Chapter Text
August 2004
“We are not doing this.” Draco plants his feet against the ground as if that will certainly keep him from being moved or from having to agree to anything.
“Think about it for a second-” Harry’s feet are also planted.
“I have been thinking about it, and I think that you’re out of your mind.”
“ Why?”
“Because you want us to pretend to be in a fucking relationship. In front of your whole family. Who all hate me.”
“Yes, but they currently hate me too.” Harry is met with a withering stare.
“Now you’re just making me hate you.” Withering stare returned, albeit less convincingly.
“We did go on that one date seven years ago.”
“Merlin, that was not a date . We were getting closure from trauma and I was paying penance for my sins.”
“You repented by going out to dinner with me?”
“No. And I’m still being asked to atone for my teenage years. Apparently.”
Harry knows what he’s saying. “Who told you that?”
Withering stare, 2.0, this one flavored with a bit of disgust. Oh, how he hated being misunderstood. Why else would Harry do it?
“Might I remind you of the contents of this conversation?”
“Might I remind you of the context?”
He blanches, and Harry smirks- a now shared trait.
“ I’m the one who always plays the Death Eater card.”
“And I don’t know why. You’ve done more than enough-”
“Are you sane ? Are you sure you’re you? Why are you bringing this up? Now I’m going to think-”
“Draco. That’s not exactly what I’m talking about.”
Draco stares at him but flicks his hand, universally, go on .
“You might have been drunk but-”
“ No.” He shifts away from the wall a little, the weight going to his feet. Harry thinks that he might subconsciously be prepping to run.
“Okay, listen. I know it was a joke, but it was rather a good idea…”
The tips of Draco’s ears are pink, and he takes several deep breaths that end in sighs, no doubt trying to get Harry to say something that will save him. “There’s got to be other ways to go about this.”
Even though Draco won’t admit it, Harry knows he’s won. It’s not quite the same as his schemes with Ron and Hermione, but it’s just as fun. And this is their biggest one yet.
____
“Harry?”
“Draco.”
“I think it is probably time to go home.”
Harry looks up at his friend’s damp brow and hazy eyes and fingers tapping sporadic rhythms into the sticky bar counter. It’s the last one that tells him how out of it Draco really is. That and him suggesting that they go home. That and the bad day Draco had been describing before they both started ordering drinks. That and the fact that he had stopped an hour and a half ago and Draco had not.
He’s supposed to be the responsible one of the two of them. Well. Tonight, he was supposed to be the responsible one. That sort of… went to shit.
“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Harry says, probably having waited too long to respond if the blank look Draco’s giving him is anything to go by. “We should just. Maybe you should wash your hands? Or no, we can do that at home. You’re just-” He gestures toward the mess that is the counter.
Draco snickers. “You sound like me.”
“You sound drunker than you should be on a work night.”
Draco wags a finger in his face. “I do not work. Nobody wants me. I’m a danger to society.”
“You have a job, and you could get another one if you really wanted, by now. Especially since we’re friends.”
Draco nods sagely. “If the golden boy’s forgiven me then all his groupies will fall in line.” He takes another drink (Harry really should turn it to water but he does not trust his magic currently, let alone wandless magic).
“You know,” Draco continues, quite thoughtfully given his state. “It’s great to be friends and all, but if we were dating, if you said you loved me, then there would, no questions asked, most definitely be an entire ceremony where everybody had to ask for my forgiveness.”
Harry stares at him.
“That kind of. Fell off the horse. The rails?”
“Okay, it’s for sure home time.” Harry’s lips quirk up. Him and Draco dating, imagine that.
“Can I side-along? If I apparated right now I would probably end up in that one bloke’s bedroom from last week.”
Harry snorted. “I’m not much better. But at least we wouldn’t end up at a random guy’s house.”
“Where would we end up?” Draco seems to genuinely consider it, leaning most of his weight into Harry’s shoulder through his own. “The Weasley’s bathroom? You and some relative that one time, right? Not your relative, obviously-”
“We’re walking. You need to burn some of the alcohol off, or something.”
