Chapter Text
-*-
“Oh yeah, Harry, right there.”
“Here?”
“Merlin yes. Oh fuuuuuuhhhh-”
“Am I hurting you?”
“Mmmm, a little, but in a good way. Where did you – ahhh – even learn to do this?”
“This isn’t my first rodeo, Malfoy.”
“That was awful, but my word, do not stop doing that with your hands.”
“Wait a sec, just gotta get a bit more oil, you’re a bit dry. There we go. How’s this?”
“Up a bit. There. Can you use your knuckle - ohmygod just like that.”
Harry kneaded the sore muscles of Draco’s back with well-practiced skill, soothing the knots and kinks from another long hard weekend spent Curse-Breaking somewhere in Snowdonia. Slowly, he eased off the pressure until Draco lay soft and pliant under his hands, his back rising and falling gently with his relaxed breaths.
“Thank you, love, I needed that,” Draco mumbled, his voice muffled somewhat by the pillow he had shoved under his face.
Harry leaned down and swept Draco’s silky silver-blonde hair across his shoulder, pressing a kiss to the elegant nape of his neck. He took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of Draco’s cologne, bergamot and citrus and musk, the salty hint of sweat (not that he’d ever dare tell Draco he smelled sweaty) and the warm medicinal scent of the massage oil. His chest felt a little tight (as did his pants, unsurprising given that he was straddling a very naked Draco Malfoy) as it hit him once again that Draco was his to hold and look after and love.
“Harry?”
“Mmmm?”
“Are you going to fuck me now?”
Harry burst out laughing. “Merlin, I love you.”
-*-
The three years since Harry’d finally told Draco how he felt had been a wonderful and ridiculous whirlwind.
The first day or so of their relationship was spent shagging voraciously between naps; they had only paused long enough to feed Basil, grab some takeaway, have a bath (which quickly turned steamy in more ways than one) and, at one point, mentally scar Ron when he Floo’d over to borrow some flour and found Draco rogering Harry senseless on the sofa.
Their friends had been happy (“About sodding time,” Ginny’d shouted before forcing them all the do a round of shots to celebrate the end of all that UST). Within a couple of weeks, a photo of them sharing a sweet kiss outside the Leaky made the front page of the Prophet. Draco’d handed him the paper on his way out to work the next day, taking two steps into the hall before whirling back around and pulling Harry into a searing kiss. He’d nipped and sucked his way down Harry’s neck, his hand reaching around to grab Harry’s arse as he whispered fervently, “I haven’t read it. I don’t care what it says. You are mine, Harry Potter, and no one and nothing’s changing that.”
(Harry had read the article later that morning after a bracing run, thrilled that it had been positive on the whole but somewhat alarmed to find out that he was now one half of a ‘power couple’. He’d carefully cut out the photo – grinning goofily as he watched photo-Draco press a soft kiss to his mouth before twining their fingers together and Apparating away – and pondered if being in a power couple meant that he’d have to spend more time on his hair.)
While Harry loved his friends, who’d supported him in so many ways throughout the years, there was something truly special about finally having a partner he could share everything with. Draco was there to clap proudly as Harry and Ron were sworn in as Aurors, reaching out to straighten Harry’s maroon robes on his first day and reassure him that he was going to be fine (“You’re the sodding Savior after all,” Draco’d chuckled, running his hands through Harry’s hair, “If anyone’s made for magical law enforcement, it’s you, love.”). He was there when Andromeda had got in touch, asking if Teddy could visit, and he was there when they arrived, a screeching five-year-old who was exhausted from a long Portkey from Sydney and broke Harry’s heart when he looked at him like a stranger. When Andromeda had asked if they might be willing to have Teddy stay during the Australian school holidays to give her a bit of a break, it was Draco that sorted out the logistics of having a child live with them for a week (the cushioning charms sometimes still came in handy when they weren’t quite able to make it to the bedroom).
Draco was there for the fights, the little squabbles about picking up towels from the floor and remembering to Vanish the rubbish, the big fights where Draco’s face would settle like stone and Harry’d shout and pace around, and he was there for the making up afterwards, the whispered mantras of let’s sort this out and I’m sorry and I love you.
