After the last of the seemingly endless funerals, no one had seen him. He didn’t come back to Hogwarts, but no one had really thought he would. He also didn’t become an Auror; that, everyone had thought he’d do. No, he simply vanished, and strangely, everyone seemed to forget about him. The Boy Who Lived had lived while the Dark Lord had not, and in doing so Potter had fulfilled his purpose.
At first, the Daily Prophet spun a tale of intrigue, raising suspicions as to the potentially scandalous motivations behind his disappearance. But his friends didn’t seem concerned, nor did anyone else who’d known him well, and their strange nonchalance toward his absence grew contagious. The Ministry erected a statue of him in Diagon Alley, where he’d first crossed into the Wizarding world, and a second in Hogsmeade. Statues that immortalised him as forever seventeen. In his absence, there was nothing to tarnish that memory.
But now-now, here he was, a little taller and a little older and a little more on stage in front of a theatre of Muggles, with his stupid hair and his stupid glasses and an undeniable lightning-bolt-shaped scar on his forehead, not even covered up. Harry Potter, Muggle magician. It was absurd.
But then, so was Draco Malfoy, Muggle.
He thought of his wand, tucked away in his bedside table in his room in his Muggle flat. He hadn’t touched it in days. He didn’t have to much anymore, not when he spent so much of his time pretending not to be able to do magic. He used to carry it with him all the time, until it started to seem a bit of a hassle, and now it only came out when he knew Sarah wasn’t around and there was something that he didn’t want to do by hand. And when he visited home, of course. Or friends. He did do that, every now and again.
“You aren’t even paying attention,” Sarah whispered scoldingly.
“Hmm?”
“It’s started, or couldn’t you tell.”
Draco wanted to explain that he was too busy having his entire universe rocked to pay attention to a bit of wandless magic, but first of all, there was no justifiable explanation as to Potter’s significance that didn’t require Draco to telling her all about a large number of things that he categorically could not tell her. Second, he also couldn’t explain how unimpressive this magic was without informing her as to the existence of wizards and the fact that Draco, as it turned out, was one of them. And really, the idea that Potter could rock his entire universe was a bit overdramatic.
It was hard to feign delight in these ‘magic tricks’, though. Not only because Potter’s very presence and involvement were incredibly distracting, but also because there was absolutely no mystery to it. Draco imagined that for Sarah and all of the other Muggles, the sense of wonder likely came from not knowing how any of it was done. Nobody was watching this and believing it was real; they were all watching and thinking, whether at the forefront or the back of their minds, that it was a trick, that the man onstage was not actually conjuring flowers but had, rather, devised a complicated mechanism that made it look like he was conjuring flowers.
No, he was merely conjuring flowers, something Draco had seen on countless occasions and even done himself every now and again, when the situation called for it. This was why he’d hoped he’d be witness to Muggle magic tonight, or at least magic from a person he could tell was a Muggle. He’d thought that Muggle magic might be just as inexplicable and fascinating as all of their other inventions, like lamps and cars and stereos and refrigerators.
Instead, there was Harry Potter, doing something very silly with several copies of a ball, some of which intermittently changed colour or disappeared. Draco crossed his arms and pouted, just a little.
Each trick was met with applause, and Draco tried to imagine what his reaction would have been if he were a real Muggle, or if he believed Potter to be one. What delighted him about Muggle inventions is their cleverness, their resourceful ability to make do without magic. Draco would have clapped for the Muggle magician’s pure tenacity, and his blind determination to mimic something he could never actually accomplish.
Draco had been trying to see Muggles as equals. That was the point. But there were moments like this that came unbidden, moments when he couldn’t help thinking of them as fundamentally deficient, in a sense. These were things a Muggle could never actually do, and there wasn’t any getting around that.
He also couldn’t help thinking that if any of them saw these things in any other context, they wouldn’t be clapping. They’d be horrified. He thought of how careful he was to never do magic around Sarah, or any of their other friends, and he knew it wasn’t because of the Statute of Secrecy. It was because he was convinced, justifiably or not, that they’d hate him if they knew.
