Chapter Text
Harry’s in some shower in Pansy’s house, scrubbing furiously at his hair and being completely, absolutely fine for a solid few minutes before he realises he hasn’t brought anything to change into.
Not a problem. Totally not a problem.
Because he’s fine.
He’s, like, good.
Great, even.
Why would he be anything else? His ex-partner rounded up his supposed best friends in the world, plus Blaise—who’s obviously there for Hermione—and Gregory Goyle, who’s there for—
For picking Harry up by his wand holster, apparently.
“I’m fine,” he hisses at the showerhead, which does not answer. “I love Godric’s Hollow.”
His throat squeezes itself shut after that, so hard Harry thinks he might suffocate, which would be really bloody ironic considering he’s in the bloody shower, but after a minute the sensation liquefies and trickles down to his chest, where it adds to his general heartache.
Because Harry does love Godric’s Hollow.
But he, unlike Pansy, has never been able to plan out how to, like, get there. Not physically, obviously, but life-wise. It would’ve meant all sorts of things that weren’t compatible with working as a Ministry curse-breaker with Pans and now—
Well, he’d have to leave Grimmauld if he wanted to live in Godric’s Hollow, and that would mean—
Harry doesn’t know what that would mean.
Does it mean he’d be quite angry, then quite sad, then glad he came?
He doesn’t know that, either.
Harry shuts off the shower and flings himself out.
There’s a clean towel hung on a hook, and all Harry’s clothes are clean, too, in neat piles on a wicker bench. His jeans, curse-breaking shirt, and wand holster in one stack. His vest and Arrows jumper in another.
His face hurts from scowling while he picks the curse-breaking shirt and spells his wand holster on. It’s not better than the Arrows jumper. It’s a lot worse, actually. But this place—
Well, this place is where he is.
He’s not ready for the jumper just yet, though.
A bit of parchment squeezes through the gap between the door and frame, folds itself into an aeroplane, and zooms across the bathroom to hover in front of Harry’s face.
Come downstairs when you’re dressed, will you? We’re having a campfire to discuss scheduling!
xoxo your closest friend, Hermione
Harry crumples the aeroplane into a tiny ball.
Then he immediately flattens it out on his thigh. He swipes the wrinkles out as well as he can, his eyes stinging, folds it nicely, and slips it into his pocket.
He pops the door open with a yank of wandless. The air in the hall is cool and dry and occupied by Draco, who leans against the wall, a sort of posh easiness in him that sets Harry’s hands aching like mad to grab him and just, like, press Harry’s entire self against him and stay there until the week is up.
“I’m not angry,” Harry announces instead. It’s true, a bit. He’s not angry like he was before. He’s a different sort of angry.
Draco does not say anything.
“Is the campfire mandatory or something? Are you here to make sure I attend?”
The corner of Draco’s mouth quirks. “The campfire is mandatory, Potter.”
Harry snarls at him, and something flashes in Draco’s eyes, bright, quick, but Draco steps in before Harry can name it and takes Harry’s face in his hands.
It’s enough to keep anything else from spewing out of Harry, such as every curse word he knows or, like, actual curses.
He closes his eyes. Only for a second or two. Just to, like, get hold of himself.
It’s a bit easier this time.
“Let’s go down, shall we?” Draco’s thumb traces that same arc on Harry’s cheekbone. “I’ll walk you.”
They wend their way through the cottage to the kitchen door, which lets them out onto a deck, which lets them out into the back garden. Another tall sycamore tree shades the furthest corner and holds back a tall hedge.
Harry flickers his eyes hard to the right instead of rolling them. Bit dramatic of Greg to say they wouldn’t have any garden left. They’ve got plenty, and every inch is soaked in loads of late-afternoon early-evening light, gold and warm and summery. There’s a stone fire pit built on the sycamore-corner side. The other side’s got a rose bower and a bloody swimming pool.
Somebody—probably everyone who’s here, other than Harry—put garden chairs ’round the fire pit. Blaise and Ron sit in two of them. Hermione stands near the fire pit, holding a megaphone. Pansy stands with Greg at the edge of the fire pit, her hand on his as he aims at the logs in a low pile in the centre.
Greg’s voice reaches them first. “—know it isn’t, Pans. I’m only saying, what if it turns out wrong?”
“I know the counter-curse,” Pansy answers.
“You haven’t got your wand out.”
