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Getting to the North Pole had been a mission in itself.
It required two Portkeys between London and a non-descript Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, home to the International Confederation of Wizards’ northernmost outpost—this being a generous name for a rundown shed with a rusted metal roof and decaying siding. Their second Portkey dumped them right at its doorstep, where an ancient-looking elf wearing a large fur hat as a coat gave them the rest of the directions by drawing a map on a flimsy piece of parchment. Then it was a matter of rumbling further north in the persistent twilight on Sirius’s motorbike, previously shrunken and transported in the inner pocket of Harry’s uniform.
A couple of hours passed before they finally saw it: a lone house, barely outlined in the surrounding snow, its single chimney puffing out a steady stream of smoke.
They completed their descent on a nearby hill. Harry pressed the motorbike down in a whirl of dusty white, and removed his earmuffs and goggles just as the last of the engine’s stuttering noises rent the frigid air.
He checked his watch: five minutes to noon, UK time. Right on schedule.
Malfoy clambered out of the sidecar, smoothing down his charcoal grey coat. They exchanged impassive looks before starting downhill, snow crunching underfoot, and didn’t speak until they reached the large red door.
“So, he’s real.” It was the first thing Harry had said to Malfoy since the outpost. “Can’t believe I made it to twenty-three without anyone mentioning that.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Malfoy said, grabbing the reindeer door knocker and thumping it three times against the door.
“The guy who lives here?”
“Why wouldn’t he be real?”
Harry opened his mouth to argue, but was shocked into silence when the door swung open.
“Hello,” said a very tall, very fit lumberjack of a man.
“Good afternoon, Mr Claus,” Malfoy said. “I’m Draco Malfoy, Ancient Runes Specialist with the British Ministry of Magic. This is my colleague, Auror Potter. We’re here to investigate some suspicious runic activity coming from this location, as it seems to be interfering with ley lines in parts of England and Wales.”
“I see,” the man said, looking unbothered. “Right finicky things, runes.”
“Indeed,” Malfoy agreed. “Would it be all right for us to have a look at them?”
“No,” the man said.
“Ah,” said Malfoy.
“I’m very busy, and the runes you’re looking for are in the basement. I don’t have time to show you around.”
This jolted Harry back into action. “Uh, excuse me—Mr Claus, sir?”
“Call me Nick.”
Harry paused for a beat. “Er, right. Nick, we won’t be in your hair. I will ensure that my colleague gets in and out as fast as possi—”
“I can go by myself,” Malfoy cut in. “My colleague is mainly here because we needed an efficient mode of transportation from the outpost in Svalbard.”
Harry glared at him.
“Be that as it may,” Nick said flatly, “I can’t just have strangers roaming about my property without any supervision.”
He gave them both a once-over. “Perhaps if you helped out first.”
“What,” Harry choked, at the same time as Malfoy said, “Certainly.”
*
Half an hour later, Harry was standing next to a workbench, trying to help an elf charm wheels onto a wooden truck. The wheels kept popping off and rolling across the floor, and the elf was shooting Harry dirty looks about it.
“This is stupid,” Harry muttered to Malfoy once the elf stormed out of the workroom they’d been delegated to and it was just the two of them again.
“Don’t let the toys defeat you, Potter,” was Malfoy’s dry rejoinder.
They’d never worked on a case together before. This was the first time since Harry graduated from Auror training three years ago and Malfoy joined up as a rune specialist. In fact, they’d barely interacted at all since the war, at work or otherwise. Even when they bumped into one another, the encounter would always be brief and desperately anticlimactic.
Like in the lifts, when Malfoy would tell him which floor to punch in, and respond curtly to Harry’s good-natured attempts at small talk. Or that one time in the canteen, when Malfoy had searched for an empty seat and Harry kicked out a chair across from him and Dawlish, which Malfoy pointedly ignored and proceeded never to show up in the canteen again.
After each of these, Harry would find himself unexpectedly struck by a variety of random, involuntary thoughts. An innocuous one, after the snub in the canteen: I saw him eating breakfast, lunch and dinner every day across the hall for six years. A distressing one, after an awkward lift ride: I saved him from dying horribly in a fire.
A right wallop of one, after Harry had spent the summer of 2001 on a feverish crawl of gay clubs, and then stumbled into Malfoy at a potions shop while picking up some Hangover Elixir. Malfoy had been enquiring about an infusion for his mother’s rose garden, and Harry thought: I love the way his hair falls across his face. Harry immediately caught himself, threw a handful of coins onto the counter, and fled the shop. But once planted, the thought took firm root in his head, and began sprouting other, similar thoughts over time.