Draco wasn’t fully aware of the show ending, only that the people around him seemed to be standing to clap, and clapping quite a bit more enthusiastically than before. He stood too, and clapped enthusiastically too, but he was in a distracted haze as he did so, and as he and Sarah left the little theatre and began the walk to the Underground. The theatre was so neglected that it didn’t appear to have any indoor heating system, and so they were already wearing their coats; Draco looped his scarf around his neck as well, and Sarah pulled a hat on over her short hair.
What was he doing there? What on earth had compelled Harry Potter to disappear from the Wizarding world and start performing magic for the entertainment of Muggles?
“Are you all right?” Sarah asked, perturbed.
Draco shrugged. “Sure, I’m all right.”
But he wasn’t.
-
It wasn’t a plan, at first. Draco didn’t think it through much at all. Later, he would tell himself he’d intended all of it from the start, but he really did not think it through. His only rational thought that even remotely approached planning was his consciousness that Potter would probably recognise him, if he hadn’t the first time, and that while going as himself was excusable when he didn’t know it was Potter, it would be pure idiocy now that he did know.
So he charmed his eyes brown, his hair sandier, his nose wider, his skin a little warmer and a little bit freckled. He didn’t have the resources to get Polyjuice or the time to brew it himself, but glamours were better anyway-they lasted longer and were easier to reinforce, with no concerns about drinking a potion surreptitiously every hour.
And he went to Potter’s magic show a second time, sitting slouched in the fourth row with his coat collar flipped up, paranoid that Potter might recognise him despite the glamours. He came alone, as there would be no way to explain the change in his appearance to any of his Muggle friends. And he tried to actually watch the show this time.
He did watch the show, in a way. He didn’t watch the tricks, though; he watched Potter.
What was most confusing about the whole situation was how very normal Potter seemed. Draco hadn’t given him much thought at all in the time since he’d last seen him in person, but if anyone had asked him, he would have guessed that Potter was miserable. There were things he was supposed to do-become an Auror and a protector of innocents, and a symbol of hope for the Wizarding world, and all of that-and he had not done those things, so clearly he was not happy.
But here he was, being-dare Draco even think it-happy. There was an ease and naturalness to his performance that made it seem not a performance at all. He could see how Potter was able to fill this small theatre for five performances a week. It was wonderful to watch, really. He seemed to delight in the magic, even though it was obviously old hat to him, both for the show and in his actual life. And the delight was infectious. Draco could feel it spreading throughout the audience, so that even the grumpy middle-aged couple to his left was grinning and applauding by the end of it.
Draco didn’t mean to come that second time. He also didn’t mean to come the third time, or the fourth. But it seemed important that he do so, for some reason. It seemed very important that he watch Harry Potter perform real magic disguised as fake magic as a form of Muggle entertainment, and so he came back every Thursday night for a month. Always in disguise, and always alone.
By the fifth time, he constructed a why. He was investigating, of course. Harry Potter had been mysteriously missing and Draco had found him, so naturally he had to gather all of the information that he could. He had no reason to believe that Potter was in contact with anyone from the Wizarding world, and this meant that it was up to Draco, and Draco alone, to learn as much about what Potter was doing as possible. And find a way to use the knowledge to his advantage, obviously. The warmth that spread through him every time Potter smiled, he told himself, was incidental.
The sixth time, he decided that proper investigation would require more than merely sitting in the audience while Potter was onstage. He was going to have to follow him after the show. He’d find out where he lived, or maybe what he did in his free time, and use that information to learn a little more and perhaps formulate a real plan. The thought came to him as he was on his way to the show, and throughout it he kept thinking of how afterwards would go.
He’d wait near the stage door, where some of the magic enthusiasts lurked after the show each night to sing Potter’s praises and try to learn his secrets. Draco had noticed them the third time and witnessed a bit of their worship; it was almost as bad as what he’d seen aimed at Potter during school, and just as embarrassing for all involved. Once Potter had made it through those folks, Draco would tail him. He would see the outside of Potter’s nondescript flat, or townhouse, or mysteriously expensive condominium, or worryingly run-down single-room shithole, even-Draco would see wherever it was that he lived, and he would…‘surveil’ it, or something. He knew things. He could observe stealthily. He had plenty of tricks up his sleeve.