Pansy slides her wand out of her sleeve without seeming to move her hand. “I’ve got it out now, haven’t I? One, two, three.” When Greg doesn’t cast, she lets out an offended oh! “One, two, three, Goyle! One, two, three!”
“Incendio.”
A spark flies from the tip of Greg’s wand and lands in the logs, setting them gently alight.
“Well done,” Blaise calls as he applauds. “Inspiring performance.”
Ron claps, too.
Greg does a sheepish bow and lowers himself into one of the garden chairs.
“Oh, good, you’re here,” Hermione says through the megaphone, aiming it directly at Harry. The sound jars his bones. “Take your seats, please, and we’ll get started.”
“Why do you have a megaphone?” Harry wants to stomp back inside, but Draco’s fingertips land on his elbow, so light it would be twattish to shake him off, and Harry doesn’t want to shake him off, actually, so he stomps irritatedly towards the garden chairs instead.
“To ensure everyone is able to hear and understand the schedule.”
“You could use your wand,” Harry says testily, and thumps himself into an open chair. He’s too everything to lean back, so he sits up straight and crosses his arms over his chest.
“I am using this,” Hermione answers through the megaphone.
Draco does not sit in the next garden chair.
He climbs delicately into the space behind Harry and folds his legs, and Harry can’t turn and ask him what he’s doing. He can’t even stay upright. He leans back into Draco, who slings his arm over Harry’s shoulder so his thumb hooks onto the bottom strap of Harry’s wand holster and just stays there, casually, like nothing has changed.
Harry doesn’t care about the megaphone anymore.
He very recently slept through the night, then apparently napped for several hours, and his skin definitely hasn’t got less sensitive. Maybe a bit less raw. Feels a bit less torn. The heat of Draco’s hand through his shirt isn’t filtered by that pain.
It’s good.
It’s really good.
Pansy slips into the next garden chair over as Hermione clears her throat through the megaphone.
“We’ll begin with an overview of the schedule for the week.” Hermione flicks her wand, and several feet of parchment snap into the air next to her. She looks utterly professional, even dressed in a bikini top and a sheer, like, wrap skirt that Harry’s pretty sure is charmed to change colours as the sun moves across the sky. Her medium-brown skin shines with more charms, and she’s got her braids twisted up on top of her head, and she looks like she’s really been enjoying herself in Pansy’s back garden. That’s good, too. Harry’s chest aches with the tension of being happy for her, really—because seeing her like this always reminds him of those months in the tent, when they’d both got a sort of ashen, exhausted pallor—and being bitterly jealous and missing her like he’d miss one of his limbs. “We will begin each morning with group individualised exercise. Free weights will be available. Ron has graciously volunteered to lead any interested parties in a yoga practice.”
“What sort?” Greg asks across the row of chairs. Harry tilts his feet down, then back up on the edge of the garden chair. He can’t wear these trainers for group exercise. They’ll fall apart.
“It’s not really yoga,” Ron answers. “It’s a series of Foundation exercises. I can explain in the morning, if anyone wants.”
“But it’s not the sort with the Warming Charms?”
“Merlin, no.”
Greg gives Ron a thumbs-up.
Ron gives Greg a thumbs-up back.
Harry stares at Ron until Ron winks at him, then rolls his eyes until he’s re-focused on Hermione.
“Group individualised exercise is mandatory,” Hermione continues. “Following group individualised exercise, we will have breakfast. Following breakfast, we will—”
It’s just, like, too much.
Too good, being able to see most of Harry’s important people all at once. Too bloody infuriating, that someone else is deciding his schedule. Too embarrassing that someone else deciding his schedule—which Harry hates—is smoothing out some jagged beat in his head. Too frustrating that he couldn’t just plan this himself, like a normal person, like any of his friends, like his ex-almost-fiancé, like Gregory Goyle, like—
He doesn’t know he’s fallen asleep until he wakes up literally in Draco’s lap, a plate over his head.
Harry blinks up at the bottom of the plate until Draco’s hand is on it, and then he understands Ron is giving Draco a plate, and then he understands it's got dark and he’s got hungry again.
Draco charms the plate with a bit of wandless so it’ll wait in the air next to them and pats Harry’s elbow.
He waits a minute to, like, get hold of himself, then sits up.
“Fell asleep,” Harry says.
“You haven’t missed anything,” says Draco, and Levitates the plate into Harry’s hands.