Nothing changed after that, though. Recontextualising his past fixation on Malfoy into some latent attraction didn’t miraculously make Harry more inclined to push for friendship, or anything close to it. Especially since Malfoy seemed so dead set on ignoring him, never picking up any cases when Harry was the Auror on call, giving him a wide berth during Ministry functions and interdepartmental meetings. The standoffishness was annoying, and Harry didn’t get it at all. Malfoy had no business being standoffish, acting like they’d only just met, and not like they had a complicated and fraught history that might benefit from some unpacking.
“So, will we talk about it?” Harry asked now, opening a sack of plastic dinosaur parts and tossing them one by one onto the workbench.
“About what,” Malfoy said.
“The fact that Santa Claus is over here looking like the December cover of WizarDILFs?”
That gave Malfoy some pause. His thin mouth stretched into something like a smile, then devolved into a sneer. “Please keep your filthy fantasies to yourself, Potter.”
Harry twirled a T-Rex tail in his hand. “Am I wrong? What, is he a crazy deity or something?”
“Don’t people say that about you?” Malfoy fired back.
“Well,” Harry said, because that wasn’t not true.
Between them, they managed to assemble thirty-eight action figures, seventeen rocket ships, and twenty life-size doll houses, by which point it felt like several hours had passed.
“When do you reckon he’ll let us look at the runes?” Harry asked after a glance at his watch, which showed it had just gone five o’clock. “Maybe we could get to London before eight.”
Malfoy closed the ballerina music box he was tinkering with and placed it back on his workbench. Then he cast, “Tempus Angliae.”
Harry frowned at the numbers that floated out of Malfoy’s wand. “Wonky Tempus Charm?”
“Of course not,” Malfoy said.
“We got here at twelve. Your Tempus says it’s only been five minutes since.”
“Because it has. In London. In case you kept your eyes closed for the entirety of our journey here, we are now at the North Pole,” Malfoy said, dispelling his Tempus with a wave of his hand. “Time runs differently here.”
Harry stared at him.
Malfoy raised an eyebrow.
“That wasn’t in the memo,” Harry said weakly.
Just then, Nick popped into the workroom.
“Nice work, men,” he said. “That’ll do for today. One of the elves will show you to the sleeping quarters.”
*
What Nick meant was that Malfoy and Harry would be corralled into a room with two single beds pushed to either side of it with just about three feet of space between them.
To Harry’s further outrage, Malfoy had packed an overnight bag for this trip, which he now smoothly pulled out of his pocket and unshrunk before Harry’s eyes.
“What? Did you seriously think you’d be home in time for the Weasley Christmas soiree?” Malfoy drawled, taking some clothes out of the bag and placing them on his bed.
Harry did think that. All the other rune-related cases he’d worked on usually wrapped up within a day, even the international ones. But he wasn’t going to admit that to Malfoy, who he was now stuck with for an unspecified amount of time at the North Pole, which had turned out to be a different dimension, or whatever.
He faced his own bed wordlessly, and proceeded to Transfigure his work clothes into something resembling sleepwear.
Later, lying on his back, his Transfigured shirt itching around the collar, Harry muttered, “How long do you think we’ll be here for, then?”
For a few moments, he was met with nothing but the sounds of deep breathing. Then Malfoy cleared his throat.
“Five hours in this place is approximately five minutes back home. It won’t be midnight in England for another twenty five days here.”
Harry swallowed. “I suppose we now know how Nick manages to make all those gifts on time.”
“Quite so.”
Silence stretched between them.
“If he doesn’t take us to the runes tomorrow, we can try to find them ourselves,” Malfoy offered.
Despite everything, this made Harry grin. “Going behind Santa’s back now, Malfoy? How naughty of y—”
“Shut it, Potter.”
*
It turned out that plan was easier said than done. Outside of breakfast, lunch and dinner, Nick and his elves kept them busy all day long. They’d been there for six days—local time—before they finally managed to slink away from their designated workroom and go looking for the basement.
They found it using Malfoy’s fancy rune sensor. (“It’s a Glyphscope,” Malfoy said dryly when Harry had first called it that.) Harry kept watch at the top of the narrow staircase leading down to the basement door, while Malfoy worked on unlocking it.
“The lock won’t budge,” he announced from the bottom landing after a few minutes. “I knew Alohomora would be a longshot, but none of my other unlocking spells are working either. It needs a key.”
“Let’s swap places, I want to give it a go,” Harry said.
Malfoy went up just as Harry started coming down, their shoulders brushing in the small space between the railing and the wall.
