Archive of Our Own

“Not very far,” said the Portkey officer, narrowing his eyes at Draco’s dress shoes. “Is maybe three kilometres.”

“Three kilometres?” repeated Draco absently, bending to look through the tiny window beside him. It was covered by a film of dirt, giving the whole scene a murky, depressing vibe, and Draco gripped the handle of his case a little tighter as he peered up at the heavy clouds and the barren, craggy mountains which towered over them on all sides. The wind whistling sharply through a crack in the wall beside him made him jump back, and the man laughed at that: a grim, grating sound which quickly turned into a hacking cough. Draco wrinkled his nose.

“Don’t worry, city boy,” said the officer, faux-cheerfully, as he tugged the door open. “Only one road. Is straight.”

There was only one road, but it certainly wasn’t straight. Nor was it flat, and Draco’s hair was damp and curling at the tips by the time he’d crested the ridge and the entire compound finally came into view. It wasn’t quite how Draco remembered Charlie describing it—the whole thing was smaller, a little rougher, perhaps, than Draco had imagined. Although, if he was being honest, his memory of that whole night was rather whisky-soaked, a haze of bright lights, pretty words, and a very nice cock, so it could easily have been his mistake. And what had he expected anyway? After all, there were dragons, and lakes; there was a row of ramshackle little houses with peaked roofs, and—thank Merlin—standing beneath a cluster of charred tree stumps, he could see a familiar head of ginger hair.

There was another man with Charlie: a thin, lanky guy that Draco didn’t recognise. They were facing away from Draco, laughing heartily as they tossed lumps of burned wood onto a waiting cart. Draco’s pulse quickened at the sight of the shift and play of the muscles across Charlie’s broad back, at the generous expanse of that familiar, freckled skin.

He cleared his throat.

“Excuse me? Charlie?”

Both heads swivelled around, their laughter dying instantly as they caught sight of Draco. Neither of them was Charlie, but the owner of the body Draco had been so admiring was indeed painfully, dreadfully familiar.

Draco’s heart had lodged itself somewhere in the back of his throat. “Weasley?” he said, in a high-pitched voice he didn’t recognise. “Er… Ron, I mean?”

Ron’s mouth was open wide, but he made no attempt to speak. He pulled an old cloth out of his pocket and wiped his brow, eyes closed in disbelief, as Draco shuffled his feet.

“Malfoy?” he got out, finally. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Caught offguard, and prickly in his formal robes, Draco deliberately drew himself up to his full height. Sadly, he was still a couple of inches shorter than Ron, so he brushed some imaginary dirt officiously from the front of his cloak for good measure.

“Weasley. I’m looking for Charlie. You don’t happen to know where he is, do you?”

Ron snorted. “You’re looking for my brother?”

“I am.”

“Well, Malfoy, I don’t know what to tell you,” said Ron, shrugging. “He’s not here.”

“Fine, that’s fine. I’ll just… wait.” Draco looked around at the barren landscape, the clouds gathering overhead. “Er, how long will he be, do you know?”

“Yeah, no idea. My darling shit of an older brother’s off on a jolly chasing some Vipertooth hybrid around South America. Or possibly he’s chasing its breeder, I’m not entirely clear. Anyway, he’s been gone for a couple of weeks now. Last time, it was six months.”

“Six… months? So who… who’s in charge?”

The man behind Ron laughed, revealing a missing front tooth. Ron scowled at him, then turned back to Draco. “That would be me. Why?”

“Alright,” said Draco, slowly. This wasn’t exactly going to plan, but… well, needs must. “I’m here about the job.”

“What job?” Ron seemed genuinely puzzled. Draco fought the overwhelming urge to turn and run.

“Charlie told me. Last month, when I… er, bumped into him he said there was a job going at the reserve. Asked if I wanted to come… come out and join him.” He spread his arms, feeling quite the fool. “So here I am.”

“Oh. Oh.” Ron winced. “Malfoy, there’s no job.”

“What? But he told me…”

“It was a line.”

“What?”

“It’s Charlie. It’s part of his thing. Oh yeah, I’m a dragontamer. Got my own reserve. You should come and see.” Ron rolled his eyes. “He was trying to get you into bed, I’m afraid.”

Draco looked down, feeling the merciless spread of a blush across his cheeks. Ron huffed a laugh. “Ah, so clearly the line worked. Listen, I’m sorry to break it to you.”

Draco swallowed, his entire body burning with shame. Would Apparating back to the Portkey office work, he wondered? Probably not; he wasn’t great with unfamiliar places. But then again, perhaps if he gave it a go he’d splinch himself out of his misery.

“Oh. Oh sure,” Draco said, trying to sound casual, like he hadn’t been living on his best friend’s sofa for eighteen months. Like he hadn’t just up and quit that shitty job at the club, like he was able to just stroll around London without getting spat on. Like he still owned a mansion… or at least owned more than the contents of the bag resting at his feet. “So there’s not actually a job going, then?”

“No,” Ron said quietly, “there’s really, really not.”

Draco nodded, mute. He turned away, trying to ignore the lump in his throat as he seized his bag and started back down the really-not-straight path once more, lost in a numb sort of fog. He hadn’t taken ten steps when Ron caught up with him, a strong, burn-scarred hand grasping him firmly around the arm.

“Look, Malfoy. I can’t give you a job, exactly… I mean, I can’t pay you right now, but you can stay here for a bit. If you want. ‘Course, we haven’t got any spare rooms so I’ll have to Transfigure you up a bed at mine. But you’re welcome here, if you’re prepared to chip in.”

Draco wanted more than anything to keep walking, but what choice did he have? So he swallowed his pride along with his self-pity, turning back to meet a pair of concerned blue eyes. “Yes, Weasley, I suppose that would be acceptable.” 

***

Everything tasted better after working so hard all day that your palms bled. That was Draco’s first lesson. 

Second lesson, which he didn’t get to learn until he’d spent his first few days clearing dung and mending fences and digging the kitchen gardens: no magic around the dragons. Not that Draco was allowed near them, or even wanted to be, for that matter. But the hard and fast rule on the reserve was that everyone keep their wands holstered and their hands clean of spells when the dragons were nearby, no telltale crackle of magic to make the dragons skittish.

“It makes them anxious,” one of the older wranglers, whose name Draco hadn’t learned yet, told him over lunch. He had spent the first few days eating alone and following Ron’s terse directions about his duties, and he was trying desperately not to appear too pathetically grateful for the company. The woman was using a wedge of bread as a mop for her gravy, and she kept having to flick her long grey plait back over her shoulder to stop it slipping onto her plate. “They are of— What would you call it in English? Old magic? Earth magic?”

“Elemental magic, maybe?” Draco said thoughtfully, through a mouthful of beef. He was genuinely interested in this stuff, always had been, with his NEWTs in Arithmancy and History of Magic and Ancient Runes, and maybe the woman could tell, because she fished a stubby pencil out of her waistcoat pocket and did some precise-looking sketches of dragon anatomy, and before Draco could notice his stew going cold they had moved on to leylines and standing stones and the particular shape of dragon claws.

By the time the shift change bells chimed, Draco had one friend.

Ron, passing them on his way into the canteen, looked tired (as well he might, for he’d been gone before Draco woke, his neatly-made bed cold when Draco touched it furtively as he passed) and suspicious. 

“Crina,” Ron nodded at the woman—Crina, Crina, Crina, thought Draco, remember Crina—“are you able to show Malfoy here the ropes?”

“At least this one knows his leylines from his Lord’s prayer,” Crina said severely to Ron. “And he has more sense than the last boy your brother brought in.” She glared across the hall at a willowy dark-haired man who was trying to manoeuvre a spoonful of custard to his mouth. Under her scrutiny, his hand began to shake slightly. Crina returned her sharp gaze to Draco and then nodded briefly. “’I'll get him started for you, boss. At least we’ll know soon enough if he’s cut out for it here.”

Ron looked dubiously at Draco, and nodded shortly. “There isn’t a lot going on at the moment, not at your level anyway. Wrong time of year for casual work, really, but we can see how things go.”

It was very clear that he didn’t think that Draco was going to be able to keep up with the work, so Draco spent the afternoon digging dragon dung with such furious commitment that his spade began to smoke gently in the embers. It wasn’t even as if he wanted this stupid job, but he definitely needed somewhere to lie low for a while, and where lower than a dragon manure pile, after all. And he certainly didn’t need Ron Weasley’s low opinion to go along with that.

That night, Draco’s arms shook so badly and his back ached so deeply that he could barely spoon his dinner into his mouth, and he actually wobbled when he stood up to make his way to bed. Ron was at a small side table, surrounded by bodies and the hum of conversation, but he looked up sharply as Draco tottered towards the door, and their eyes met for a brief moment before Ron turned his attention back to his plate and Draco staggered the rest of the way to their house. Draco fell asleep the minute he climbed into the bockety little transfigured camp bed, and when he woke the next morning, every muscle in his body screaming in pain, Ron’s bed was empty yet again.

***

“It’s free-range,” Draco shouted through the Floo to Pansy, who from the sounds of things had half of their old Slytherin class and the contents of an entire off-licence back at hers.

“Sorry, darling, what was that? We’re having pre-drinks here, you know, and it’s getting a little rowdy.”

Draco hadn’t even remembered that it was Friday night, so caught up was he in the small internal schedule of the reserve, though at least now he was nine weeks in he was reasonably sure Ron wasn’t going to give him the boot.

“Free-range, I said!” Draco tried again. “It means the dragons are allowed to just fly about the place.”

“That sounds wonderful, darling, but when are you coming home to me?” Pansy purred. “It’s been nearly three months and I miss your face. Although,”—her disembodied head peered at him more closely—“looking at said face, I must say it rather suits you, the life out there. You’re looking positively broad. Are those shoulders I can see?!”

Draco shrugged, then felt immensely silly and unfolded himself from in front of the fire so she could see him properly.

“Pans, look at me. I have fifteen separate burns on my body. We consume so much strong alcohol here that I think my hangover has actually settled in as a permanent feature. I have three shirts to my name, none of which are unsinged. Did you know that dragon dung can retain heat for up to eighteen hours after deposit? Ask me how I know.” He sat back down abruptly in front of the fire, fingers itching to reach out and touch Pansy, ruffle the tips of her silky hair, steal her drink, taste the huevos rancheros that were the only thing she knew how to cook. “And to top it all off, Weasley doesn’t even have any hours for me this week. I actually miss my shovel, if you can believe that.”

“I hope you haven’t shagged him again,” Pansy said sharply, shoving her empty glass at someone Draco couldn’t see and making pouring motions with her hand. “He may be a war hero and, yes, there is that body to consider, but from what I saw that night, he was an absolute tart. And I know you’ve already convinced yourself that you deserve to be treated like dirt for the rest of your natural life, but at some point you’re going to have to start accepting that you are who you are, and you did what you did, but you’re also more than all of that. It’s not like you can do penance forever, darling.” Her hand came back into view, clutching a fresh drink—a Dirigibellini, it looked like, and Draco thought of the sharp fresh taste and swallowed down a wave of homesickness. Pansy drank deep.

“Sorry, darling,” she said, sounding more reasonable. “Turns out I had a lot to say on the topic of slaggy redheads who fuck and run.”

“It was a one night stand,” Draco said, trying to keep the irritation from his voice. He’d spent far too much of his small savings on this call already, and he wanted to feel like he always used to with Pansy, safe and easy and a little bit hopeful. “That’s sort of the point of them. And anyway, it’s not that Weasley. Charlie’s not even here at the moment. I’m talking about Ron.” He blinked in disdain when Pansy whistled long and low. “Yes, Pansy, Ron. Ron who I bullied mercilessly at school and who then went on to literally save the world, and is now my boss. That Ron.”

“What’s that like, then?” Pansy said, the slightest gurgle of a laugh in her voice. “Is he a decent sort? He probably is, knowing your luck. At least if he was a massive twat you could hate him for it.”

“He’s…” Draco didn’t think he had ever said anything about Ron Weasley without making it sound like an insult, and he closed his eyes, pained. “He’s really decent. It’s more than I deserve, really. And he runs the place like…” He thought of all the things he could hardly escape, sharing the small room that was supposed to be Ron’s refuge in the overcrowded house. Ron with his face white and strained, going over accounts at the kitchen table while Draco tried to make a cup of tea quietly, and the amount of knocks that came at their door after hours, requests and questions that only Ron could handle, and the way Ron looked at his broom sometimes, like he didn’t think he’d get to see the sky again. “He works really hard. And he’s good at it, you know? He’s busy all the time, so I hardly see him, which is fine. But he loves the dragons and he keeps a good eye on things and I actually feel like— Look, Pans, I know you think it was a mad idea, to come out here, and maybe it was, but there’s something about the place. I think I might stick around. For a while, anyway.”