The streets are empty for the most part, and anyone who is unlucky enough to be out at near 1 AM doesn’t seem to care for the two twenty something year olds currently racing to a stoplight.
“I hate you,” Draco pants. He lost.
“No, but did you see that? I obliterated you, oh my God.”
“I’m so drunk though. So I don’t think it counts.”
Harry leans an arm against the stoplight that Draco’s draped over with his whole body. “And I’m, what, sober?”
“You don’t get hangovers,” Draco points out helpfully.
“I do so. You’re just never around to see them.”
Draco starts walking again, apparently having decided that it is more desirable to wobble along the curb and bicker with Harry than stand and bicker with Harry.
“You know, there was this one hookup from a particularly dark time in my life where I got drunk and went home with someone, as you do. And I was like blackout, at this point, keep that in mind, so the other guy was too, I think? Or else he totally took advantage of me. You know what, I was way too good for him. I could’ve gone home with anyone there but-”
“Draco, I love you but get to the point.”
“...I had one, I promise.”
“You were talking about hangovers, I think.”
“Oh, yeah. Ugh, if you wake up without a hangover I will not be speaking to you for a week.”
Harry sighs. He will almost certainly never hear the end of Draco’s story. “Okay but, wouldn’t it be better. Wait, wait, okay let’s go back to the imagine-we-were-hypothetically-dating scenario. Wouldn’t it be better if I woke up without a hangover and could like, make you breakfast?”
“Can you even cook?”
“Draco, you literally eat at my place at least once a week.”
“Yeah but what if you secretly have a house elf?”
“I mean I have Kreacher, but I enjoy cooking for you. You always compliment it.”
Draco turns to look at him and raises a brow. Harry worries that he’ll fall off the curb. “I do not?”
“Well you don’t say anything, but I don’t know, I kind of notice that it makes your mood better? On a bad day.”
“I,” Draco falters. “Yeah, you’re completely right.” He stops for a moment. “You’re a really good cook actually. How the hell did I forget that?”
“Thanks, D.”
Draco turns to him, eyes wide, then bolts off down the street with surprising coordination. “NEVER AGAIN,” he yells from almost a block away.
He turns down the wrong street.
“NO, DRACO. COME BACK.”
Draco doesn’t respond.
Harry, of course, chases after him, wondering distinctly when he ever started hanging out with Malfoy over his much more reasonable, much more clingy-when-drunk Ron and Hermione. Neville and Luna. Ginny. They would not be running down the streets of London while very, very drunk. Probably.
“DRACO, I SWEAR TO MERLIN DO NOT TURN DOWN THAT STREET.”
It takes sixteen minutes for Draco to exhaust himself and for Harry to find him almost asleep on the sidewalk. Harry wishes his future boyfriend luck.
____
Present:
“I can’t believe Ginny was dumb enough to date you at one point.” Draco complains over breakfast the day before leaving for their faking-a-relationship-so-that-Harry-survives-the-week vacation.
“I can’t believe I was dumb enough to break up with her.”
Draco turns to him, brow raised but eyes serious. “You don’t still love her, do you?”
“No, no. You literally- you know that I don’t.” There’s too many drunken conversations and random, freedom-in-the-darkness ones for him not to. “But now we’re here, so.” He shrugs. “Dumb.”
“Ah, right. Because you forgot to factor in Ginny’s very large family and her many older brothers when you broke up with her.”
“Less older brothers and more mother . I can’t sit through another dinner of ‘Harry, how’s your girlfriend’ and ‘oh, you don’t have one? well neither does Ginny.’ And I talked to Ginny last week, and she’s coming stag.”
Draco nods. “It always falls to you.”
One of Draco’s favorite pastimes is making fun of the Chosen One. It had taken them a while to get there, but as soon as the ice had broken and Draco was no longer scared of being sent to Azkaban for a poor joke, it was everything Harry could do to get him to stop.
“What do you normally have to do in a fake relationship?” Harry asks.
“Get photographed together and end up on the front page.”