He stooped to examine the brass lock and poked at it a bit. Without drawing his wand, he whispered, “Unlock.”
The lock vibrated, as though giving a small headshake.
“Oh, why didn’t I think of that,” he heard Malfoy mutter. God, he was so tetchy. For some reason, that made Harry think of Hermione lecturing him and Ron about expulsion after they’d broken into another locked room when they were eleven. Harry grinned, drew his wand and said, “Expecto Patronum.”
His stag burst out of his wand, lighting up the landing. Harry pointed at the lock. “Can you find the key for this?”
The stag blinked at him once, then turned and trotted through the staircase.
“Are you joking,” Malfoy rage-whispered from above. “How is your Patronus supposed to—”
He was cut off by Harry’s stag galloping back out of the opposite wall and charging straight through Harry. Harry had still not got used to this part—he stumbled back against the wooden railing, gulping for air as the stag fully passed through him and then dissipated.
“Taught him a few tricks over the years,” Harry said on his next exhale. “He found the key.”
He realised he was keeling over and bracing himself against his knees when he felt a hand steady him by the elbow.
Harry looked up at Malfoy and pulled himself together. “It’s in Nick’s bedroom.”
Malfoy held his eyes for a few seconds, something like concern flickering across his face. Then his expression melted back into indifference, and he released Harry’s arm.
*
“We’re never going to get out of here,” Harry grumbled the following night, cross-armed at the door to their shared bathroom, watching Malfoy cleaning his teeth in the mirror.
“We’re not hostages,” Malfoy countered, wiping his face with a cloth. “We can leave whenever we want. It’s the runes that need fixing first.” He brought his hands up to smooth his hair back, pyjamas shifting slightly with the motion. Calling them pyjamas was a bit of a stretch; Harry had spent the past week painstakingly trying not to call them a nightie in his head and mostly failing. Like right now, when Harry’s eyes slid down to Malfoy’s pale ankles.
Before he could stop himself, he blurted, “Why do you sleep in a dress?”
A flush spread across Malfoy’s cheeks, and he frowned. “It’s a nightshirt, Potter. Pardon me for not wanting to sleep in poorly Transfigured fabric every night. At least I came prepared for a case abroad.”
“How was I supposed to know we’d be spending more than a couple of hours here? The memo said—”
“By the way,” Malfoy cut in icily, “your clothes are showing signs of wear from all the back-and-forth Transfiguration. I fear the front of your trousers will burst in one of those poor elves’ face any day now.”
Harry tried catching himself before hurling back another pointless jab and failed. “Been staring at my crotch a lot, then, Malfoy?”
Malfoy’s flush dipped below his collar, the contrast between it and the white nightshirt quite striking now. “Wouldn’t you like that, Saviour Slag.”
That’d been one of the Prophet’s less inspired monikers for Harry in recent years.
They went to sleep without the perfunctory exchange of ‘goodnight’ that evening.
*
It was on day thirteen that the elves officially started decorating the house.
They hadn’t seen much of Nick lately; he was out on deliveries every day now, the logistics of which still eluded Harry, since time apparently kept moving the same way for him outside of the Pole (a fact he was supposed to accept at face value, and not question constantly like he kept wanting to).
“So, basically, he’s super fast,” Harry said to Nixie, the elf he’d been working together with the most. He was following her around with an armful of decorations—tinsel, garlands and wreaths—while she moved her ladder around and hung them up on the walls. “That’s how he manages it all?”
From the other end of the workshop came Malfoy’s unmistakable scoff. Surrounded by a small troupe of elves who had adopted him ever since he taught them a particularly nifty Mending Charm, he was working on one of the workshop’s twelve massive trees, coaxing fairy lights into spirals and just being very chipper about the whole thing.
“Yes, imagine that,” Malfoy said. “The man delivers gifts to millions of children all over the world within a single day. Of course he’s super fast, Potter.”
Harry tried throwing him the finger, which caused some of the tinsel in his arms to unfurl, and he had to prop it back up with one knee. “Excuse me for being so uneducated,” he grumbled, struggling for balance. “Some of us spent our childhood living with Muggles, and our magical adolescence fending off Dark wizards.”
“Here he goes again,” Malfoy stage-whispered to the elves, who all snickered in unison. “Don’t ask him where he got the motorbike, that one’s a sore spot.”
Harry couldn’t summon up the adequate levels of outrage necessary for his next retort. He settled on, “Hardy-har-har. Inbred tosser.”