Pansy was silent for a long moment, so much so that Draco reached out to poke the coals, worried the connection was failing, and had to see his fingers passing through her disembodied head as she sighed.

“It just feels like a long way to have to run,” she said, lipstick smile brittle. “You’re still the same person, Draco, even all the way over there. The sooner you realise that you’re allowed to be happy, the better. Will you at least make it home for Christmas?”

Draco, who still hadn’t made any money to pay Pansy back for the international Portkey fare she had given him to get him to Romania in the first place, let alone enough for a return journey, lied and said yes, which at least seemed to cheer her up a bit. By the time the chimes went to end the call, Draco could hear the distant clang of the gates of the big animal pens, and then it was time for dinner.

***

On the fourth morning in a row that Crina told Draco there was nothing rostered for him in the schedule, Draco finally went and banged on the door of Ron’s office.

He could hear Ron talking inside, but he took so long to answer that Draco nearly left; only sheer stubbornness kept him shivering there in the sly whistling arc of the wind from the mountains with his fist aching from pounding against the wood. When Ron finally answered, Draco wished he had left. Ron looked drawn, his overlong hair tousled, days worth of stubble glinting golden across his jaw and down his throat. He had a bullwhip wedged in his waist holster, and his dirty boots were lying just inside the door, but otherwise he looked like he hadn’t seen the outdoors for a while. His jacket was nowhere to be seen, and the pale milky linen of his work shirt was still clean, though it was faded and thinning from what must have been repeated washing and Extinguo charms.

Ron mouthed something Draco couldn’t quite make out and held up a finger apologetically to Draco as he listened to the distant crackling voice of someone shouting over a Muggle walkie-talkie.

“I don’t—” Ron said into the mouthpiece, sounding frustrated, and rolled his eyes when he was immediately drowned out by a roar of static. 

“Yakiv,” he shouted. “Do not try to approach the border, is that clear?” He waited for a moment, no reply forthcoming, and then pressed the button again. “Do you copy? Keep clear of the wards and I’ll send someone to sort it out asap. Yakiv?”

He threw the walkie-talkie down on the table and sat heavily, face in hands for a moment, before looking up at Draco. There was a moment, before he rearranged his face into a polite professional blank, that his expression made Draco swallow hard.

“... help you, Malfoy? I really do only have a minute though—I need to get out to the eastern perimeter to check that ward breach out.”

“Right,” Draco began, hating the hesitation in his own voice. “It’s just… sorry, I know you have a lot on your plate at the moment, but Crina doesn’t have anything in the schedule for me, and I wondered if maybe there had been some sort of oversight?”

Ron looked at him flatly, before getting up and going to a small cupboard by the door. He grabbed his ancient dragonhide jacket.

“There aren’t any oversights, Malfoy,” he said, shortly. “I put the schedule together myself. If you’re not on it, it’s because there’s nothing suitable for you at the moment. Was that all?”

“Well— sorry, I realise this might not be a great time, but I don’t know quite what I should do about making up my hours? There must be something I could help with, I know the kitchens are low on—”

Ron interrupted coolly, not looking at him, as he bent to lace his boots. 

“There’s plenty to do, Malfoy. The library has a number of English language texts, and the TV room is always free during the day—Mara should be able to show you how to tune it in, if you grab her before she heads out this morning. And you know where the village is. There are even some nice walks in the area, or so people tell me.”

“I meant,” Draco said icily, “I’m not sure what I should do about money, Weasley.”

Ron had the door open now, that blasted wind screeching through the door, making the fire dip and waver, ruffling Ron’s hair. The sun was fully up, its remote clear light behind Ron, so Draco couldn’t make out his expression.

“I told you when you turned up here that we might not have anything for you,” Ron said. “I don’t care what my idiot brother promised you before he kicked you out of his bed, but I’m running this place and it’s up to me to work out what we need. You’re not trained to work with the dragons, and we already have enough of the local kids to manage the maintenance of the place. You’re more than welcome to stay here, and as our guest we’re delighted to include you in our meals and our activities. And”—he shifted in the doorway with what might have been a small concessionary nod of approval—“I hear good reports of your work. Crina’s pleased with you, and if she has no complaints, neither do I. It’s not about you, Malfoy. As soon as some hours open up, I’ll get you back out there.”

Draco’s face burned, maybe the wind or maybe his humiliation, but he knew he couldn’t hide it in the clean winter light that streamed through the door. 

“I didn’t come here for your charity,” he said, viciously, his voice a high thin thing. 

“I know that, and I’m sorry,” Ron said, and he finally turned his back on the room, his shoulders in silhouette tight and defensive. “But that’s what you’re getting.”

***

There was something to be said, Draco thought, for being so tired that he couldn’t see straight. Not in general, of course, the day-to-day wasn’t great, but for elemental magic, the less focus the better. Leylines were finicky things at the best of times, and sometimes the best way to find them was to be very much not looking for them at all. 

Above him, the sky felt huge, night trails of cloud streaming away towards the encroaching moon. Draco stifled a yawn and absentmindedly shifted his hazel rod to his left hand so he could reach the gogosi he had stuffed into the pocket of his jacket that morning. The dough was still soft and yielding under his teeth, icing sugar puffing from his fingers in flurries, and not for the first time he thanked his lucky stars for Florin’s.

He loved the bakery, oddly enough. He had gone into the first shop he saw with a Help Wanted sign in the window, not really caring what the job was as long as it paid. But the bakery was like a deliciously fragranced pink cave, if a cave came with doilies and a jaunty striped awning, and Ana and Florin didn’t mind that Draco had to rely on translation charms and smiles most of the time, and they didn’t even mind that he didn’t really know how to bake. They let him help with the mixing and the kneading and the selling, and they were happy for him to leave before lunch every day, and he got to eat anything he had helped to make. They were used to the dragon people, and they looked on Draco with a sort of bemused kindness that involved giving him kisses goodbye and stroking his hair—always curling from the humidity—when he pulled off his hairnet, and feeding him up with whatever they thought was most delicious on any given day.

He didn’t have much time, though, as since his talk with Ron, he found himself back on the roster at the reserve most days. Not that Ron ever mentioned it, or did any more than give Draco a clear assessing glance across the canteen every time the weekly hours were posted. Draco was getting callouses across both palms, and fresh burns laid over older burns, and he had freckles of windlash across his nose, and the days dwindled down to sharp points of here, and now, and this is it. It was oddly comforting.

In his hand, the hazel rod twitched lazily, and he hastily licked the last of the sugar off his fingers and grasped it loosely in his wand hand, waiting for the kick of magic that would draw the line for him. When it came, it was almost an anticlimax, a straight strong line already marked out by an old stone wall, nestled right at the foot of the mountains. The moon was swollen bright, and Draco could follow the leyline without stumbling, and under the drag of the ancient magic he felt the shiver of the wards, new-wrought and foreign and shaky.

“No wonder nothing’s working,” he muttered. From her perch on the broom above him, Crina cackled. 

“You know what they say,” she shouted into the wind. “Talking to yourself is the first sign of madness.”

“Not half as mad as whoever set these wards up,” Draco called back disapprovingly. “This is an absolute bodge job and a disgrace to the profession.”

“Tell that to the boss,” Crina said, and as she swooped away, Draco heard the dense crackle of static from her walkie-talkie.The wind was picking up.

By the time Ron landed, Draco’s wrists were aching from the drag of the wand, and he was getting a headache from the strumming tension of the wards. Ron looked as bad as Draco felt, eyes shadowed, cheekbones thrown into sharp relief by moonlight, jaw clenched. He let his broom drop.

“How bad is it?” 

“Do you really need to ask?” Draco passed him the hazel, their wrists knocking together, fist over fist, as the rod jumped and swayed between them. “What utter incompetent put these together? I’m guessing you got some sort of security firm in to take care of it. Did you even think of asking the locals?”

“I’m not completely inept, Malfoy,” Ron said sharply. “I’d have loved to get someone who knew the terrain, but I couldn’t for the life of me find anyone with the elemental knowledge. The native dragons are all ferals, so the local wardwrights don’t have experience with dragon herding, and aren’t keen to mess with the dragons’ natural cores. Now I can see why.” His face was stern.

“These feel like industrial wards,” Draco said, casting. Above them, a net of protective spells was lit up against the sky, its vivid, rigid lines of spellwork intersecting, its tattered edges gaping. 

“Yeah, they were put up by the Gringotts warders,” Ron said grimly. “None of the European warders were available. Too much competition, you know? There’s so little funding available, and we got that big grant a few years ago from the Société pour la Préservation des Créatures Mythiques…”

His accent was soft and uninflected, and Draco had to take a moment to work out the French.

“So the Swedes and the Norwegians are bitter about that, and they snapped up the good guys? Bastards. What about the Chinese reserves? Their dragons are practically domesticated, but they’d still have done a better job than this!” He jabbed his wand at the wards and the net flickered and sighed into nothingness. In Ron’s hand, the hazel rod leapt joyfully, unrestrained.

“Couldn’t afford them.” Even in the moonlight, Draco could see Ron’s face was red. “This place is already running at a loss. It’s only the grants that keep us going. Even the feeding… we rely on donations, really, to keep up with that. Harry’s been great, actually. He really got behind the cause.”

“I’m sure,” Draco said, carefully neutral. “Right, well, I’ve dismantled those. It’s not ideal, though. You’ll have to put up some temporary magical barriers along the borders for now, but they’ll need refreshing every day. What you really need is to work with the leylines to raise the natural wards. Places like this are full of ancient protective magic, we just have to make it work for us. Harness its power, if you will.” He eyed Ron’s bullwhip. “You’d know all about that, I’ll bet.”

Ron smirked. “Alright then, mate. When do we start?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“When do we do the wards? You can do the wards, Malfoy?”

Draco realised too late that he was gaping unattractively.

“I can— I mean, I’m not qualified to—” 

“Did you or did you not study this stuff?” Ron asked. “Isn’t that what all this is about?” He waved a hand at Draco, tapped the perlite amulet at his chest. “The hat is very fetching, by the way.”

"The hat is neither here nor there." Draco touched the woven brim, self conscious. "Willow for flexibility, regeneration. It's just precautionary."

"Do I need the gear?" Ron asked, reaching out again. He touched the amulet at Draco's chest, fingers bracketing the stone where it lay over Draco's heart. "To help with the wards, I mean. Do I need the necklace and the hat and whatever you've got going on with these trousers?"

"These are just my trousers," Draco said, affronted, before he had a chance to catch Ron's sly teasing smile. "Oh, shut up, Weasley. We can't all carry off mokeskin. Anyway, no. I mean, technically no. Hypothetically, if we were reckless enough to do it ourselves, you don't need the gear. That's for the focused work, the location of the leylines, all of that—you'd only have to help with the channelling, which is altogether easier. Tiring though."

"So, what's the problem, then?"

"The problem is that I'm not qualified for— I have my NEWT project, that's it."

"You were going to do a mastery, though." It wasn't a question. Draco wondered how he knew that.

He'd started the mastery, that was true, though at the time, on house arrest in the appalling surrounds of the Manor, and his parents in Azkaban, it had felt like a dream, something intangible, unknowable. And it had been, after all, in the end. It wasn't the theory; that he could learn. But the fieldwork element, work experience on Diagon, research trips with the Gringotts warders, well… he couldn't do it, couldn't bring himself to ask people to look beyond the tightly buttoned long sleeves of his robes where he knew they knew the Mark lurked, his conspicuous Malfoy hair, his too-rich clothing that he had to keep wearing because he couldn't afford to replace it. 

"I dropped out." That was the truth, though not the whole truth, but Ron was not the sort to pry.

"I spoke to Sinistra," was all he said, and Draco looked up at him in shock. "She said the work you did on the Hogwarts wards is still watertight. 'One of my most promising students,' she called you."

"This is outrageous," Draco said. "How dare you—"

"Oh, give over, Malfoy," Ron snapped. "Do you think I would have let you fiddle around with my borders without vetting you first? This isn't a school project. They're my dragons."

Silence, nothing but the whisper of the wind picking up, and then they were both shouting, Draco’s willow hat knocked sideways, Ron's fists clenched.

"Do you think I don't know tha—"

"I need to be sure—"

"—I would never—"

"—they depend on me to—"

"I want you to trust me," Draco shouted, and Ron cut off abruptly, like he'd been Silencioed. The memory of the words— their horrible truth—hung there between them..

 "I'm sorry," Ron said, "if anything I just said makes you think I don't trust you. I've seen you, Malfoy. I've seen you out there doing what needs to be done, I've seen how you are with the others. I have you sleeping in my home, for fuck's sake. Crina told me months ago you'd be the man for the job—why do you think I've had you shadowing her? This was not about trust. This was about checking if you're up to the job.”