Harry rolls his eyes. “Convince the extended Weasleys and I’ll even give them a quote. Willingly.”
Draco seems to brighten, though Harry doesn’t know why: Draco knew exactly what the deal was when he agreed as soon as he realized he could get something. Not that Harry doesn’t think Draco would’ve been willing to help him- it just would’ve taken a couple more days of wearing him down.
“We’ll need a backstory. And we have to set boundaries that are realistic enough to be believable but not so weird that we ruin our friendship by accidentally hooking up.”
“Why would we hook up rather than just getting really awkward? “
“Because we’re both attracted to men and have eyes.”
“Hard pass.”
Draco bristles a little, preening just how a bird would if a bird could understand English and be indignant about what it heard. “I would pass on you first. The Chosen One, how cliché is that?”
Harry is considerably less offended by this. Considerably as in not at all. “Can we just stick with our backstory being how we actually met?”
“That can be how we became friends but your friends know too much of that story. We have to come up with a ‘when’ and a ‘how’ for us actually dating.”
“We can be drunk.”
Draco steals a piece of toast from Harry’s plate. He’s not going to finish anything else on his own plate. It’s tradition.
“I agree. We will definitely have to be drunk to survive this weekend.”
Harry knows that Draco knows that he’s being difficult. “You came up with the idea when we were drunk. How about we got drunk one time and you kissed me?”
“Why do I have to kiss you ? I just told you that going out with the Chosen One is cliche enough already. Plus, you totally would be the one who would have to chase me.”
“One, I would only have to chase you because you’re emotionally constipated. Two, you have the restraint of a niffler when you’re drunk and like you said ‘we’re both attracted to men and have eyes.’”
Draco glares at him.
“So. You kissed me when you were drunk one time then ran away to another country for ‘work.’ And then I tracked you down and we lived happily ever after,” Harry says. It’s not the farthest thing from the truth, honestly. Minus the kissing, Draco had run away the first time they went out to get drinks together and Harry had insinuated that they were friends.
“What, am I joining Mother in France? Donville-les-Bains and the Sunday Market?”
“Somehow I can’t see you at the beach.”
Draco blanches, and Harry uses the time to switch their plates. Draco doesn’t protest. Tradition.
“How do you know where that is?” Draco asks, looking mildly frightened at the notion that Harry possesses any worldly knowledge.
“I’ve been friends with you for six years-”
“ Almost six years. six years in August.”
“- and it’d be impossible not to know where your family’s summer home is.”
Draco taps his toast against the side of his- Harry’s- plate. “This is good actually. Since we’re really friends we don’t have to learn any random facts about the other to seem convincing. The only thing is,” Draco smirks, “we have to figure out how other parts of the relationship would go.”
“The boundaries you were talking about. Right.”
Draco shrugs. “That and what we’re like in bed.”
Now it’s Harry’s turn to blanch. “There is no way we’re going to have to talk about that with Molly Weasley.”
Draco laughs at him. “Believe it or not, I’ve actually had several conversations with several of the people there. No ones going to believe that we’re together if I don’t make any jokes.”
“Why don’t you just...do what you normally do, and I’ll follow your lead?” Harry did not want to be dealing with this at breakfast. It’s not that he’s a prude, no, he just doesn’t want to talk about sex over cold eggs, especially not sex with the man whose cold eggs he’s currently eating.
“Yeah, sure. I doubt it’s going to be that big of a problem. Only your ex-girlfriend’s slash pseudo mum is going to be nitpicking and psychoanalyzing everything we do. No big deal.”
Harry sighs. He’s right, of course, but this is becoming much more complicated than he expected. In Harry’s mind, he got Draco to agree and they showed up at the Weasleys and possibly held hands. Harry got to dodge Molly’s persistent attempts to set him and Ginny back up, and Draco gets to be loved by the entire wizarding world.
“Okay, fine. What do you want?”
Draco laughs at him, again. Draco quite frequently laughs at things that Harry does not intend to be funny.
“I was mostly kidding.” Of course. “But I’m the best you’ve ever had and you’re average, at best. A Tuesday hookup.”