Or, not tricks, he thought, as Potter pretended to pretend to levitate a playing card. Spells. All sorts of spells.
He had his collar up as he left the theatre and went to stand a discreet distance from the door, and he rearranged his scarf and knit cap so as to obscure his features even more. He then reached into his pocket for his wand and reinforced his glamours. These weekly excursions had meant that he carried his wand with him more often than he had in months, and it was uncomfortable to realise that doing so now felt uncomfortable. Part of him was convinced someone would notice; someone would detect his wand’s presence in his pocket and it would all be over. Worse than that, though, was the bizarre sensation of the magic as an auxiliary, rather than an integral part of him. Every day he went without it felt awkward and inconvenient, and visiting the magical world always brought him a sense of relief, but there was an incongruity to using magic in the presence of Muggles that made him feel uneasy. He didn’t know how Potter could do it.
That was what he was thinking about when Potter approached him. He was thinking that Potter should not have looked so comfortable, so natural, doing magic in front of Muggles. Because he was supposed to like Muggles, wasn’t he? His whole side had taken offence at the idea that Muggles were less than Wizards. Draco could only understand taunting Muggles with magic if you thought they were indeed lesser creatures. (Muggles were too stupid to know what they were seeing. Muggles couldn’t even recognise what was right in front of them. Those were the sorts of things Draco’s father would have said.) But Potter wasn’t taunting them, nor was he afraid of being found out. He was-
Standing right in front of Draco, smiling.
“Hello,” Potter said, as though it were a question.
“Hello,” Draco said, matching his uncertain tone and speaking in a slightly lower pitch than his natural voice.
“Did you-” Potter gestured vaguely. Draco looked around and realised the others were gone, having praised and interrogated Potter to their satisfaction. Draco was the only one left.
“No,” Draco started, because he hadn’t meant to talk to Potter; he’d meant to tail him. Sneakily. Which was all spoiled now. “I didn’t-”
“Oh.” Potter looked somewhat sheepish. “I thought because you-never mind.”
“I what?”
Potter licked his lips, seeming nervous. “I mean. You come to my show a lot.”
He’d noticed?
Draco instinctively hunched slightly, as though to make himself less visible, despite the twenty-odd reasons that immediately came to mind as to why that was completely ridiculous. He crossed his arms, and raised his chin only to drop it again.
“I like magic,” he said after far too long a pause.
“I bet you do.” Potter was grinning again, for some reason.
“I do,” Draco insisted. “It’s-it’s quite amazing, really.”
Potter crossed his own arms and raised his own chin, slightly. “Well?”
“Well?” Draco echoed.
“Aren’t you going to ask after all of my secrets, then?”
Yes, Draco thought, that’s the hope. “Are you suggesting you’ll share them?”
“Join me for a drink, and we’ll see.”
Draco couldn’t believe his luck. He’d set out to (or rather, decided belatedly to, but what difference did it make?) find out what Potter was up to, and now Potter was as good as offering that information up on a platter? Draco could do all of his investigating from a much closer vantage point than he’d dared to even dream.
“I’d love to,” Draco said, smiling genuinely.
“Excellent! I’m Harry,” Potter said, and held out his hand to Draco.
“I’m-” Draco searched his mind and said the first name he could think of: the last bloke he’d taken home. “I’m Andrew.”
“Good to meet you,” Harry Potter said, as Draco Malfoy shook his hand.
-
A drink became four; ‘investigating’ became nearly three hours of conversation. Draco hadn’t anticipated actually talking to Potter, and he didn’t have any prepared backstory. Instead, he told Potter things that were mostly true but which-hopefully-wouldn’t tip him off as to Draco’s identity. Potter seemed to be doing the same. He said he’d loved magic since the first time he saw it performed, when he was eleven, and that he’d practised all through his teenage years. Draco supposed the fond look in his eyes as he thought of Hogwarts would not have been as glaringly obvious to someone who didn’t know what Potter was really thinking of, but it struck Draco as terribly unsubtle of Potter all the same.