Draco let out a breath, unsteady.

"Okay," he said, too quiet. "That's— That makes sense. In that case, I'll tell you what I think. I don't have my mastery, no. But I know what I'm doing, and I've been walking your borders for weeks now. The land knows me."

And it was true. He had always loved the countryside, the unbridled stretch of it, the exuberant greenness, the restless rolling topography. It was where he had learned warding, growing up pacing the bounds of the estate.

"You've done this before," Ron said, and Draco nodded. "The Manor?" 

"Yes, a few years ago. After the— After."

"And the wards? They're holding?"

Draco closed his eyes. Even now, even all these thousands of miles away, sea and sky and everything in between, if he concentrated, he could feel it. Wiltshire; relentless furrowed fields, chalk ridges, the profound pull of the standing stones. Draco had spilled salt and blood there, had chained his magic to the soil. It was part of him. A wind whispered around his fingers, something soft and fresh and waiting.

"Yes," he said. "Yeah, they're holding."

***

“My arms are hurting,” Ron muttered, and Draco gritted his teeth and vowed by the magic of the waning moon that he would refrain from committing actual murder.

“Did you know,” he said instead, “that elemental magic is often enhanced by the addition of freshly spilled blood? Just a little tidbit of information there for you.”

“I take your point,” Ron said, and he might even have been smiling. Draco couldn’t check because he was using all his energy to levitate an enormous boulder to the westernmost edge of the reserve. 

“We have to hurry,” he said, breathlessly, once he had them in place. “We need to get the wards up before sunrise or we’ll have to wait another month for the next full moon.”

“Please don’t let me keep you,” Ron said drily. “Why don’t you get on with it, and I’ll just stand here like a prat, holding my bucket of flame, shall I?”

“I would happily do this alone and in perfect silence,” Draco said patiently, “but we need some of your magic in it. The land will recognise your mastery. It needs your… well, not your permission as such, nothing so prosaic, but your… interest, I suppose. Your intent.”

“My current intent revolves primarily around getting these wards up so we can go for breakfast,” Ron answered, as his stomach gave a growl of punctuation. 

“Oh for— Here, just take this.” Draco holstered his wand and reached into his pocket for another gogosi, still wrapped in a little square of greaseproof paper. “It’s from yesterday, but it should still be good.”

“I’ll say.” Ron’s voice was muffled through a mouthful of dough. “This is brilliant, Malfoy. Did you make it?”

“I helped,” Draco said shortly. “It’s my dough, but Florin helped me with the filling.”

“This is what I imagine heaven must taste like,” Ron said dreamily. “Why are you still working there? You should be cooking for me.” His mouth was frosted, softened by sugar. “I mean. For us, of course. For the team.” 

“I will bake you an entire tray if you will please stop talking about food,” Draco begged. The moon was silvering up, a translucent disc. Morning was coming.

Up close, the boulder was ancient, pitted with the marks of time, spotted with lichen. Draco placed a hand on it carefully, let himself feel the gentle pull of the leyline.

“Okay, pass me the fire,” he said. “Thank— fucking, ow!”

“Malfoy,” Ron said severely. “You’re not supposed to be out anywhere on the reserve without your gloves. There’s a reason we all wear them, you know. It’s not about fashion.”

“Clearly,” Draco answered. The jar of fire had left a raised weal across the palm of his right hand. It was already starting to bubble up. “I haven’t got around to buying the gloves yet.”

“You can order them through Stefan,” Ron told him, wincing as he inspected Draco’s palm. “I really should write you up for this one. We don’t mess around with health and safety here.”

“I didn’t order them,” Draco said, looking steadily at the boulder and not at Ron, taking out his salt, “because I am still saving up for them.”

Ron was silent for a long moment.

“Do you remember, in school,” Ron said, voice very close to Draco’s ear, “you always used to mock me for being poor?”

“I do.” Draco swallowed. The salt was gritty against his fingers as he sprinkled it at the base of the boulder. “I think about it all the time. It was… unforgivable. I am unforgivable. Being sorry doesn’t change anything, of course. No matter what I do, I can’t undo that. But please do know how very sorry I am for how I was back then.”

“Feeling sorry doesn’t change anything, “ Ron said. “But being sorry does. It’s an active thing, isn’t it? Ongoing, permanent, quite tiring. It’s hard, believe me, I know. But it’s worth doing the hard work, in the end. Sometimes you just have to jump into the pond and pull out the massive ancient sword, you know?”

“I certainly do not know,” Draco told him, “but you can fill me in on that another time. We need to move.”

It was fast, in the end, once all the work was done. 

“Here,” Draco instructed Ron. “Spit. That’s for water,” and Ron, looking mystified, did as he was told, spat on the rock just as Draco gingerly took the charmed fire and carefully tipped it out onto the rock, blew on it oh so gently, one hand on the keystone, one on the earth beneath the rock. For a moment, the fire held its shape, and Draco concentrated, his own core sluggish and congested at first as he tried to connect, feel his way from the inside out.

"Come on," Draco muttered, air to earth, fire to water, and then he felt the shift, something in the leylines opening up, joyful and uninhibited.

"Wow," Ron said, hushed, and Draco laughed as the protective wards sprang up, spreading out from the keystone like a golden net, seeking the borders, the other markers he had left north, south, and west. 

"They look—" Ron sounded awed.

"I know! So beautiful."

"It's like they're meant to be here," Ron said, and he reached out a hand. The wards met him with a sweet ringing sound. Jubilant. Wild. 

"This is wonderful," Draco whispered, the magic of the leylines surging freely now, the fire at the keystone writhing like something living. Draco's hair was moving in a wind that had picked up, curls whipping around his face even as he dug his fingers into the soil. It was as though he could feel every grain of earth shivering at his touch.

"Malfoy," Ron said, eyes wide. "I can feel it." He looked down at his own feet, stretched a hand out blindly through the air. "It's everywhere."

"It knows us," Draco answered. "We're part of it now." He grinned up at Ron, and he could, he could sense Ron's magic in the mix that was thundering through him, smoky-sweet, a tightly-controlled hunger. He felt like he was shaking out of his skin.

"Look," Ron breathed, pointing. Above them, the web of wards pulsed and tightened like a knot being tied, flared up supernova bright, and then faded. Draco could see the imprint of the pattern behind his closed eyelids.

"It's done," he heard Ron say, and then the earth was coming up to meet him, sky tilting, stars a riotous feverish pattern of pinpricks, and there was quiet.

***

It was the rain that woke him, a battering needlesharp downpour that had him gasping back to consciousness, and the warm weight of Ron Weasley over him, sounding panicked. 

"C'mon, Malfoy," he was saying, hot palm flattened against Draco’s cheek, tapping frantically. "Where did you go, come on."

"Cold," Draco said, and opened his eyes, and Ron sat back and dropped his head into his hands. 

"I thought—" he said, and then stood up. "You're soaked through. Can I cast a warming charm or not? I wasn't sure if I should be using anything while this is going on."

Draco pushed himself carefully up onto his elbows, and peered beyond Ron at the sky. They were high on a ridge above the keystone. It must have been dawn, but the clouds were grotesquely swollen, dark as thunder, and the rain was whipping almost sideways in the wind.

"Stupid of me," he said. "I should have anticipated this."

The earth was cracked along the leyline, a fissure as wide as the Knight Bus and twice as long. From it, a new stream sprang, foamy and agitated. 

"Did we cause this?" Ron asked, and Draco took a brief moment to feel grateful for that we.

"Hogwarts, the Manor—they're both well-established. The land has already been mastered, generations back. Here, it's all new. The land is still wild."

He knew it was true because he had felt it, that fierce fresh rush of it through him.

"It should calm down soon, I think. It's just testing the new limits, settling into itself." Even as he spoke, the clouds opened with a sound like tearing paper, and lightning arced across the sky.

"You had better be right," Ron said, hands on hips, looking over the terrain. Draco heaved himself up to kneeling, then standing, not imagining the wobble in his own legs.

"I feel like I've been trampled by a Hippogriff," he murmured, and Ron threw him a sideways look.

"You would know," he replied, then exasperatedly as Draco shivered helplessly, "you're freezing, Malfoy. We need shelter. The broom's useless in this wind."

He scanned the hillside behind them, eyes narrowed against the rain, then pointed decisively.

"There."

Draco couldn't see the entrance until they were almost on top of it, Ron scrambling up the slope, hauling Draco with him. It looked barely more than a dent in the rockface, but inside it was a high-roofed chamber, dry and suddenly, blissfully silent where the wind couldn't reach.

“I could sleep for a week,” Draco said as they stood together at the mouth of the cave, looking out. He felt wrung out, bereft, hollow. His own magic was a small discontented spark at his core, missing the feverish pulse of the leyline.

“It’s working, though,” Ron said, and pointed. Above them, high in the distance, a group of Swedish Shortsnouts wheeled and dipped, skimming the squalls. As they approached the edge of the reserve, Draco felt the wards awaken, vigilant. He could see them glowing faintly against the sky, flexing and rocking with the movement of the gusts and the dragons’ windtrail.

“Shall we chance a fire?” Draco said. “I think we’re probably far enough away that it’s safe.”

Ron eyed the dragons, judging the distance, then nodded grimly. “You’re soaked and it looks as though this isn’t going to let up for a while. Can you take care of it? I want to see if I can get my radio working. It’s been on the blink since the lightning storm.”

The cave floor was dry and compacted, and Draco cleared a little circle in the soil. It took a few tries to light his bluebell flames, like his magic had retreated a little. Core exhaustion, he suspected. 

“That’s better,” he sighed, holding his hands out to the small flickering fire. “Weasley, come and warm up before you catch your death and everyone blames me.”

“No doubt you’d manage to find somewhere to hide my corpse before—” Ron’s voice stopped abruptly, and Draco looked up at him.

“Malfoy,” Ron said, deathly quiet. He was very, very still. “You need to move very slowly towards me. Okay? Easy does it. Just… quiet and slow.”

“I don’t—” Draco began, and then he saw Ron’s face and stopped talking, and began to shift himself minutely to his feet.

“Okay,” Ron breathed. “Well done. Now come this way. Just keep your eyes on me.”

This, of course, had the exact opposite effect, and Draco’s gaze turned unbidden to the back of the cave behind him. At first, he couldn’t quite make out what he was seeing, under the arching rocky vaults of the cave roof, with the uncanny flicker of light and shadow. But then there it was, a darker shadow against the rock, too impossibly spiny and sharp and armoured-looking, limbs askew. A dragon.

“Oh.” It was barely an exhale, but the creature shifted at the sound, the knobs of its spine rippling and undulating, great claws skittering across the dry earth, wing-tips dragging like dry leaves. It looked at Draco out of one enormous eye, unblinking, and the petroleum sheen of its scales wavered as it inclined its head.

“Malfoy,” Ron was at his side, hand to his whip, trying to get in front of Draco, and the dragon gave him an unimpressed glare. “She’s a Hebridean. You need to get out.”

“Weasley, why aren’t we dead yet?” Draco asked, barely a whisper.

“I don’t know,” Ron answered testily. “Why don’t you step behind me and let me see if I can work it out.”

“And what happens if you can’t work it out, and I have to drag your corpse back to base and explain how you died during my ward-setting?”

The dragon snorted, an irritated puff of steam, and Draco and Ron both froze. When they didn’t move, the dragon yawned once, a huge gaping thing, the gleaming needles of her teeth brutal in the firelight, and then without warning, she stood up, drawing her wings in with a leathery slap and unfolding the long, dangerous-looking curve of her neck. She was so fast.

Draco could feel Ron beside him, quivering with tension. The dragon’s eyes glowed plum-dark in the shadows. 

Slowly, slowly, her massive head descended towards them. Draco could feel his body humming with heat, the furnace-blast of dragonbreath a fug around them. Low in her throat, the dragon made a contented-sounding chirrup, and then her huge blunt snout was nudging against Draco, scales clanking densely off his perlite amulet, knocking his willow hat right off his head.

“Wow.” Ron’s voice was reverent. “Malfoy, I think she’s… I think she’s trying to make friends.”

Draco could see his own hand shaking as he raised it, fully expecting it to be blasted down to the bone at any moment, but the dragon just burrowed closer to him, her twin nostrils as wide as his chest, and then he was petting her gently between her eyes, rubbing gently over the spiked fan of her skull. There was a low rumbling sound, and a belch of steam that Draco narrowly avoided, and the dragon folded herself down onto the ground again, front claws tucked under her chin, and closed her eyes.

“This is… completely unprecedented,” Ron said, and there was the dragontamer, in the envious note in his voice, and the way his body leaned into the dragon territorially. “I can’t be absolutely sure, because I’ve never got close enough to her to check her markings, but I think this is Minnie, one of the Hebrideans Charlie brought in last year. She’s usually a very cranky girl.”