“Oh.” It’s food. It’s food Harry likes. But the sight of it makes his pulse tick up for, like, four different reasons. “Er—”
“Here.”
Draco nudges something against Harry’s arm.
It’s his Arrows tumbler.
“We’ll be going inside for group individualised free time,” Hermione says into her megaphone at some point later.
Harry gets to his feet, his body quite heavy from the food and, he guesses, being tired, and brushes at the front of his jeans in case there’s any dirt.
There isn’t.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” he tells Hermione.
She narrows her eyes at him over her megaphone. “Yes, it does.”
In the cottage, Ron and Greg spell dishes clean in the kitchen while they talk about some yoga studio on Diagon Alley. Pansy takes Draco’s elbow and pulls him aside. Hermione and Blaise bend their heads over a length of parchment—the schedule, Harry thinks—and have a murmured chat about it. Blaise rests his hand on the back of Hermione’s neck and pulls her a bit closer.
“I see that,” he says to her. “And I must remind you, my love, that it is essential you put away the books at a reasonable hour.”
“And who decides what constitutes a reasonable hour, hmm?”
Harry goes upstairs.
He can’t stand the curse-breaking shirt much longer, but he’s got to do, like, some things before he falls asleep without planning to again.
The cottage is a lovely stone sprawl on the outside. On the inside, it’s got three floors and only vaguely matches its outer appearance.
Harry climbs to the second floor without thinking much about it. Draco will want to sleep in a room that looks over the back garden, and it’s better if he knows he’s got a bathtub nearby, and the bed’s got to be just so.
There’s one room that meets all the necessary criteria. It’s got the view, and the bed, and even an ottoman at the foot. The spell for the bed hurts like five or six heart attacks. It’s never been simple for Harry. He’s got to use his wand to cast it how Draco likes, but it goes off like nothing’s changed.
Harry breathes out the horrible familiar ache of it, holsters his wand, and sets about warding the door.
Draco’s mother came to the townhouse on Connaught Square and warded Draco’s bedroom door the day he moved in. That was before Draco and Harry were dating, and when Harry found out about it, he’d freaked out a bit for no reason and Floo-ed to the Manor directly and rushed about calling for Narcissa.
He realised how mental he was being when Narcissa stepped out of a sitting room wearing a set of staying-in robes and an absolutely calm expression. Harry recognised that calm from seeing it on Draco’s face.
He should’ve sent an owl.
It was urgent, though.
Narcissa didn’t seem to care that Harry was being mental. She showed him how to cast the wards anyway. It was the sort of complicated spell framework he and Pansy had both spent loads of time studying and arguing about, so he wasn’t totally in the dark. Still, it took an hour or two of practice on one of the doorways near Draco’s bedroom at the Manor for Harry to get it perfect.
He can’t imbue it with Narcissa’s magic or anything, but he can make it feel like a sister spell.
Not, like, a Bellatrix spell.
Not like that.
That was also the first real conversation Harry ever had with Draco’s mum. The times they spoke at the trials didn’t count.
He finishes the casting on the doorframe and walks through a few times to be sure the ward is how it should be, then steps into the attached bath.
Not bad. Harry Extends the bathtub and runs a thin layer of Warming Charms over the floor. Pansy’s already got a thick stack of towels and flannels and—suspiciously or kindly—Draco’s favourite hair potions.
Harry could lie down again.
He goes downstairs instead, skirting the sitting room and kitchen. Everybody else is in there. He can hear Draco saying did you know, Weasley and Hermione laughing and Pansy talking curse-breaking theory with Blaise.
Harry’s ribs loosen up.
Not much. Just a bit. Enough to breathe deeper. He’s got no idea how they got so compressed.
He lets himself out the front and holds out his hand for a wandless Lumos.
It bobbles out of his palm and floats a pace in front of him, lighting the path from house to hedge.
Harry starts at roughly the place he tried to rip it apart and Vanishes the hedge-pieces left on the grass. A glance at the cottage—nobody’s looking.
He casts his mildest Diagnostic Charm at the hedge.
The green mirror-lines shoot out from his fingers like always, but then the hedge…
Blows them out like a candle.
Harry’s magic turns into a puff of smoke a few inches before it touches the shrub.
He casts again.
The hedge blows his charm directly back in his face, ruffling his hair.