The strange magnetic quality he had onstage remained, even as they sat in a dimly lit booth in a noisy pub. Draco felt the inexplicable urge to pay very close attention to every one of Potter’s words-not because he wanted to catch any scraps of important information that Potter revealed, but because Potter’s speech itself seemed hugely important. Potter was smiling and sharing part of himself with Draco, and he’d bought Draco’s drinks, and he was asking Draco questions about himself, too. It felt very friendly, and after an hour or so, Draco forgot that he was supposed to be investigating.
“It’s getting late,” Potter said eventually, with a weird sort of look in his eyes. Draco suddenly remembered his initial intention to find out where Potter lived.
“I’ll walk you home,” Draco said, which elicited a wide grin from Potter, and Draco rather enjoyed that.
And that was how they got-here.
“Please fuck me, Andrew,” Potter says, and reaches up to cup Draco’s jaw, holding him in place for a hard kiss.
There are many things wrong with this. For one, Potter is apparently gay, which is giving Draco a whole host of new theories as to the reason behind his disappearance from the Wizarding world. For another, this came out of nowhere, which is making Draco a little concerned as to Potter’s well-being; he seems to be a bit of a sex-crazed slut. Draco’s own erection aside, Potter’s present enthusiasm is a little concerning. What sort of person launches themselves at someone else immediately upon arriving home, mouth-first, and takes things directly to the bedroom?
A person on a date, Draco’s mind offers unhelpfully, as he considers his own past behaviour. A person who thinks he’s pulled.
Potter gives Draco some breathing room, but only for a moment; he’s trying to get as much of their clothing off with as little physical separation as possible, it seems. The first offender is Potter’s own shirt; he then gets started on unbuttoning Draco’s.
That wasn’t-was that a date, just now? They did talk an awful lot about themselves and ask a good many questions about each other, and that has always been one of those inconveniences of going on dates. Draco has suffered through it in the hope of eventually getting to the sex. Tonight, on the other hand, it was all he wanted to do, and this offer of sex has caught him completely off guard.
Which is odd, when he thinks about it.
He should be stopping this, he thinks, if he doesn’t want it. He certainly didn’t mean to end up in bed with Potter, and he doesn’t fully understand what made this possible, but-he could take the opportunity now that it has presented itself, couldn’t he?
He’s in the middle of kissing Potter as this occurs to him, in the middle of grinding down against him and sucking on his tongue, which seems to indicate that yes, this is an opportunity he’d like to seize.
The second he decides he wants it, he realises rather forcefully that he can’t.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, much more loudly than necessary. He separates their bodies and moves backwards, all the way to the edge of the bed. “I’m so sorry, Harry, but-we can’t. I can’t.”
Curiously, Potter appears unruffled by this. “Why not?”
“I-I’m not-” Draco takes a deep breath. “I’m not who you think I am.”
Potter grins, of all things. “And who are you, then?”
Draco stands and moves to where Potter tossed his coat over the top of the dresser. He removes his wand from his coat pocket. Potter doesn’t react to that, but then, he is probably too shocked that ‘Andrew’ is a wizard to speak. Draco removes the glamours, all at once. In the mirror above the dresser, he watches as his hair and eyes lighten, his nose returns to its normal shape, and his skin regains its natural pallor. He turns to face Potter, Draco Malfoy once more.
Potter is still grinning.
Which is…odd.
“You aren’t-you don’t seem surprised,” Draco says, after a silence that Potter doesn’t seem inclined to fill.
“I’m not.”
“And…why is that, exactly?”
“You’re a much worse spy than you think you are,” Potter answers, and laughs.
Draco crosses his arms, which makes him realise his shirt is open. He buttons it hurriedly. “I’m an excellent spy,” he counters, and feels his face heat as he hears how ridiculous that sounds aloud.
“I saw you the first time you came to the show,” Potter says, leaning back to rest on his elbows and stretching out his legs. He’s still clearly hard, Draco notices, which makes his face heat further.
“I saw you as well,” Draco says, again before he can consider how incredibly stupid it sounds.