“That is not as reassuring as you might think,” Draco said narrowly. “Get over here, Weasley. You’re supposed to be the expert.”

“Malfoy.” Ron swallowed. “Would you— Could I—” He gestured between them, holding his hand out.

“Oh,” Draco said. “Oh! Right, let me just—”

They manoeuvred around each other awkwardly, and then Ron was bending in close, hair moving in the gusts of hot air from Minnie’s nose, and Draco took Ron’s hand tentatively and, feeling stupid and terrified all at once, raised it in his own so they were stroking the dragon together. Ron’s eyes fluttered shut in something that looked close to bliss, and Draco could feel his hand trembling.

Minnie just heaved a sigh of contentment and let her head fall to the side with a thump that resounded through the chamber. Ron made a low crooning sound and began to scratch around the bulbous ridge of her horns. The dragon’s back leg jiggled in pleasure, and her huge barbed tail swished from side to side along the ground.

“There you go, sweetheart,” Ron said in satisfaction. “You like that, don’t you?” He peered closer at the dragon as he moved around her huge bulk, petting at her scales, giving her reassuring pats. “She’s gorgeous,” he said admiringly. “Look at the shine on that hide. And she’s just a little ‘un, look at her lovely dainty claws. Although she’s definitely quite solid… oh, hang on.” 

Draco, who was pretty sure that one of those dainty claws could quite comfortably skewer him through the softest part of his belly at a moment’s notice, remained quiet, gently patting the dragon’s warm snout. 

“Malfoy,” Ron said, voice thin with disbelief. “I think she might be pregnant.”

Draco watched Ron’s hand as he traced the curve of the dragon’s ribcage, the rippling movement of her big belly, and then he felt his legs begin to tremble again, adrenaline deserting him. When he sank to the floor, the dragon butted him gently with her head and then settled on her side so he could lean against her, soaking in her body heat.

“I’m stumped,” Ron said, coming to sit next to him. He leaned into the dragon eagerly, and the dragon just gave a little murmur of acknowledgement and then her eyes clicked shut and her breathing deepened. At the curled edge of her lip, the tip of a fang gleamed. “This makes no sense at all, Malfoy. You were casting earlier, in here. Your bluebell flames are still burning. Any dragon should be going crazy right now from your spell residue, let alone a pregnant female—and she’s quite close to term, by the looks of things.”

“She really doesn’t seem bothered in the least, does she?” Draco agreed. “And look, I noticed she doesn’t seem to—”

Carefully, he unholstered his wand. Minnie blinked once, twice, and raised her head to sniff at the length of hawthorn, before settling back down into her doze again.

“It’s the leylines,” Draco said slowly. “That’s it, isn’t it? Dragons draw their magic from the natural power sources around them. You and I, last night… we gave something of ourselves back to the land, didn’t we? You felt it, you know what I’m talking about.”

Ron nodded. 

“So if she’s tapping into all that lovely natural elemental magic, then she must recognise our magic. It makes perfect sense, when you think about it. Especially if you consider the way our magic must be interacting with the wards, on a macro level, I mean.”

“Are you telling me,” Ron eyed him dubiously, “that we’ve become dragon whisperers?” He began to grin. “This is possibly the best thing to ever happen to me.”

“We can’t tell anyone,” Draco said. “If this gets out— Weasley, if anyone finds out we can approach a fully-grown adult dragon with this level of trust, then the whole thing will escalate. The newspapers, the various Ministries—they’ll all want in. They’d try to use us to… to… to experiment, or communicate, or something. And this is a reserve, not a research facility. These dragons are meant to be free here. We can’t best serve their needs and allow them to be tested and prodded and poked. It would be inhumane.”

Ron looked at Draco oddly, a pinkish flush high on his cheekbones.

“You’re right,” he said stiffly. “Of course, you’re right. This doesn’t go beyond the reserve. If that means Unbreakable Vows for everyone, then so be it.”

Against their backs, the dragon let out a low contented purr. Outside, the rain had finally stopped.

***

It could be worse, thought Draco, this little life he’d stumbled into in Romania. He’d always been an early riser, and the dragons woke him at the crack of dawn anyway, so it wasn’t especially difficult to creep out of bed and tiptoe out of the room—usually past a snoring, sleep-soft Ron—for his early shifts at Florin’s. He’d spend his mornings rolling cornuleţes and daydreaming, enveloped in a cloud of yeast and sugar, the lilt and flow of foreign tongues drifting periodically through the open door as Ana chatted to the customers out front. Most days he’d return from the village around lunchtime, flour-dusted and pockets stuffed full of treats, just in time to join in with the feed. Shift or no shift, there was always something to do around the reserve; always more work than hours in the day, so that by the time the sun fell behind the western mountains, Draco would find himself heavy with a satisfying, bone-deep kind of exhaustion, his body wind-battered and tense and longing for some kind of release.

On the other hand, there really wasn’t much around that might entertain them of an evening, and so, unsurprisingly, they spent much of their down-time gathered in the largest of the houses, passing around bottles of whatever booze they could get their hands on. There were fifteen of them on the reserve: mostly men, and mostly local, although there was an American scientist who’d arrived just before Draco, and a couple of Swedes who’d brought a dragon over for breeding a few years ago and ended up staying. For ease, they all spoke English on the reserve, although with enough beer in their bellies some of the older guys would slide back into their own mother tongues. They were a cheerful bunch, and, to Draco’s surprise, even the ones who were twice their age seemed to have a healthy respect for Ron’s authority. Draco had mentioned it one night, scrambling for a distraction while Ron stripped off his work clothes, leaving them puddled on the floor as he climbed into bed. Oh yeah, they all like me, Ron had said simply. You know Charlie. I’m not saying his heart’s not in the right place, but he’s always been too… reckless. It gets their backs up a bit, you know? And then he’s off again, and they moan about him leaving them to do the hard work, and… yeah. What they need’s a firm hand, I reckon.

Draco thought about that often, tossing and turning in his little camp bed long after Ron had succumbed to sleep. A firm hand, he heard, that low, sure voice echoing in his mind as Draco’s own slipped silently, often guiltily, below his waistband. 

Ron spent a lot of his spare time on the Floo in his office, talking loudly about expenses, arguing over missed orders and import taxes and goodness knew what else, but on occasion he would drop in on their evening gatherings, and that was when things tended to get messy, as though Ron’s presence implied some tacit permission to let loose. There’d be drinking games, and old, half-remembered songs, and stories which would inevitably be corrected and re-told: Ha, don’t you remember that time back in ’91 when the south side wards came down? No, you old fool, that was ’92. How can you forget the heatwave, huh? When Silvia had the twins and we were stuck sweating our balls off in that cave… and Draco would sit and sip his elf-wine, indulging his melancholy side, and let the songs and the arguments wash over him until he could almost imagine he’d been there himself, nursing Zillah through a bad case of pneumonia, as though his life before Romania had all been some shadowy fever dream. Those were Draco’s favourite evenings, the ones where Ron joined them, and Draco could watch him out of the corner of his eye, the expressive sweep of Ron’s strong arms, the crease of smile lines around eyes, his easy, infectious laugh.

It was one such evening, the end of another long week, and they were celebrating the anniversary of Mara’s divorce—and may his prick stay soft forever! she’d yelled gleefully out of the window—and Draco had brought back a cake, a huge chocolate thing, and one of the others had gotten hold of a bottle of Black Balsam, which was thick and syrupy and dangerously potent. Draco was in his usual spot, thoughts drifting, in front of the fire, Stefan was sitting beneath the Lumos, biting his lip in concentration as he traced his wand over Anders’ calf in the slightly-shaky outline of a Horntail, and Ron was up at the table, in the thick of things as always, a friendly arm around Yakiv’s shoulders, talking a little too loudly and swaying slightly as he laughed along with the group.

“Go on then, Draco, let’s see yours!”

Draco started in surprise, looked around until he spotted Anders looking at him expectantly. Anders indicated his leg, where the finished Horntail was flapping around, little tongues of flame shooting past the rolled-up hem of his trousers. The air had turned thick and suffocating, and Draco’s mouth was dry. “Sorry, what?”

“Your tattoo. It’s magical, right? The skull?”

Ron looked up, then, and Draco shrank back in his seat, hand flying up involuntarily to wrap around his left forearm, where under the thin grey fabric of his top, his Mark still burned a vivid blood-red.

“No,” he said, voice thick with woodsmoke and the weight of his past mistakes. “I mean, yes, it’s magical, but it’s not…”

“That’s the Dark Mark, you twat,” hissed Yakiv loudly across the room, a blessing and a curse all at once, as every pair of eyes in the room swivelled over towards Draco.

“Ah, shit,” said Anders, eyes wide, as Mara let out a high-pitched, drunken giggle. “So you were a… what was it called? Death Eater?” Draco nodded, a single sharp jerk of the head. “And you, boss, you were with Harry Potter, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So you two were enemies?”

Ron laughed meanly, lip twisting derisively into a face that Draco had long forgotten. “Enemies, yeah. Not just ‘cause of the war though. Malfoy was a snobby little prat way before that.” Ron’s words hit him square in the ribcage, and Draco couldn’t help the sharp inhale that escaped. “Tried to poison me once, y’know,” Ron continued, shifting his gaze to Draco. “Couldn’t make it stick though, could you?”

Draco didn’t respond. The fire crackled behind him, and he was aware that the others were whispering to each other, could hear them shuffling around, tense and uncomfortable, but he himself was frozen in place. Somewhere in the distance a roar sounded and was answered by several sharp screeches. Ron’s expression was grave, defiant almost, and without breaking eye contact he reached for the bottle, took a long, deep swig and swallowed loudly.

Stefan laughed, nervously. “So, er… why’d you take him on then, boss?”

Ron looked away, finally, opening his mouth to respond, and the spell was broken. “I…” he began, but whatever he was about to say, whatever pity-loaded tripe or drunken rant about second chances sat ready on the tip of his tongue, Draco would never know. He was up, out of his chair, the room, and the whole damn house as fast as his legs would carry him. As he fumbled with his key in the door, mind gone slow and stupid with alcohol and rage, there was a sudden crash behind him. He turned just in time to watch Weasley thunder out into the darkness.

“Hang on a second, Malfoy, would you? I was about to say…”

Mercifully, the door opened. “Fuck you, Weasley, you self-righteous prick,” Draco shot back in Ron’s direction, gait unsteady as he headed towards the staircase, gripping the banister rail for dear life and dragging himself up to their room. “In fact,” he added, a spiteful afterthought, “fuck all you fucking Weasleys.”

Ron was still following him, clumsy and ridiculous. “Yeah, you’ve already started on that one, Malfoy,” he yelled at the back of Draco’s head. “Remember?”

With a snarl of rage, Draco slammed the door to their room so hard the floor shook. Outside, a young dragon screeched indignantly at the racket, and Draco clutched at the doorframe to steady himself while he groped for his wand. But before he could even get his fingers around the handle, Ron had shoulder-barged the door open with a loud grunt, barrelling through, and straight into Draco, sending him sprawling heavily across the floor.

Livid, Draco tried to sit forwards, hoping to direct a cutting remark—or at least a decent sneer—at Ron. On lifting his head, though, the room began pitching and rolling around him. Ron had all but disappeared too, a mere flash of red at the edge of Draco’s vision. All he could do was drop his head back against the floor, eyes closed, and let out a long, loud, frustrated noise, halfway between a groan and a growl, that he hoped would get his point across.

“Malfoy?” It was still Ron’s deep voice, but it sounded different to before: urgent, breathy, and extremely close to Draco’s ear. “Malfoy?” he called again, and partly out of laziness, but mostly because he wanted this, wanted the bastard to worry, Draco didn’t reply. A warm hand landed on his collarbone, clumsy fingers sliding over his pulse point. “Malfoy, you alright? Talk t’me!”

“Mmm…” Draco grumbled, finally, opening his eyes, “no thanks to you.” He glared resolutely past Weasley’s concerned expression and up at the ceiling beams, which swam most disconcertingly before his eyes.

“Oh, thank Merlin. Oh. Oh…” said Ron, letting out a heavy exhale and collapsing forwards to join Draco on the floor, wrapping Draco in a drunken tangle of long limbs. Ron’s head briefly lolled side to side on Draco’s chest, a comforting pressure, before he rolled off and hit the floor with a grunt.

“Why are you bothered, anyway?” Draco asked the ceiling, slowly, his tongue tripping over the words. “You must really hate me, after… after everything.”

“Nah. ’S not… What I said, I…” Ron sighed, jabbing a stern finger into Draco’s side, just beneath his ribs. “Look, I don’t want you to die, Malfoy. Y’know? ‘S been… alright, having you around here.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Yeah, was gonna say… you were a prat, but you’re sort of okay now.” Ron said, and out of the corner of Draco’s eye he watched as those full lips curved into a loose, teasing smile. “Even if you did shag my brother.”