“Tuesday?”
“I’ve had a few good ones.” Draco picks at his nails, looking impossibly impressed with himself. “They’re mostly terrible though. Or average, at best.”
“I can’t believe you even got to go out on Tuesday nights.” Harry doesn’t frequently regret his job as an Auror- rather, he doesn’t frequently regret his job in the field as an Auror- but Draco seems to be enjoying his twenties quite a bit more than he is.
“Well, it’s not like I could get anything other than day jobs at the time. Let alone be an Auror or something respectable.”
“You got a job eventually. Plus, you don’t even want to be an Auror.”
Draco smiles at him, most likely also thinking back to the many conversations they have had where Draco complains about Aurors in general. Draco complains about Harry’s job more than Harry does.
“I definitely don’t.”
“Great, I know nice little tame things about you, and you get to convince everyone I love that I am terrible in bed.”
Draco, ever sympathetic, responds, “Not everyone you love is going to be there. Hagrid won’t. Your Auror friends. Probably most of your Hogwarts friends too. So I’m really only embarrassing you around your family.”
“How does that make it better?”
Draco sighs and gets up to do the dishes, a sure sign that Harry is being particularly slow. “None of them are going to believe me. They’re just going to think I’m in love with you and covering it up by making fun of you. How do you not know this, you’re my best friend.”
It’s not the first time Draco’s said it, but it makes Harry pause for a second anyway. He fights off a smile, knowing that Draco will one hundred percent comment on it, but it will never, ever not be funny to think of what little eleven year old Harry Potter would think of Draco Malfoy, even a twenty-four year old Draco Malfoy, claiming that a twenty-four year old Harry Potter was his best friend. Even more wild to think that twenty-four year old Harry Potter agrees with the statement.
“And I suppose at least Ron and Hermione had to catch on at some point that instead of bullying them you were professing undying love.”
“Hermione absolutely knows. She’s the only reason I know.” Draco stops washing the dishes and turns around to face him, still sitting at the table. “She got me alone one time when I was out with you lot and we had a very long, very drunk, very teary conversation about my emotional inadequacy and how she had finally forgiven me completely when she saw how I was around you. I think I apologized about a thousand times that night.”
“And if Hermione knows,” Harry finishes for him, “Ron knows.”
“Yes,” Draco says, thoughtful. “But if they, you know, if they ever mention that I’ve crossed a line or something… I mean I can’t promise that I’ll stop teasing, there’s just so many opportunities to. I can’t help myself. Besides-”
“I’ll let you know if they come to me,” Harry says, cutting off Draco’s rambling before he inevitably gets self-conscious because he knows he’s going on and says something incriminating. “But at this point, they might come to you.”
Draco has turned back toward the sink to finish the dishes, but Harry can see the muscles in his back and arms stop moving. Harry wishes it wasn’t so bright outside so he could see Draco’s reflection in the window.
When he speaks, it’s a little quieter, if you’re paying attention. “Would they?”
“You go out with them without me, sometimes.”
Draco resumes his dishwashing. He has a point in mind, in control of the conversation again. “Only when I know you’ll be there later.”
“I don’t think you give yourself enough credit, Draco.” Harry knows he doesn’t. It was months after they first met that Harry even considered that Draco could be changing. Could be changed. But Draco proved himself, time and time again. “Equal Front is so incredible. Hermione knows it is. Ron does. Everyone going to be there knows about what you’ve done.”
“Why, because you love to brag about me?” Harry’s just happy Draco refrained from saying something more self-deprecating than that.
“I do, actually. You’re pretty fucking incredible.” Draco side-eyes him. “You went from being a bratty, bigoted, emotionally stinted bully to actively spending your life reversing the toxic ideology you’d been taught since you were a child. In others. That’s pretty fucking impressive.”
Draco hums. “Maybe if you didn’t think I could change. I have a lot to account for.”
Sometimes Harry really wants to shake this man. How can he change so much and not see it? Merlin knows when his ego is going to show and when it’s going to conveniently be nowhere to be found.