“You wore that exact coat.”
Draco looks at his coat, tossed across Potter’s dresser. “What’s wrong with my coat?” It’s a handsome forest green herringbone, and Draco likes it a lot, thank you very much.
“It stands out a bit in a sea of black and grey; that’s all I’m saying.”
Draco blinks. It does, a bit.
“You knew it was me all along,” he says, wondering if saying it aloud will help him process this information. It doesn’t, not really.
“I knew it was you all along,” Potter confirms. “I mean, the second time you came I just thought it was you again, when I first noticed you. Then I looked a little closer and I wasn’t sure, but you kept coming back so I thought you probably were you, and then you were hanging around afterwards tonight and I thought maybe you weren’t you, but then I talked to you and I knew you were definitely you.”
“You knew I was definitely me,” Draco says dumbly.
“Yes. I was just waiting for you to admit it.”
Draco gasps. “Was that-is that why you were doing all that snogging? Were you trying to-to out-sneak me?”
“‘Out-sneak’ you?” Potter laughs. “I don’t know what you mean, saying I was doing all that snogging. You were definitely doing at least some of it.”
Draco chances a glance down at Potter’s crotch. Still hard. Well, then.
“You knew I was me because I kept coming back? That doesn’t even make sense.”
“You’ve always been obsessed with me.” That grin is at full volume, now.
“Excuse me, Potter, I believe it was you who followed me around constantly-”
“All right,” Potter concedes, “maybe I’ve been a bit obsessed with you as well.”
“A bit obsessed with me?” Draco can’t seem to stop repeating Potter’s words, but then, Potter can’t seem to stop saying very ridiculous things.
“It isn’t your nose you need to alter,” Potter says, “when you’re trying to disguise yourself.”
“My nose?”
Potter is standing, now, and stepping toward Draco. “It’s your cheekbones.”
“My cheekbones.”
“And your jaw, as well. You have a very distinctive face shape, you know.”
“Face shape,” Draco repeats.
Potter nods. “And you did a piss poor job disguising your voice, besides.”
Draco supposes he ought to be taking this as a learning experience so the next time he wants to spy on a person he can do a proper job of it, but he’s currently stuck trying to wrap his mind around Harry Potter snogging him while being completely aware of who he was.
“That was a pretty impressive pile of bullshit, though,” Potter says, somehow making it sound like a real compliment. He is very close to Draco, now, and Draco backs up a couple of steps, until he runs into the dresser. “All of that nonsense about how you’re studying English at uni-how did you even know how Muggle schooling works?”
“I am studying English at uni,” Draco says, finally snapping out of his baffled haze.
“You’re a university student,” Potter says, eyebrows raised, like it’s some sort of joke.
“Yes, I’m a university student.”
“Studying English, with Muggles.”
“I’m in my second year,” Draco says.
“With Muggles,” Potter repeats.
“Yes, with Muggles! I study with Muggles. I live with Muggles. I almost am a Muggle, functionally. How did you think I wound up at your magic show?”
“A tip from a friend who’d found me out? I dunno. I thought you came for a laugh.”
“I came with my flatmate because she thought it would be fun.”
“Your Muggle flatmate?”
“Yes, my Muggle flatmate!”
“Flatmate? Or girlfriend?”
“Flatmate, Potter. She’s gay. As am I, if that needed pointing out.”
Potter seems to consider this for a moment. Draco isn’t sure why this clarification is what has prompted the pondering, but he doesn’t want to do anything to distract from all of the effort that the pondering seems to require, and so he stands silently, waiting.
“How did that happen, then?”
“How did what happen? A pair of gays cohabiting?”
“You, living with a Muggle! And-and studying English, at a Muggle university, and practically being a Muggle, apparently.”
“The story isn’t brief,” Draco warns.
“Well, abbreviate it.”
“I needed a change of scenery.”
“Obviously I need bit more than that,” Potter says, rolling his eyes.
“I wanted to learn.”
“About English literature,” Potter supplies.
“And the rest.”