Draco huffed a short laugh. He kicked blindly out to the side, catching the knob of Ron’s bare ankle with his boots. “Fuck you.”

“Fuck you right back.” Ron’s West Country accent had broadened with the drink, his vowels lengthening, rolling around his mouth in an endearing, homely way. “Anyhow,” he murmured, conspiratorially, “I never knew that you… that you were into…”

“What, men?”

“Ha, no,” Ron said, and his response was so instantaneous, so certain, that it took Draco aback. “No, not that. I jus’ meant,” he indicated himself, “Y’know. Gingers.”

“Yes, well,” said Draco, loftily, hoping to salvage some last shred of dignity, “nobody’s perfect.”

Ron turned his head sharply at that, squinting over at Draco. His breaths were hot against the side of Draco’s neck, liquorice with a sweet alcoholic undertone. “’M… ‘m sorry he’s not here.”

“Hmm?”

“Charlie.” Ron rolled onto his side. The distant bellowing had faded away, Ron’s slow, drink-heavy breathing suddenly all Draco could hear. Ron was warm, the little curve of his belly soft against Draco’s side, his fingernails drumming absently over Draco’s ribcage, and Charlie’s stupid drunken promises seemed a very, very long time ago. “I jus’ mean,” slurred Ron, nestling closer into Draco’s body, eyes wide and earnest. ’M sorry it’s me… instead.”

“I’m not,” said Draco, instantly embarrassed at his rashness, his very un-Slytherin candour. Ron’s breath hitched, his tongue sliding slowly across his booze-stained lower lip. His eyes were bright blue, the searing heart of a flame, as they lit on Draco’s face, and then suddenly his mouth was on Draco’s, and it was dizzying, and unexpected, and totally fucking crazy… but, realised Draco, absolutely brilliant.

Ron groaned, fingers clenching against Draco’s chest until he held a tight fistful of Draco’s top, which he used as leverage to swing his leg over until he was half straddling Draco. He brought his hands up to Draco’s face; palms hot as they cupped Draco’s cheeks, kissing him fiercely, greedily, holding nothing back.

“Ron?” Draco murmured, and then again, when Ron didn’t respond, louder and more urgently. Regretfully, he turned his head to the side, watched the way Ron’s parted lips still moved, chasing his own. Merlin, Draco wanted nothing more than to stay like this, to say nothing that might disturb this new, exciting thing between them… but he had to check. He’d been here before, after all, had fucked everything up more than once, and he really needed this job.

Not just that: he really liked this job.

“What?” Ron was grinning down at Draco, eyes alight as he tried to tug him forwards, and it took every single ounce of Draco’s willpower not to let him.

“No, Ron, wait. Wait. Is… isn’t this a really bad idea?”

“Probably.” Ron said, half-laughing into the word as though it really didn’t matter, and Draco could almost let himself believe it too. But then Ron’s brow furrowed, his expression turning serious. “Why, ‘cause of Charlie?”

“No, god, Ron,” said Draco, shaking his head, reaching up to drop a kiss against Ron’s worried mouth. “Not that, never that. Charlie was—that was nothing.”

He leaves the rest of the sentence, the and you… unspoken.

“Right,” said Ron, slowly, his frown lines smoothing out as he looked down at Draco once more. “Well, I reckon s’all alright then. ‘Course, Harry’ll about kill me.”

“No, no. Not that either. I only mean, you’re like… my boss? The boss?”

Ron sat up, grinning lasciviously as he centred himself over Draco’s hips. He swayed a little, eyes losing focus for just a second. “Oh, I’ll be the boss. Is that what you like, Malfoy, hmm?”

“No, I… yes… no. Look, I meant…”

But it was hard to keep talking when Ron’s hand was doing that: sliding slowly, almost predatorially, beneath the hem of Draco’s top, the rough pads of his fingers exploring, moving confidently over the ridges of Draco’s scars.

“Can’t say I’m surprised,” murmured Ron against Draco’s lips, as the sudden, sharp twist of a nipple made Draco gasp and writhe. “‘S a posh thing, innit? You lot always need someone to spank your bottom and tell you what a bad boy you are, right?” 

He took Draco’s bottom lip into his mouth, biting down on it once, twice, and, “oh my god, Weasley,” Draco gasped, flushed with a giddying mix of embarrassment and desire, “could you just stop fucking talking?”

Ron snorted. Draco wasn’t sure if he was winding him up deliberately, but then he sat back again, and there it was, that glint in his eye, the same one Draco saw when Ron had to tell off the staff, that fucking sexy, self-assured look. Draco felt dazed, flushed from the wine and heady with arousal, so he lay back, folding his arms under his head and watching, unashamedly, as Ron slowly peeled off his top, revealing the muscled expanse of his chest, hair curling soft and coppery over his breastbone and lower, past his nipples, and down, down…

There was so much to look at, so much Ron suddenly before him, and Draco was just admiring the swell of his biceps, ringed by tan lines, the freckles there so dense that they almost merged, when Ron’s hand crept down to his own crotch. He cupped himself through his trousers before undoing the zip, so that his cock sprung free, half-hard, bobbing heavy in front of him, and god, Draco thought wildly, of course it was massive, of course it fucking was. And they were doing this, apparently, really doing this, so Draco tugged his own top over his head, kicked his boots off and shoved his own trousers down, and Ron grinned and bent forwards to kiss him again and Merlin fuck, this was incredible.

It was no surprise, thought Draco, that Ron would approach this the same way he did everything, capable and forthright, and his hands—those firm hands— seemed everywhere, all at once, demanding and possessive, sliding beneath Draco to grasp handfuls of his arse, winding hard into Draco’s hair, nails raking up Draco’s sides, little half-apologetic afterthoughts spilling from Ron’s lips as he moved: you don’t mind, do you?

They wanked each other a bit, Draco enjoying the weight of Ron’s cock in his palm, and then Ron shuffled back, giving Draco space to bend his knees and hold his thighs back, and Draco watched Ron’s face, breathless, as Ron slid one spit-slick finger deep inside, his pupils turning dark at the sight of Draco’s body opening up so easily under his touch. But in the end they were both too drunk for it to come to anything, and it was very late, and, as Ron pointed out when Draco apologised, Draco probably had a head injury anyway. So they gave up on that idea and just carried on kissing for a while, until they heard the shivery morning flutter of Bluebell’s wings unfurling, which always heralded the first rays of dawn, and neither of them could suppress their yawns any longer.

“Time to turn in, I reckon,” murmured Ron, looking up at Draco through the long, bronze sweep of his eyelashes. Draco, who’d been secretly hoping they might fall asleep right there, on the awful wooden floor, groaned softly. His stupid fucking camp bed mocked him from the coldest corner of the room as he clambered to his feet and began to stumble away.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Malfoy,” Ron called, still slurring slightly as he pulled back the sheets on his own bed, “get over here, would you?” So Draco did, sliding in silently beside Ron’s still-naked form, and it was all wonderfully warm and snug, and within seconds he fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

Far too short a time later, with all the dragons screeching their mournful pleas for breakfast, and daylight spilling properly into the room, Draco woke, head fuzzy, to a warm armful of Weasley. Ron was still snoring softly, and it was a strange, overly intimate situation for Draco, who’d spent years avoiding mornings after. He lay there for quite some time, winding himself up about the what nows, trying to work out whether he’d managed to fuck up yet another good thing, until finally he worked up the courage to extricate himself and tread an unsteady, painful path to the bathroom.

The water had only just finally reached acceptable temperatures when Ron staggered in himself, squinting, and grunted g’morning as he wiped the sleep from his eyes. He stepped straight into the cubicle, placed his palm against Draco’s chest and pushed him back through the spray, pressing him firmly against the tiled wall. He was making his stance clear, it felt like, as he wrapped his big fingers around Draco’s cock and kissed him hard through the steam, and Draco closed his eyes and forgot to worry any more.

When they’d finished, Ron ran a hand through his hair and slipped back out again with a wink, leaving Draco slumped boneless against the shower wall. By the time he emerged, Ron had already left for work, but Draco’s camp bed had been transfigured back into a stool and his pyjamas had been deposited in a crumpled heap at the bottom of Ron’s bed, and that was that. 

***

But what exactly that was remained a mystery to Draco. Weeks passed, breathless nights spent tangled up in one another, Ron’s arm slung heavy across his chest each morning, Draco’s cheeks flushed pink with more than just the heat of the oven as he kneaded and sifted, and ignored his co-workers’ knowing looks, and smiled to himself as he thought of the knobbles of Ron’s hipbones against his parted thighs, or the little dimples at the base of Ron’s spine which appeared as he arched beneath Draco’s touch.

All that and more, and yet they never talked about it, this strange, wonderful thing that had somehow sprung up between them. Ron still behaved in exactly the same casual manner towards Draco during the day, sparing him not a single extra glance as they went about their business, and Draco had no idea what the others thought, or if they even knew at all. There was plenty of banter about the reserve anyway, dick jokes and the like thrown around the place cheerfully as they went about their work, but occasionally Crina would tip Draco a little knowing wink, and a tight, knotty feeling would spring up in his chest as he wondered whether Ron had done this before, how many times he’d brought visitors into his bed.

It was almost definitely a short-term thing anyway. Perhaps Ron saw it as a bit of fun, a pleasurable way to pass the long, cold Romanian nights, before Charlie returned and forced Draco to Portkey back out of Ron’s life for good.

But then again, perhaps not, thought Draco, on days when he returned from long shifts to find a steaming bath waiting for him, or evenings when he got back from helping Crina with a very grouchy, very pregnant Minnie to find Ron waiting up for him in bed, grinning and naked except for Draco’s willow hat, balanced suggestively atop his groin. And Draco knew exactly when Ron realised that Draco never worked on a Sunday, because one Sunday morning Draco had woken at the sound of the morning feed outside, and had nudged Ron and murmured aren’t you late? and Ron had replied, voice croaky with sleep, nah, I don’t work Sundays anymore, haven’t you seen the new rota? and from then on Sundays had become Draco’s very favourite day of the week. Sundays were for relaxing, for spending in bed, and, when Draco got his way, for going flying.

It took a lot of coaxing to get Ron to agree to leave the reserve even for a couple of hours. Yakiv was second-in-command, and he’d been there for fifteen years, but for some reason Ron found it hard to trust anyone at all, it seemed. The first time Draco’d taken him out, he’d groused and snapped the entire way until Draco had sped up and left him behind, eventually setting down beside a glassy emerald lake that reminded him of Hogwarts. He’d laid out his blanket on a smooth grey rock, dipped his toes in the freezing water and waited, while a pair of swifts wheeled back and forth in the endless blue above. Ron had been sulky at first when he’d caught up, jaw set and big arms folded, but then Draco had reached into his bag and pulled out a folded cream cheese pastry—an especially large one he’d brought home with Ron in mind—and watched with satisfaction the way Ron’s eyes brightened as he accepted the offering. They’d eaten in comfortable silence, and then Ron had wiped his floury hands on his trousers, and waggled his eyebrows at Draco, a little blob of cheese still lingering at the corner of his lips, and they’d ended up shagging on a blanket under the bright midday sun like a scene from one of Pansy’s trashiest romance novels.

And it was with hazy plans to try and convince Ron to recreate that scene that Draco lay in bed, restless, on this particular Sunday morning, the familiar huffs and yawning screeches of hungry dragons filtering in through the cracks around the battered old window. It couldn’t be later than six, not with the sky still that cool slate grey and only the faintest blush of daylight visible from beyond the east mountains, and yet Draco’s body clock, so used to early starts, had dragged him, maddeningly, from sleep. Ron was still dozing, beside Draco, arm rising and falling with Draco’s breaths, and Draco was just beginning to slide one foot up the ankle of Ron’s pyjama bottoms when their front door slammed downstairs. He sighed, rolling away at the sound of dragonhide boots thundering up the stairs, two at a time, calling out for Ron.

Ron leapt out of bed, holding the door half-closed as he slipped out to speak to Yakiv. Their voices were hushed and ominous, and soon Yakiv was crashing back down the stairs and Ron was dressed and chasing after him before Draco had even sat up in bed.

The reserve was buzzing with activity by the time Draco made it outside, shivering in his thickest cloak, fist curled tight around the rough edges of the amulet he’d stuffed into his pocket as an afterthought. A low, anguished bellowing which echoed across the valley, rolling straight through Draco’s body and setting his teeth on edge, and shadowy figures were rushing from all over the compound towards its origin. Draco hurried to join them, combing his fingers through his bed-scruffy hair as he raced over towards the west mountains. A whoosh sounded from within the range, and a familiar rugged outline lit up in blinding orange. It was Minnie’s cave, Draco realised with a sudden sick twist to his stomach, his breath coming fast and hot in the frigid air. It felt half a dream still, or a nightmare, perhaps, and he stumbled several times as he clambered over the rocks at the foot of the mountain.