“Fine, Jesus, okay.” He holds both hands up for a second, showing he’s given in, Merlin’s bollocks, then reaches into the hedge with his fingers spread apart. Harry wraps his entire hand loosely over the first ley line he touches.
They’re stronger than they were. The ley lines themselves are thicker. Warmer to Harry’s touch, too.
It’s not just reinforced. It’s self-reinforcing. Anything Harry—or anyone else—puts into it will get absorbed by the framework and make it stronger.
Or else it will get blown into his face.
So if Harry wants to destroy it, he’ll have to destroy it. He can’t just slip away in the night.
“Nice one, Pans.” Harry moves on to counting the ley lines—seven, obviously—and feeling out the framework so he can see where everyone’s magic fits in.
He hadn’t felt Draco’s magic before, but now—
Harry goes from section to section, tracing the ley lines with his fingertips and checking for gaps on the off-chance he can make a quick getaway.
There are no gaps.
His sense of Draco’s magic in the casting flickers in and out like those far-off pixies. It’s here, but is it only here because Draco was the seventh person across the boundary? Is it not Draco’s magic at all, just similar magic?
He doesn’t expect to, like, figure out the answer now. It’ll come later if it ever does.
Clockwise from path to garden. Harry steps away from the hedge to put out the embers left in the fire pit. Wings flap overhead as his Aguamenti hisses in the last of the embers.
It’s Pig, Ron’s owl. The fluffy Snitch of a bird bobs wildly across the garden and zooms up to one of the sitting room windows on the side of the cottage, a roll of parchments ten times his size bouncing from a string tied to his leg. He taps the window with his beak, whistle-hooting for attention, and after a second the window opens and Ron leans out.
“Bloody hell, Pig, why didn’t you get help? You’re an old man! Look, Pans—it’s the forms for—” Ron pulls Pig inside, his voice cutting off as the window closes.
Harry goes back to the hedge.
He’s just crossed the midline towards the rose bower when he feels the pulse.
It registers at the line of his knuckles, and all at once, Harry knows he’s felt that pulse all along. He’s only just now noticed because it’s so subtle. It’s like noticing his own heartbeat.
Only it’s not really a pulse, like Harry’s heartbeat. It’s something else.
Pansy’s curse-that’s-not-a-curse is ticking.
You’re staying the week because you’re still ticking.
Harry doesn’t tighten his grip on the ley lines. He doesn’t loosen it, either. He closes his eyes against what feels like a lightning strike, it’s so bright and close and obvious.
Harry’s running out of time.
This week is all he’s got, and the not-curse is counting it down for him.
On the other side of it, there’s nothing. Pansy leaves him at work. Draco leaves him everywhere else. Blaise and Ron and Hermione and, yeah, Gregory Goyle go back to their lives.
They’re giving him a week.
When Pansy said he’d be quite angry and quite sad and then he’d be glad for this, that’s got to be what she meant.
Which means…
This is his last chance to be lovable.
That’s a pretty tall order, especially for Harry. He’s got to be reasonable.
This is his last chance to be as easy to love as possible.
“Maybe just, like, easy to put up with,” he says to the hedge. “Let’s not go overboard.”
Okay, so, he’s got to be less difficult and annoying and worrisome to people. He’s got to, like, talk to his friends and generally be at Curse Sleepaway Camp. Pansy already expects him to be furious, and Harry doesn’t quite know how to stop, which leaves him with getting over it fast.
Well, Harry bloody hates that. He hates all of it, actually. The only thing he’s happy about is that he’s getting this one chance to have his friends remember him in a decent light when they move on with their lives.
Harry draws his hand out of the hedge and breathes in the damp night air and lets it fry up his lungs and his chest.
He’s barely aware of crossing the garden to the deck. It only occurs to him when the kitchen door opens and Draco’s there.
Lovable, he thinks. His mind locks on to how bloody beautiful Draco is and how much Harry wants to touch Draco’s hair and how much he just wants him, every part of him. There’s not much processing power left over to come up with a real plan. Question?
“Can I sleep with you?” Harry blurts. “Tonight, I mean.”
Draco’s face softens, his eyes getting wider, and thank bloody Merlin it wasn’t an unlovable annoying arsehole thing to say.
Bloody. Fucking. Perfect. Harry’s shaking and he didn’t know.
“Harry.” Draco takes Harry’s elbow and ushers him in like it’s Draco’s house and not Pansy’s. “Have you got tired? Of course you have. Let’s go up now, shall we?”