Harry loved Draco and he loved them as a couple. He knew, deep in his bones, that this was a once-in-a-lifetime feeling and he wanted to hold onto it forever. And, because of that, he was going to ask the prat to marry him.
-*-
It was during his year off between finishing his Eighth Year at Hogwarts and starting the Auror training programme that Harry had finally got around to hiring a Financial Adviser. (The fact that Hermione had told him to do so with the same steely no-nonsense air she’d had when presenting him with a personalised Eighth Year revision schedule had no bearing on his decision whatsoever, thank you very much.)
Lugnott was a fairly friendly goblin – in that he didn’t seem to actively dislike Harry or hold that whole theft-by-dragon business against him - and within a few weeks he had catalogued Harry’s various assets on reams of parchment and presented them in all in a very sophisticated leather folder.
Harry had felt like an eleven-year-old all over again as he realised just how much he suddenly had. There were the different vaults at Gringotts (the one his parents had set up for him, the Potter and Black family vaults and Sirius’ own personal vault). As well as Grimmauld Place, he also owned the ruins of the cottage at Godric’s Hollow and a plot of land on the outskirts of the village that had once belonged to the Peverells; a crumbling manor in Gloucestershire that had belonged to the first Potter, Linfred of Stinchcombe; a Black family home nestled on the banks of the Dordogne in Bergerac…on and on the list had gone until Harry had seen, listed inconspicuously under ‘Miscellaneous’, his parents’ wedding rings.
He’d felt a flash of guilt as he realised he hadn’t really ever thought about his parents’ personal affects. He’d seen the crumbling cottage at Godric’s Hollow, had stood at the threshold of his parent’s marital home and hadn’t even thought to ask if anything had been spared. (In fairness to him, trying not to get killed by an evil noseless megalomaniac did take up a lot of brain power.)
His musings had been interrupted when Lugnott had placed a new piece of parchment before him, containing a variety of graphs that, curiously, were moving and flashing almost like the stock exchange charts he’d sometimes caught glimpses of when Uncle Vernon had been watching the news. Harry tuned back in to what Lugnott was saying just in time to understand that he was pretty fucking loaded. He’d immediately asked Lugnott to look into setting up a vault for Teddy and organising some hefty charitable donations to orphanages around both wizarding and muggle Britain.
“I’d like my parents’ wedding rings,” he’d requested at the end of the meeting as he shook hands with his Financial Adviser. They were delivered a few days later by a magnificent (if a little terrifying) eagle owl. His mother’s ring had been a delicate white gold band with a pretty sapphire in the centre that had no doubt set off Lily Potter’s pale skin and red hair beautifully; his father’s was a simple and solid platinum ring that sat heavy in the centre of his palm. He’d almost fancied that he could felt a whisper of their magic as he examined the rings, running the tip of his index finger around them reverently.
The rings had gone back into his vault when he’d realised that he wasn’t going to be needing them anytime soon. Thrilled as he was that his two best friends were joined at the hip (and face) and engaged to be doing that forever, Harry had known then that he wasn’t interested in settling down any time soon. Maybe not ever.
Which was why, when he’d retrieved the rings from his vault three months ago, he’d had a small chuckle to himself. His twenty-year-old self would no doubt have been a little surprised to know that in only five years, Harry would be thinking about how he was going to propose – and to Draco sodding Malfoy at that.
After a night in the Leaky, where Seamus had joined them, bursting with pride about Dean’s new jewellery shop in Diagon Alley and how he was finally taking his talent seriously and doing something with it, ya know?, Harry had anonymously owled his mother’s ring to Dean and asked for it to be altered slightly; he wanted the band widened and thickened to fit Draco’s finger perfectly.
The ring had been returned, exactly right, earlier that morning. Basil had sniffed the little cream coloured velvet box – scuffed at the edges and worn at the front – before curling his little body around it, a sign of approval if Harry’d ever seen one. Harry had finally moved it to the darkest corner of his underwear drawer, using six Auror-grade spells of concealment and a fancy muggle technique where he threw a load of questionable underwear over the box in hopes that the truly shocking amount of holes would deter Draco’s wandering hands.
He smiled to himself as he headed off to Floo Ron. He needed to talk to his best man.