There was a little group huddled a few feet from the entrance. Crina and Mara were there, warming their hands on a gas lantern, and their faces were grave as they watched Draco approach.

“Is it the baby?” he asked Crina, voice trembling slightly. “Has it hatched? Is Minnie… is she alright?”

“Baby’s hatched,” answered Mara bluntly, “and is boy. But baby is hurt.”

“Hurt? How?”

“Minnie get scared. She step on baby’s wing. Now baby cannot stand up to feed, and…” She broke off in obvious distress, turning into Crina’s embrace and burying her face deep in Crina’s wild grey hair. Crina pressed her lips against Mara’s temple, shushing her.

She turned to Draco, voice soft, almost apologetic. “No-one can get close enough to the baby to help feed him. Min’s getting distressed, she’s stumbling all over the place too.”

Draco tried to recall everything she’d taught him about caring for a hatchling. “So they need to feed in the first thirty minutes, right?”

“Exactly.”

“So what’s the plan? How do we help them?” The cave lit up once more, and Draco could see another group, Ron’s unmistakeable outline amongst them, gathered just inside the entrance.

“Well, I think,” cut in Stefan, “they’re planning on stunning Min.”

“A stupid idea,” said Crina, scornfully. “That much magic… they’ll frighten the life out of every dragon in this place. And Boiúna’s in there with them, of course. He’ll bring the mountain down on top of them, you mark my words.”

“What you want to do, old lady, huh?” asked one of the others. “Let baby die? We never had baby die here, not in twenty years.”

“I know, you fool,” she said, drawing herself up to full height and jabbing an accusatory finger in his direction. “You were barely off your mother’s knee when I started here. You remember the windstorm of ’74? Tsss.” She shook her head. “Have some respect.”

The man spat loudly on the ground before he replied, words fast and vicious, but Draco had stopped listening. He was off, tugging on his gloves as he went, fear prickling up his spine as he reached the gaping jagged mouth of Minnie’s cave. The acrid smell of dragonsmoke surrounded him here, and he looped the amulet over his neck, ignoring Crina’s worried voice behind him, shaking off Ron’s questioning hand, as he made his way, slow and tremulous, into the depths of the mountain.

Minnie was indeed in a bad way, keening loudly as she paced back and forth across the widest part of the cave. She seemed dazed, swaying from side to side as she moved, claws clattering sharply across the rock as she staggered past a Crup-sized heap which lay, shivering, on the floor. Over in the far corner, Boiúna was watching, his slanted eyes darting back and forth, his narrow, pointed face angled towards the mouth of the cave, where Ron stood in the shadows. Behind him were Yakiv and three of the younger wranglers, lit by the feeble, flickering light of a single lantern. Even cast in shadow, Draco could tell that Ron’s expression was severe.

“Draco,” he hissed, edging deeper inside the cave. “What are you doing?”

“You know what I’m doing, Ron,” said Draco, slowly, as Ron drew near. “You know I can help her.”

“Draco,” said Ron with a sigh, his tone softening. “We’ve got this, okay? Please. You should go back home.”

“No,” said Draco, as the baby wriggled again, letting out a tiny squeak followed by a puff of smoke that made Minnie howl and stamp her feet. “No. I know her, Ron. I’m going to help…”

“What you know about dragons, Malfoy?” called Mihai, the youngest wrangler. “You been here five months. Is no job for warder. Or baker,” he added, cruelly.

“Cool it, Mihai,” muttered Ron, rolling his eyes. “Draco, what did you have in mind?”

“Just let me talk to her,” said Draco. “I’ve got all my fireproof gear on, I’ll stay out of her way. Please, please, don’t stun her. I can do it, I know I can.” Ron still looked unsure, and Draco lowered his voice dramatically. “Dragon whisperer, remember,” he said, watching the faintest hint of a smile flit across Ron’s face.

Uncertain, Ron did something Draco had never seen before; he turned to Yakiv. “What d’you reckon?”

Yakiv shrugged. “Up to the boy. He gets trampled, that’s on him.”

Ron swallowed, thickly. His eyes glittered in the lamplight as he turned back towards Draco. “Don’t get trampled, alright?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Draco firmly, shooting Ron one last desperately determined look.

“Wands on,” hissed Ron to the waiting group as Draco turned back to Minnie, empty hands raised in front of him, and began his approach. He felt for his magic, traced the thrill of it down through his wand arm, conduction pathways firing as he reached the core, the old technique he’d learned back in York almost effortless here, amongst these ancient creatures, deep in the heart of this ancient land. The perlite hummed a gentle warning against his skin as Draco crept closer, skin tingling as he allowed the magic of this place to flow freely through him, visualising it spreading through his feet, streaming out across the granite floor and down into the earth. 

Minnie looked down at Draco, then, her enormous head tilting forwards to take in the sight of him. She sniffed disdainfully in Draco’s direction as he watched her eyes, a deep mauve, flicking back and forth between him and the crumpled pile of limbs and sagging leathery skin shifting on the stone beside her. As she looked at Draco, she seemed to nod, and her breathing quickened, loud smoky puffs forced from her nostrils, the baby screeching mournfully at the sound and Draco’s cloak billowing around him with every gust.

“Minnie. My Minnie, girl,” he murmured, low and soothing. “You’re okay, girl, aren’t you? You’re alright now. You’re going to be alright.” He reached out towards her with one shaking arm, and she shied back with a snort. His heart clenched a little, and he could hear Ron whispering urgently behind him. He reached again for the strong, soothing current of his magic, let it guide his words as he continued. “Shush, shush, girl, you’re fine. It’s just me. It’s just Draco. What a clever girl you are, eh? So brave, and you’re doing so well; so, so well. Look at your lovely little boy. What are we going to call him, eh, Min? What d’you reckon? Shall we call him after your namesake too? How about it, does he seem like a Mac?”

Minnie growled softly at that, giving Draco a faceful of hot, bitter dragonbreath and a glimpse of a row of razor-sharp, gleaming teeth. “Okay. Alright, girl,” he said, his body trembling mercilessly as he tried to keep his voice level. “Not Mac then, fair enough. You’re probably right. He’s got his daddy’s colouring, doesn’t he? Shall we name him for his daddy then? Yeah?”

He reached towards her again, and this time she made a dry throaty noise, nuzzling down towards him so he could scratch the side of her snout. She was still panting hard and her enormous throat constricted in a wave-like pattern, the scales over it rippling as she tried to swallow. “Listen, Min,” said Draco softly, an idea forming. “Back in England, where I lived before, I have a friend called Millie. And last year, d’you, know she had a baby too. A girl, she was, called Claudia. Gorgeous, and she looked like her daddy too. I went up to visit them, when she was just a few days old; bald as an egg, all tiny wiggly toes and huge blue eyes. Millie was feeding him herself, you see, and she had her house-elf hovering around the whole time, said the thirst was unbearable.  Are you thirsty too, girl? Bet you haven’t had a drink yet, have you?” Minnie turned her snout towards him, prodding at his chest, his arm thin and milky white against the shimmering armour of her scales.

The baby mewled, feet scrabbling on the floor. Merlin, they were nearly out of time. Draco turned his head ever so slightly towards the mouth of the cave.

“She’s thirsty.”

He heard Mihai’s voice, a protest. “But the baby…”

“You heard him,” Ron hissed, and footsteps echoed sharply through the cave as a couple of the men ran off to the store. Draco kept his eyes on Min, and a couple of minutes later they were back, rolling a barrel carefully before them. They set it down next to Draco, prying the head off with a crowbar, and then retreating rapidly as the distinctive tang of brandy fumes filled the cave. Draco watched, mesmerised, as Minnie grasped the barrel gingerly between her jaws and tipped her neck up, litres of golden liquid splashing noisily down her throat. It seemed barely seconds before she was done, grinding the empty barrel flat, and spitting the enormous splinters across the cave.

“That’s better, eh girl? You feel better now, hmm?” Draco whispered, and much to his relief she let out a contented little sigh, then all at once went forwards onto her knees, her great soft underbelly slamming hard into the ground as she curled up before Draco.

“Now what about your little boy?” he whispered. “Please, Min, will you let me help him too?”

She didn’t respond, but her breathing had evened out, and her enormous eyelids were drooping, and so, reaching for his magic once more, Draco began to tiptoe over towards the shadowy bundle wriggling pitifully on the bare rock. Close up, the baby looked like one of those anti-rain contraptions that the Muggles held over their heads, all spiky limbs and too-large wings folded this way and that, his bronze scales shining in the pale light of dawn as it flooded into the cave.

Minnie whimpered, but didn’t move, and so Draco knelt down, reaching out gingerly for the baby. A ruby eye flickered as Draco drew near, and the baby growled in warning, a tongue of flame bursting from one nostril to lick around the wrist of Draco’s glove. As the baby shivered, unfolding himself, Draco spotted the break, clean through one wing, the skin peeling away from the uneven stumps of bone in a ragged-edged strip which fluttered limply with every one of Min’s exhales.

"Alright, my darling," Draco murmured to the hatchling, taking a long moment to breathe as he let himself feel for the leyline. Its magic was a slow current today, syrupy and contented and safe, no longer sparking electricity off his core. "Let's get you fixed up." 

When it was done, Draco reached out, as gentle and tender as he’d been with Millie’s babe, sliding his gloves around the smoothness of the tiny dragon’s heaving belly. “Up, up,” Draco said in desperation, but it was no good, the little hatchling’s core all but drained, and his legs gave way beneath him as he tried to take a step.

Behind Draco, Minnie let out a frustrated huff, then clambered back to her feet, scales crashing against the wall of the cave. Draco backed away quickly as Minnie approached her baby, watching as she examined the healed wing carefully, lifting it with a single hooked claw. She exhaled, a long, grumbling breath, and then she flopped down once more, her body mere inches away from the exhausted hatchling, and all at once the baby began to perk up, his nostrils flaring, his snout nudging towards Min’s swollen chest. Draco dropped to his knees once more, groggy and dazed, focussed his magic into his shaking palm and grasped the baby around its middle for one final, hopeful push. To his utter surprise, the hatchling rose at last, took three wobbly, tentative steps, then fell forwards onto his mother’s chest and noisily, began to feed.

A cheer sounded from somewhere behind Draco, and all at once a surge of adrenaline swept through him, his magic shrinking back inside, and he staggered back, weakened and shivery, and Ron caught him from behind just before he hit the ground. Shush, shush, Ron said, a mimic of Draco’s earlier reassurances, setting him down gently against the wall of the cave, where the earth magic seeped through the rock and into Draco, seeking out his depleted core.

“Well, baker,” said Mihai, flashing Draco a sheepish grin, “maybe we make wrangler of you after all.”

He smiled, weakly, and the others crowded round, bending to clap Draco on the shoulder and ruffling his wind-blown hair. Then Ron stepped forwards, and they all fell silent.

“Great work, Draco,” he said quietly, wrapping his hand around Draco’s bicep as he squatted down beside him. “Really, you…”

But all at once they heard footsteps, loud on the rock outside, and some kind of commotion, and they all turned towards the mouth of the cave, the daylight so bright it stung Draco’s tired eyes, and Ron’s words died in his throat at the sight of Charlie, silhouetted against the sky.

“Hello, little brother,” Charlie said, and though he was addressing Ron, his eyes were narrowed and fixed on Draco. “Now, is someone going to tell me what the fuck he’s doing here?” 

***

“What d’you mean, works here?”

It was strange, thought Draco numbly, watching them together. His two lovers: the one he barely recalled, and the one he knew so intimately. To the untrained eye they’d probably seem alike, but if you looked past the ginger hair and the freckled, burn-scarred skin, the similarities fell away quickly as they squared up to one another, framed by the yawning mouth of the cave.

Charlie was slightly broader, and more than a head shorter, but strangely it seemed the other way around, Ron hunched uneasily beneath the stone roof, shoulders rolled forwards, crumpling in on himself, while Charlie leant back, thumbs in his waistband, all cool defiance. Draco squinted up at them from where he sat, drinking in the familiar soft line of Ron’s jaw, the ever-so-slightly upturned, freckled nose, the angry blush spreading across his cheeks. Charlie was just as Draco recalled – the arrogant quirk of his lip, chiselled jaw tilted upwards, his bicep flexing as he ran an irritated hand through the length of his hair—a shade lighter, realised Draco, gold to Ron’s copper. They were all still there, all the things that had made Draco want Charlie, once upon a drunken, muddled time. But standing there next to Ron, considerate, hardworking Ron—his Ron—Draco could see Charlie exactly as he really was.