“Mr Potter is not uneducated,” Nixie said indulgently, patting his head and plucking the next item from his precarious pile. She did not elaborate nor provide further evidence to support her claim.
Harry huffed, falling silent. His thoughts inevitably drifted to Christmases past—the mountain of presents that would always wait for Dudley under the tree each year, and the toothpicks and packets of tissues Harry would get on his end. No matter how much time had passed since all of that, his mood would still sour when dwelling on it for too long. There was something almost masochistic about pressing on that old wound, and then soothing the pain with memories of all the holidays he’d celebrated since discovering he was a wizard.
“Does he give presents to all the kids?” Harry asked, mind still lingering on the image of Dudley unwrapping his twelfth G.I. Joe.
“Mr Claus tries, but he doesn’t get every child’s wishes,” Nixie said with a sigh. “The magic is bound to the parents’ or caretakers’ intent, too.”
“Right,” Harry said gruffly. “Makes sense.”
“It’s not a perfect system,” Nixie said gently, as if she knew why Harry was asking.
Harry opened his mouth to answer, but whatever crabby response he might’ve mustered got derailed spectacularly when Malfoy appeared next to him and pressed a very quick, very soft kiss to his cheek.
Harry stared at him, breath caught mid-exhale.
“Mistletoe,” Malfoy said matter-of-factly, pointing at the sprig that Nixie had just hung up. He jerked his chin at the decorations in Harry’s arms. “Careful with those, Potty. The garlands are fragile.”
He strolled back to his tree, leaving Harry to stand there, tinsel slowly spilling out of his arms.
*
On day seventeen, Malfoy started employing some interesting tactics.
“Nick,” his voice rang all the way from the other side of the workroom. They’d been promoted to the main one—an enormous, dome-shaped hall filled with frenetic energy and dozens of elves running about. “While we still have you here, would you come have a look at this?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw the man wipe his large hands on a rag before walking over to Malfoy’s workbench. “What is it?”
“It’s just, this bit is a little wobbly. I’ve noticed the same flaw for each of them, even the fully assembled ones. See? Just there…”
Harry rolled his eyes. That was something he never thought he’d hear again: the voice of Draco Malfoy, simpering to the likes of Snape or Umbridge. He waited gleefully for Nick to dismiss Malfoy with one of his signature grunts, which was how he typically communicated with the two of them whenever he was actually around.
But instead, “Good catch, young man. These’ll all need to be replaced.”
“Ah, I thought so,” Malfoy said. “What a shame, all that work. Maybe I could help? I’m something of a tinkerer, really—runes are a passion of mine, but your toy mechanisms are quite fascinating to analyse…”
Harry turned around in disbelief, then did a double take at the sight of Malfoy leaning closely into Nick’s space as they bent over the workbench. Their shoulders pressed together while Malfoy went on and on, gesturing animatedly.
Nick was nodding along and listening to him. Intently. Nick, who was nothing like the famously depicted round-bellied, jolly, elderly man wearing a garish red suit.
An insane thought: what if Nick was Malfoy’s type? It wouldn’t be the most outlandish thing to consider—an older, handsome, rugged man, taller than Malfoy by at least a foot, with the kind of easygoing air that screamed VERY GENEROUS TOP.
Malfoy’s posture next to him was open and relaxed in a way Harry had never seen before, at least not in his own presence.
“Would you like to help me with the trains?” Nixie peeped.
“Er, sure,” Harry said, struggling to refocus on their work. “Yeah, sorry, I…”
“All the charm work is done upstairs,” he heard Nick’s gravelly voice from behind. “We have special workbenches that power the enchantments. It’d be good to check whether any of them were faulty during the manufacturing process…”
Harry’s gaze flickered back to Malfoy without meaning to. He was smirking now, following suit as Nick led the way towards the exit.
“I would love to help in any way that I can,” Malfoy said, smiling brightly at the man. Then, before they passed through the door, his hand came up to brush away a speck of soot from Nick’s bicep.
Harry calmly placed the train Nixie had handed him onto his workbench and excused himself from the workshop.
He spent the last few hours of the workday flying Sirius’s motorbike in circles around the house. Round and round, trying to clear his mind of white-blond gits and their elusive smiles. Round and round, resolutely not looking at the inviting warm light spilling from the windows onto the thick blanket of snow. Round and round, until his Warming Charm wore off and he was forced to land and stomp back into the now quiet workshop.
Their bedroom, when he trudged into it, was empty and cold, the last embers of the fire Malfoy had lit that morning glowing weakly in the hearth.
*
“Rejoice, Potty,” Malfoy said to him the next day during breakfast. “We’re going home tonight.”