Draco is sure Potter won’t understand what he means; Draco isn’t even sure that he understands what he means. But Potter nods, comprehension in his eyes. “All of it,” he says.
“Yes.”
“And you’re learning?”
“Every day.”
“So am I,” Potter says.
It feels as though if they say what they mean outright, if they don’t talk in code, somehow the moment will shatter, and they’ll have to take several steps backward. It also feels as though they are understanding each other, more than Draco would have thought possible.
Draco ruins it, of course. He has to.
“Did you really-” He clears his throat, and Potter’s brows knit together. “Did you really want to fuck?”
Potter smiles, and it’s not the same confident grin from earlier. He looks a little bit embarrassed, even. “It wasn’t the original plan, no.”
Draco tries to convince himself that the sinking feeling that follows isn’t disappointment.
“I was expecting you to blackmail me,” Potter continues, “not to flirt with me.”
“I wasn’t flirting,” Draco says indignantly. “I was questioning.”
“You were flirting.”
Draco thinks back to their conversation at the pub, to the way he paid close attention to Potter the whole time and the warm feeling he got when Potter smiled, and he internally concedes that, all right, he might have been flirting, a little bit.
“You were flirting,” Draco insists, aloud.
“Yeah, I was.”
Draco had adjusted to Potter’s proximity, but he feels very aware of it all over again.
“Because you’re obsessed with me,” Draco says.
Potter nods. “No more than you are with me.”
“I’m not obsessed with-”
“You paid for my show six times,” Potter points out.
“Well, yes.”
“You’re not claiming you came for the magic, are you?”
“No,” Draco admits. Potter’s eyes are very, very green.
“You didn’t come so you could report me, either. I thought, maybe-but you could have reported me after the first time, and you didn’t.”
Draco shakes his head. “I came because I wanted to understand why you did it.”
“Why I-?”
“Why you’re pretending to be a Muggle magician! Why you’ve been missing for years, and when I happen upon you, it turns out you’re performing real magic for Muggles and passing it off as illusion!”
“I suppose I wanted to find myself,” Potter says thoughtfully, “or some cliché along those lines.”
“And you thought you might be hiding in a top hat?”
“I mean, that’s why I-left. I didn’t think any of the options I had were right for me, so I selected ‘none of the above’, I suppose. If that makes any sense.”
It makes a lot of sense to Draco, actually. He’d sort of done the same thing.
“As for the magic, well. I’ve always loved it, ever since the first time I knew it was real. That was true, when I said that before. And I suppose I-it feels really nice to share it with people. Even if they don’t think it’s real. I can always see that look of wonder in their eyes, that same wonder I experienced when I was eleven, and-it feels good. I dunno. I like it. I like it a lot. For a little while there I wasn’t sure there was anything I liked anymore, and then there it was.”
Draco kisses him.
Potter is frozen for a moment, and Draco worries he might have preferred to continue talking, but then Potter presses his hips forward and starts working on unbuttoning Draco’s shirt all over again.
Draco still isn’t entirely sure how he got here, but he definitely isn’t complaining.
-
And this is how, bizarrely, Draco Malfoy comes to date Harry Potter.
Or rather, how he comes to fuck Harry Potter, the first time. The dating comes later. Talking about their visits to the Wizarding world (Draco once a month to see his mother and every now and then to see Pansy and Blaise; Harry much more frequently than Draco would have guessed, but always directly to his friends’ residences) and their reasons for leaving-that comes later. Sarah meeting Harry and immediately asking if she can ‘fix that hair’ comes later. Their first visit to the Wizarding world together, to see Narcissa Malfoy, comes later; as so does their second, to Andromeda Tonks and Teddy Lupin, and their third, to Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. The first time Harry calls Draco his boyfriend, their first shared flat, Draco’s graduation, the time Draco accidentally says ‘I love you’ and Harry chokes on a biscuit and Draco is briefly concerned he may have actually killed him-all of this comes later.
First, before any of that, Draco bends Harry over his dresser, and they have some really excellent sex. “Thank fuck you’re so obsessed with me,” Harry says afterwards, sweaty and out of breath, and Draco thinks he should act without a proper plan more often.