“You know where I found him, right?” said Charlie, nodding at Draco without bothering to lower his voice. “Last time I saw him, he was bent over in the alley out the back of the Groggy Nogtail, begging me to give it to him harder.” He smirked, and Draco watched Ron’s fist clench behind his back. “I’m sorry if I didn’t exactly expect to find him on my reserve.”

Beside Draco, Crina shook her head firmly. She nudged Draco, pulling a slice of Draco’s own apple cake out of her pocket. She tore off a piece and held it up to his mouth. “Eat,” she whispered, and he complied.

“Maybe,” said Ron coolly, drawing himself up at last to look Charlie directly in the eye, “maybe you should have thought about that before you offered him a fucking job.”

“Oh come on, Ron,” laughed Charlie, arms extended. “You know how it is. He was off his tits that night, it’s a bloody miracle he even remembered…”

“So what?” said Ron, voice low and dangerous, stalking forwards into Charlie’s space, “Draco’s good for a shag and nothing else, is that it?”

“Well,” said Charlie, shrugging, “if the shoe fits…”

Ron inhaled sharply, his face twisting in rage, and Crina pulled Draco close, tutting loudly in Charlie’s direction, but it was Mihai who spoke up first. “Didn’t you see Draco with Minnie, boss?”

“Yeah, Mihai, I did, thanks. And from where I was standing his reckless stupidity nearly got that baby killed. Should have stunned her straightaway, Ronnie. Rookie mistake.”

That seemed to do it, finally, and Ron snarled and shoved Charlie in the centre of his chest, forcing him back and not stopping until he had him held firmly against the jagged wall of the cave. “Fuck you, Charlie,” Ron growled, as Charlie struggled hard against his grip, his eyes growing wide and darkening as shock met rage. “I always knew you were a lazy shit, but this…”

Minnie grunted, and a sudden burst of flame lit up the cave, “Stop!” said Draco, louder than he’d planned. “Stop it now. Both of you. You’re scaring Minnie.”

“He’s right,” said Yakiv, as Ron reluctantly let Charlie go. “She’s been through enough. You take this outside, please.”

***

It was almost worse, though, with the two of them out of sight. Mara produced a flask of Firewhisky from the folds of her thick woollen cloak, and they passed it back and forth, trying to distract Draco as they kept close watch over Minnie, who was grumbling contentedly as her baby took long, deep swallows, his tiny body rising and falling atop her chest. It was no use, though: Draco’s mind was completely preoccupied, obsessing over what might be happening outside. Decisions about Draco’s future at the reserve presumably, or more awful discussion about his sex life. Or perhaps the brothers had just knocked one another out cold. Who could tell?

One very long hour later, the little hatchling finally drifted off into a deep sleep, wisps of smoke emanating from his nostrils with each rumbling snore. Minnie curled her tail around him protectively, tucked the very tip of her own snout beneath his healed wing, and closed her eyes. Even Boiúna in the corner was almost asleep, with just a tiny sliver of gold now visible beneath one heavy eyelid, his beady pupil still fixed on the remaining wranglers gathered at the mouth of their cave. There was nothing more to be done now, not until feeding time, and so Draco could hide here no longer. With Mara’s help he struggled to his feet, and slowly began to drag his exhausted body across the reserve and back towards his house. There was no sign of Ron: Draco had no idea what that meant, and tried with all his worth not to guess.

“Malfoy,” came a voice from across the veranda, startling Draco as he fumbled around in his little mokeskin pouch for the key. It was Charlie, of course, Draco’s whisky-lined stomach turning over at the sight of him perched on the edge of the wooden railing, where he’d clearly been waiting.

“Weasley,” Draco mumbled, fingers tightening around the doorhandle.

“My brother tells me you work here now.”

“I know,” said Draco, mustering his dignity and turning towards Charlie. “I was there. We all heard your thoughts on the matter.”

“Well, if it helps, I’m sorry you had to hear all that, Malfoy. You must understand, though. We can’t just let anyone turn up here and start messing about. Ron should have told me—I’m in charge of this place, after all.”

“Are you,” said Draco, disdainful.

Charlie ignored him. “Look, Malfoy, I hear you’ve been doing well for yourself. My brother certainly vouched for you, and you seem to have earned some respect amongst my men. So no hard feelings, eh?” He smiled widely as he held out his hand; a challenge, Draco thought. He took it, slowly, still thinking of the way Charlie had treated Ron, the way he’d scoffed and called him Ronnie.

“And now I’m back, if you have any worries, you know, make sure you come to me.” Charlie’s big hand stayed wrapped firmly around Draco’s own, rubbing uncomfortably against the burn scar from ward-setting all those months ago. “I’m back in my usual house, next-but-one to you. Biggest bedroom in the place,” he added, casually.

“Sure,” said Draco, sliding his hand neatly from Charlie’s grasp. Charlie might have said something else before Draco slammed the door behind him, but if he did, Draco didn’t hear; his mind was on someone else completely. It occurred to Draco that he had no idea what he might find when he entered their room, and he took his time unlacing his heavy boots and lining them up next to Ron’s by the front door. He shook his robe out neatly and hung it on the peg beside Ron’s coat.

When he finally pushed their door open, he found Ron curled up on top of their bed, a blanket over his legs and a cup of tea in hand. He smiled fondly at Draco as he entered, patting the duvet next to him in invitation. On the bedside table a second mug steamed gently under a stasis.

“How is she?” Ron asked, lifting his drink carefully as the squeaky old mattress dipped under Draco’s weight.

“She’s good, yeah,” said Draco, piling up the pillows behind him and flopping back against the headboard. “Baby seems to have perked up now, too. He had a nice big feed and fell asleep.  Anders is keeping an eye; he’s going to give her some extra whisky along with the morning feed.”

“Good, good. That’s great,” said Ron, passing the extra mug across. The tea was strong, overbrewed, and exactly the way Draco liked it. They drank in silence for a while, listening to the sounds of the reserve, until Ron set his mug down, looked over sideways at Draco.

“And you?” he asked.

“What?”

“How are you doing?”

“Oh, I’m fine. I’m fine,” said Draco, too quickly. He swallowed. “I mean, no, I’m knackered; you remember how draining all that stuff is, but a few good hours of rest and I’ll be…”

“Draco,” Ron cut in, suddenly serious. “You know I didn’t mean that.”

“Ah.”

When Draco didn’t say anything else, Ron stretched a little and sighed. “Well, in good news—I think—Charlie’s arranged for two young Vipertooths to arrive next week. With all the extra grant money, we should finally be able to roster you full time. So you can quit the bakery. You know, if you want to.”

Draco hummed, non-committal. He knew Ron must have been excited to tell him, knew he should be happy—after all, he’d been waiting for this news for months, hadn’t he?

Ron seemed to sense his disquiet, shuffling a little closer so that Draco could feel the heat of him against his side.

“Hey, Draco. You did an amazing thing today, you know that?” There was a lump in Draco’s throat, and he gave a little half-shrug, looking away. But Ron caught his wrist, curling his fingers around it and pushing up his sleeve to expose the little Hebridean Black on his right forearm. She was currently curled up and yawning, a mirror of her real-life counterpart, and as Ron ran a thumb over her back, she let out a contented purr. “Are we—are we okay?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Ron,” said Draco, quietly. “You tell me.”

“Look, you mustn’t worry about Charlie. He’ll come round, I promise.”

“Do you want him to, though? Wouldn’t it be easier if I just… if I…?”

Ron looked perplexed, and Draco rolled his eyes in frustration. He’d rather take on an angry Minnie ten times over than finish this conversation, he thought, fighting the urge to crawl beneath the duvet and hide. “You didn’t tell Charlie. About—about us.” It was humiliating, voicing it out loud, but it had been on Draco’s mind ever since Charlie had thrown him that poorly-veiled come-on out on the porch.

“Oh, Draco,” said Ron, sounding relieved. “That’s was just… look, it’s not what you think.”

“No?”

“No. It wasn’t the right time. Not today. He doesn’t know you. He thinks—you heard what he thinks. I didn’t want him to…” Ron looked down, threading his fingers through the holes in the blanket, and suddenly he was the one looking nervous. “I didn’t want him to cheapen this, alright?”

“Oh,” said Draco softly. He lifted his mug, hoping to hide his blush, as Ron continued.

“Growing up, in Charlie’s shadow… he was captain of the Quidditch team, practically the most popular guy in school to hear my brothers tell it. Then by the time we started at Hogwarts he was already working, you know. Oh yes, that’s my brother, Charlie the dragontamer. And you know what he’s like. Around him, I always felt so… so small. I know I’m the youngest brother, I know I chose to follow him out here, I guess I should probably expect it.”

He shrugged, eyes distant. Draco set his mug down, lacing their fingers together, giving Ron’s hand a squeeze. “But he’s never here, is he? Been gone the best part of the last three years, and now – all that work we’ve done together on the wards, you and I… this place, it knows me now. I’m not just working at Charlie’s reserve anymore, you know? And you’re here too, and I just thought… you know what? Why does he get to just come back and swan around the place? And then hearing him insult you like that…”

“I thought you were going to hit him.”

Ron snorted. “So did I.”

“He looked terrified,” said Draco, feeling his face breaking into a grin. “Also, and I hope this goes without saying, it was a very good look for you.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean it. I don’t think anyone’s ever stood up for me like that before. Certainly no-one wielding a bullwhip, anyway.”

“Noted,” said Ron, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards, and he leant over to Draco, the headboard clattering against the wall as he kissed him, long and deep. Tired, Draco rested his cheek against Ron’s.

“What’s he going to say when he finds out?”

“I don’t know,” said Ron, sighing. “Probably make some stupid comment about sloppy seconds. Something about how he had you first, anyway.”

“He didn’t though,” said Draco, nudging his forehead against Ron. “He never had me.”

“But—”

“He never had me,” repeated Draco. “Not… not in the way that you do.”

Ron hummed, pleased, then settled down in the bed, curling a proprietary arm around Draco. “You know, lots of people,” he began, stroking Draco’s hair off his forehead, “lots of people pass through here. They do a season, or a year, or even a couple. But hardly anyone actually stays for good. The isolation, the work, the danger… it’s too much for a lot of people. And I know it’s not something we’ve talked about before, but I think it’s only fair that you know: this place—the reserve—this is me. This is where I belong. And I would get it, you know, if you felt…”

“I feel,” Draco cut in, cheek warm against Ron’s chest, “like it’s been a very long time since I’ve belonged anywhere.”

“So stay,” said Ron, simply. “Belong here, with me. I’d like that.”

“I’d like it too. Anyway,” he said, lightly, “my magic’s in the wards. You’re not getting rid of me that easily, Weasley.”

Ron didn’t reply, his chest rising and falling deep and even, and Draco wondered if he’d fallen asleep. It was warm here and so easy, so very easy, with Ron. Just as Draco’s own eyes were closing, the dragon on his arm let out a little snore, and Ron chuckled dozily.

“You’ll have to get Stefan to draw her a baby too now.”

“I will,” said Draco, twisting around so that he was looking up at Ron. “Anyway, what was that you were saying about new Vipertooths?”

***

It was a nightmare that woke him, the first one since he’d got to Romania; maybe it was all the fresh air, or the long days, or the solid heat of Ron in the bed, but Draco was sleeping through the nights easily, dreamlessly. 

The bed was empty, long fingers of moonlight stretching across the ruffled expanse of bedlinen, which still held a formless warmth where Ron’s body had been.

There was a thin line of light at the base of the door, and Draco kept his eyes on it as he fumbled into Ron’s discarded jogging bottoms, still shivery from wrenching himself out of sleep. At the open window, the curtain moved, a soundless billow in a breath of wind. Draco could hear a distant, contented rumble from outside—Bluebell, he thought, returned from her hunt. A satisfactory night’s work, it sounded like.

The door swung open at his touch, golden light spilling clean into the quiet dimness of the bedroom. Draco padded down the stairs.

The big living area was quiet, no one but Ron and Draco awake after the long day. The kettle had just been boiled, steam still licking into the frigid air. Ron was standing in front of the big fireplace in just his underwear, one of Draco’s t-shirts stretched over him. He was so big; it was easy to forget, seeing him beside the dragons all the time, dwarfed by their bulk, or lying with him, wrapped up in him, only concentrating on the pieces of him—the uncomplicated blue of his eyes, or the capable span of his hands, or the savage flex of the muscles at the back of his thighs when Draco’s fingers dug in—how very much of him there was to touch.

He was bending over, hopefully to stoke the fire, Draco thought, shivering again. The t-shirt strained upwards from the tapered line of Ron's lower back, revealing a thin stretch of winter-pale skin above the elastic waist of his underwear, a spray of freckles blooming over the shifting curves of his spine. Draco could see the beginnings of a mark there, from a scrape of fingernail or maybe even teeth. They had that in common, the two of them so pale. Neither of them could hide what they wanted, what they had taken.