“It’s going to be fine,” Harry says. Because it is . The Weasleys, at least the most important ones, have long since accepted that Harry and Draco are best friends and that he’s no longer evil. Many of them have even accepted that he probably never was.
Draco lets out an enormous breath, and Harry feels himself relax a little too. Harry had said something that could potentially get Draco to stop being a massive idiot for one second. Harry: one:: Draco’s psyche: zero.
“I fully expect you to be at Equal Front every weekend for the foreseeable future.”
Here it comes: Draco inevitably getting everything he wants by exploiting his own emotional vulnerability.
“Then you’re doing Thai with me after.”
“I like it better when you cook,” Draco responds, and Harry is not quite pleased enough to cede completely.
“Half, half.”
Harry doesn’t know why they argue at all. ‘Half, half’ is how it always ends up.
“I have to go pack,” Draco announces, drying his hands on his favorite of Harry’s dishtowels, a snitch pattern embroidered with a golden He’s a Catch ! that Draco had found in a tiny Quidditch shop on a random street in Wizarding London. He’d been laughing too hard to do anything other than frantically flap his hands until Harry had purchased it. Is it that funny? No. Will Harry ever get rid of it? Also no.
“Are you sleeping over tonight? I don’t fancy having to floo to yours to wake you up tomorrow.” The first time they went on a trip, they took an early morning Portkey. Draco had not woken up, and Harry had to go to his place and practically overturn all the pots in the kitchen to get him downstairs and out the door. Needless to say, they leaned towards afternoon or evening portkeys from then on. This time, Harry didn’t think Draco wanted to be at the Burrow for an extra evening. He also didn’t think he wanted to have to sleep in the same bed as Draco for any more nights than he had to. They were fully grown men, see, and he’s slept at the Burrow before. The beds are very intimate.
“I’m going to be awake,” Draco says, definitely lying.
“Because I’m going to wake you up.”
“Not my fault you’re a morning person.” Draco grabs his wand but leaves his coat and multiple random notes he had written on a paper towel that morning. “Dinner?”
One would think that meant that Draco was offering to bring dinner to his lovely and gracious host/alarm clock, but Harry knew that he was actually asking Harry to cook dinner for the two of them. He’s long since gotten used to it. Maybe he wouldn’t cook as much if Draco didn’t ask him to everytime he was over.
“Sure. And the weekend’s pretty casual, forgo the autumn suit.”
Draco pouts. “You love the autumn suit.”
“ You love the autumn suit.”
“True,” Draco shrugs. “Plus, most everybody already saw me in it, so it wouldn’t be worth the effort. What do you think instead though?”
Harry looks at Draco, dressed in a pressed shirt and slacks on a Monday morning. Harry wasn’t even dressed, and he had work today. “Just. Bring your normal stuff?”
Draco nods. “You’re right, I outdress you even on your best day.”
“And I outfly you.”
“In our fake relationship, I outseduce you.”
“I thought we agreed that you were better in bed, nothing about you seducing me.”
Draco pretended to consider for half a second, considerably longer than he’s normally willing to. “We also agreed that you had to court me after I accidentally drunkenly kissed you. So it’s implied.”
“You can’t be better in bed and have me wrapped around your little finger.” .
Draco regards him in such a way that is so painfully Draco that Harry can’t stop the smirk that pulls at the corners of his mouth. “Don’t I, though?”
No. Probably. “No.”
“See you for dinner,” Draco calls, half out the door, looking- as ever- terribly impressed with himself.
As soon as he’s gone, Harry goes to the guest room to make sure the sheets are clean and get fresh towels for the bathroom. Draco doesn’t always shower there, but he wants there to be the option.
Harry stops in the middle of the hall. Damn. Draco was right. He never thought he’d see the day when he could one, voluntarily cede that Draco was right, and two, agree that he most likely gives a little too much ground when it comes to him.
But at the same time, Draco was willing to visit a bunch of people who he actively fears will hate him while pretending to be his boyfriend. Their enabling goes both ways. Guess that’s just what best friends do.