He was smiling as he walked over to Ron, a stupidly obvious, unsuspecting smile, a smile he thought was safe enough here in the confines of the house. It meant that when Draco reached the fireplace—heard the low murmur of voices, saw the dull pulsating throb of the vivid green international Floo call flames, felt the lack of heat—that Harry Potter saw that smile from where his head rested on the cold banked embers.

“Cheese curds,” Potter was saying, and Draco wondered for a moment if he might be still stuck in his bad dream. “And gravy. Mate, you would have lo—”

He stopped so suddenly that Draco almost laughed, and then Potter said carefully, “Ron, why is Malfoy naked in your living room?”

Ron’s head whipped around, colour already rising in his face, and Draco half-retreated and realised he was too late so stepped forward again, a ridiculous dance, bare feet curling against the cold floor.

“I’m not naked,” he said, and he saw Ron’s mouth shift into that private, amused shape it sometimes took on when they were together, and he felt a little bolder somehow. It was warmer next to Ron, whose skin was still bedheated and slightly pink. 

“He came about a job,” Ron told Potter, which was not a lie, “and he really isn’t naked.”

Potter laughed at that, an unexpected sound, and looked at Draco again, still smiling, taking him in. Draco resisted the urge to cross his arms over his bare chest, the tight knots of his nipples in the frigid air, the low sag of Ron’s joggers at his hips.

“So,” Potter said slowly, “how is the job going, then?” but he was looking at Ron when he asked, and Draco stayed quiet.

“Great,” Ron said firmly. “It’s really… great.” And then he was stretching ostentatiously, his big body distracting in his small pants and Draco’s small t-shirt, and he put an arm very deliberately around Draco’s shoulders and pulled him in a bit, just enough for Potter to notice, and oh, Draco thought. He could feel gooseflesh rising where Ron’s fingers grazed his skin—good hands, they were, with calloused palms, the shine of a fresh burn at a wrist, those talented fingers.

“Well,” Potter said, sounding taken aback, and then stopped talking again. His eyes returned to Draco slowly, almost reluctantly, gaze dark and unreadable in the sickly glimmer of the Floo. Draco felt his bare chest prickle under the scrutiny.

“I’m going back to bed,” Draco offered into the silence, and then he let his hand drift up to touch Ron’s where it rested against his skin below the collar bone, just a brief tangle of fingers, and then he extricated himself and headed for the bedroom, leaving the silence behind him.

He was almost at the door when he heard Potter speak.

“Mate,” he said, and Ron said crossly, “Don’t, Harry, don’t start,” and Draco swallowed hard. But then Potter said, “No, mate. It’s good. It’s great, you’re great.” There was another beat of silence, a big warm waiting one this time, and then Potter and Ron started talking together, words tumbling over each other, quiet and collusive, and Draco didn’t need to look back to know that Ron was smiling.

Draco was almost asleep when Ron got back into the bed, and he shifted restlessly over to Ron’s side, disoriented by the soft night noises through the open window, and the dip in the mattress at Ron’s sudden weight, and the shock of cold air as the duvet lifted and fell again over both their bodies.

“Hello,” Ron said, and his face was buried in Draco’s hair, and all of him felt cold under Draco’s grasping arms.

“We have got to start keeping the range properly stoked at night,” Draco said, shivering at Ron’s hands skimming him, the ghost of a touch at his ribcage, then a thumb flickering at his nipple, a deeper tremor racing through him.

“I took care of it after I finished with Harry,” Ron said, and of course he had, the sweet smell of the woodsmoke trapped in his hair.

“Do you always have secret dead-of-night Firecalls with Potter, then?” Draco asked, keeping his voice light. Ron’s stomach tensed against Draco’s, muscles taut. He must had taken his t-shirt off before getting into bed, because Draco could feel the rasp of chest hair with every movement of breath between them.

“Harry’s… Harry’s been going through some stuff,” Ron said. “He’s travelling in Canada at the moment, and it’s tricky to work out our timezones. And it wasn’t a secret—you just slept right through the Floobell.”

"I just wasn't expecting him, I suppose," Draco said. "I would have definitely worn more clothes, for one thing. And I suppose I thought—or, I assumed, at least—that you might want to keep things quiet."

In the moonlight, Ron's eyes were a flat unfocused grey, but Draco could still see the quizzical, enquiring lift of his eyebrows, Ron pulling back, the better to see him.

"Why would I want that?" He sounded genuinely surprised, like it really might not have occurred to him that Draco was not someone he was supposed to want, a dirty Death Eater with a dirty name and an even filthier history.

Draco must have been quiet for too long because Ron sat up and leaned over him, pushed a finger against his mouth, thumbed it open and pressed a kiss to follow.

"I always thought you were a complete shit," he muttered into Draco's mouth, big hand firm at the back of Draco's head. "But that was before. Bloody hell, Draco. If I was ashamed or whatever you've convinced yourself into thinking, I wouldn't be doing this. I wanted to tell Harry first, though. You know what he's like."

"Okay," Draco said. "I mean... I don't, really. I hope I'm different, since school. He might be too."

"He is and he isn't," Ron answered. "It's just that it's always been me and him, and Hermione, you know? And it still is, in all the ways that matter, anyway. I just didn't want to do anything important without him knowing."

"Oh." Draco wished immediately that he hadn't said anything, hadn't drawn attention to it, but Ron didn't seem to think anything of what he had said, just smiled and said, "yeah'" and bent his face down to kiss Draco again, more heat behind it this time. Maybe that was what it was like, being a Gryffindor, Draco thought. Just being able to say these things without having to weigh the balance of it all.

"He's a bit—" Ron propped himself on an elbow so he could wave a hand around "—a bit possessive, you know? We both are, I suppose. And I did wonder, maybe, if you and him… I dunno, you had all that tension at school. And neither of you is any good at working this stuff out. And he was getting a good eyeful earlier when you walked in practically bollocks naked.”

“Are you asking me if I fancy Potter?” Draco felt itchy at the thought. “Or are you telling me that Potter fancies me?”

“Neither,” and Draco squirmed under Ron at the note of promise in his voice. “But I’m telling you that when I want something, I want to feel like it’s really mine.”

“That sounds like a fairly Slytherin approach to romance,” Draco said, and Ron’s eyes glinted with amusement in the moonlight. “And one I can get on board with. The worst part, after, you know, everything that happened”—he swallowed hard, and Ron bit down gently on the swell of his Adam's apple—“was how alone I was. I had always been a prize, you know? Someone’s treasure, someone’s precious thing. It took… some adjusting." He arched his back slightly, a restless urge to press or be pressed. He thought Ron might be getting hard, the weight of his cock against Draco's hip no longer slack. "I like being wanted. I like feeling— ah—” Ron’s hand at his hip, shoving him back into the bed, thumb dipping into the elastic of his waistband, Draco's nerves strung tight with sudden arousal  

"You like being the focus of attention?" Ron said, almost teasing, but he was pressing Draco down harder now, nearly a restraint, and his other hand was playing with the legs of Draco’s underwear, twisting the elastic, stroking along Draco's inner thighs, up and under the fabric, pressing along the tight swell of his balls, all the while watching Draco’s face, eyes narrowed against the moonlight. 

"Did you like it when Harry was looking at you earlier?" Ron asked innocently, barely touching now, the tips of his fingers a waiting heat at Draco's perineum. Draco thought about Potter’s eyes on his bare chest, and at his pause Ron reached up and pinched his nipple. "You liked him watching you?"

"I liked him watching us." Draco wasn't sure if he was imagining Ron's inhalation. "I liked it when he saw— When you touched—" Ron dropped his mouth down, licked around his fingers when Draco sighed into the touch at his nipple. "Ron… please."

"You know you can have whatever you want," Ron told him seriously, "as long as you tell me what it is.” He smiled, teeth scraping electricity over Draco’s skin. “I can tell you what I want, if you like.”

“Absolutely not,” Draco told him, winding a hand into Ron’s hair and tugging at it. “I know how this goes, you’re going to give me lots of filthy ideas and it’s just going to get me worked up, and I’m already too close to—”

“Actually,” Ron said, “I was only going to say that I want to fuck you tonight. I want to really feel you.”

It was so easy Draco thought, when Ron was over him, pushing in carefully, face downturned in concentration, big hands slippery with lube and sliding where they held Draco’s thighs open, so easy to know what Ron needed. He was used to asking for things, maybe, or it might just have been that ordered, precise mind of his that made him so pragmatic. Draco wondered if it had always been that easy for him.

“I need to move,” he told Draco, and he meant it; Draco could tell from the shivering tightness of his muscles how very much he meant it. “Are you okay if I—”

“I want it,” Draco told him, and watched him bite his lip, felt the slow powerful swing of his hips. “I want all of you." Ron's quiet groan was low in his throat as he tried to go slow. He was so big; knew it too. Draco wriggled impatiently, itching for more, restless with it. "I don't want anyone else.”

“They can't have you. Not Harry, not Charlie, not that fucker from your bakery that makes the, what do you call it, the pandispan.” Ron was moving easier now, Draco arching up to meet him, all the better to be filled up, pushed down, taken apart. “I don’t care—” Ron panted, slowed for a moment, shoulders high and tense. “I don’t care if they want you. But they can’t have you. Okay?”

It wasn’t as though Ron didn’t know, Draco thought—he must have known, must have seen it in the cold high daylight of the Romanian winter, or in the flare of Lumos in Minnie's cave, or in the small careful flicker of the range when he bent to take the dinner out; it was all there, written all over Draco’s face, probably. But Draco told him anyway, in case he needed to hear it out loud, a litany: I want you, I only want you, there’s no one else, as though the thought or memory of anyone else wasn’t driven right out of him by the feel of this, of them. And it wasn't just this, not just Ron fucking him, or him fucking Ron, or any combination of hands and hot mouths and wet patches and so much skin, but all this and more than, too. 

“I’m going to come,” he told Ron, and he really was, so close already, so easy for it, the delicious simplicity of Ron deep in him, the slow wet push in, the coiling heat low in Draco’s belly, their shared breaths.

“Yes, fuck,”—Ron leaned on one arm, bicep bunching, getting a hand free for Draco to fuck into, just tight and warm enough—“I want to see you.” And he did watch as Draco shuddered and came into his palm, watched Draco with wide interested eyes until Draco clenched around him hard enough that his lids fluttered shut and he stilled, soundless, as deep as he could go.

After, he was still inside Draco, a slackening weight, a wet slide between Draco’s thighs, Ron’s body loose and relaxed on top of him. 

“That was so good,” Ron said into his neck, licked over Draco’s pulse, laughed a muffled laugh when Draco groaned tiredly. “Sorry if I made it weird, though, with the thing. You know, mentioning Charlie and Harry.”

“Don’t forget Ciprian from the bakery,” Draco said. "Though you don’t need to worry about him. I just want him for his cakes. Anyway, I meant it, you know. What I said.”

“You could tell me again,” Ron said. “Now I’m not distracted by how truly excellent your arse feels.”

“I don’t want to fuck your best friend.” Draco yawned, a huge exhausted thing. “And I don’t want to fuck your brother.”

“You don't want to fuck my brother again,” Ron corrected mildly.

“Again,” Draco agreed. “Definitely not. For one thing, you have a bigger dick.”

“I am aware,” Ron said, “but thank you anyway.”

“And for another thing, that whole Charlie incident was…” He looked at Ron, at the sun-lines around his eyes, and that particular bronze of his freckles, and the sweep of his rich red hair, and the clear blue gaze that made Draco want to be honest.  “Well, I only wanted to fuck him in the first place because he reminded me of you. The whole… you thing was very confusing back at school, but I’ve come to terms with it since then. If that helps at all.”

“I was not aware of that bit,” Ron said, sounding pleased. “But it does help, actually. Plus it casts some of your more extreme theatrics at school into a very different light. Shall we have a few rousing verses of Weasley Is Our King next time I’m balls deep in you?”

“Don't tempt me," Draco said. "Quidditch was when it all started, actually. You on a broom." Ron snorted. "All the leather. Your big hands. You know the sort of thing."

This time it was Ron who yawned, a soft amused sound, and Draco heard the pop of joints as he stretched his arms above his head, and as if on cue, through the window they heard a distant screech and the muffled thump of something igniting.

"When is Boitatá going to start sleeping through the night?" Ron said into his pillow.

"He'll settle," Draco said. "Go to sleep. You need your rest. Those dragons won't wrangle themselves, you know."

Ron sighed, already shifting out of wakefulness, his face uncomplicated by sleep. Draco touched Ron's hair, allowed himself to stroke it. He closed his eyes.