He sat right next to Harry and slapped a wad of keys on the table in front of him.
Harry stopped his spoon halfway to his mouth.
“Where did you sleep last night?” he asked before he could help it.
“Elsewhere, whilst you were off on your joyride,” Malfoy quipped. “Didn’t you appreciate the solitude? No offending nightshirt in sight?”
“I can’t believe you would—” Harry broke off, breathing in carefully. “Malfoy, did you seriously whore yourself out to Santa Claus so he’d give you the fucking key to the basement?”
It was the worst possible thing he could have said, and he knew it the moment the words left his mouth.
Malfoy looked as if Harry had dumped a bucket of ice water on his head. “Excuse me?” he said.
“Er,” Harry croaked, “it’s just that—yesterday at the workshop, it looked like—I mean, how did you get him to…”
“I talked to him,” Malfoy said, very slowly and steadily. “He said he’s very grateful for all our help, and he gave me the keys himself.”
“Oh,” Harry said, feeling incredibly, stupidly small.
“Then I told him you would be delighted to return home and stop rooming with a coworker you dislike,” Malfoy went on stonily. “He said he hadn’t realised we’d been given only one room. Nixie showed me to a separate one.”
“Oh,” Harry said again, neck prickling with sweat. “Malfoy, I do like you.”
Again, the wrong thing to say. Harry was about to rip his own tongue out. The look on Malfoy’s face was making him want to scream.
“If you wish to insult me,” Malfoy said, standing up, “you’ve done so enough for one lifetime with this—opinion you’ve just revealed to me. I’ll see you downstairs.”
*
The door leading to the basement was a portal.
Whether Nick had mentioned this detail to Malfoy or not, Harry didn’t know. Malfoy hadn’t said a word to him since breakfast, not even when he finally showed up at the staircase, where Harry had been pacing for an hour. So, ‘portal’ was the only term Harry could think of himself when the door snicked open to reveal a shifting veil of light and colour.
Malfoy stepped through first, and Harry followed, wand held tightly in his hand.
The world on the other side appeared to be a vast, sunbathed meadow. Harry had to squint against the sudden onslaught of bright golden light; he lifted his palm to shield from it while his eyes adjusted, and proceeded to gape at the wide stretch of tall grass, bending in lazy waves from the breeze. Not too far in the distance, ancient trees sprang up impossibly tall into the sky, branches heavy with blossoms. The air around them felt like the warmest day of summer, tinged with the scent of wildflowers and honey.
“Right,” Harry mumbled, lowering his hand. “Santa Claus has a summer resort in his basement. No surprise there, of course. I’m sure everyone knows about this.”
Malfoy didn’t comment. He was working his rune sensor, turning the dials on it. Once pointed towards the edge of the forest, it started glowing brightly and urgently.
“The runes are etched into one of those trees over there,” he announced. “As we’ve already established, your assistance is not needed for this part. Go start up the motorbike, or whatever you need to do so we can leave as soon as I’m done.”
And he strode towards the forest.
Harry stared at his retreating back. “No,” he said loudly. “I’m coming with you, and then we’re leaving together. And—and then we’re gonna talk.”
Malfoy kept walking away. Harry’s heart was racing, feet rooted to the ground. He snapped himself out of it, took a few steps forwards. “Did you hear what I said?”
Malfoy scoffed, not turning around, but Harry didn’t have to see his face to imagine the accompanying sneer. Good, Harry thought, quickening his steps, stumbling through the grass. Sneer at me. Yell at me, make fun of me, talk to me—
“No need to spend another minute in my abominable presence!” Malfoy suddenly shouted, still walking, still not looking at Harry. “Just sod off back to London—I can find my own way back to the outpost—I don’t need—”
His strides became longer, his words increasingly dispersing in the open air, scattered by the breeze and the shifting grass between them. Harry followed mindlessly, then tripped on a stone and hit the ground hard, scraping his palms.
None of this was going to plan. Harry hadn’t had a plan to begin with, but his gut was telling him that he’d intended for something to go differently here, that the days spent in this place with Malfoy had, in the back of his mind, been leading up to something that—was not this.
“Malfoy, stop,” he said, breath catching as he pushed himself up. “Wait. Will you just—can we just—”
Malfoy kept moving, shoulders tight around his ears, almost disappearing into the treeline.
Something flipped inside Harry at that moment. He started sprinting Malfoy’s way, reached him just as they broke the edge of the forest, and grabbed him by the elbow.
Malfoy whipped around, tugging his arm out of Harry’s grasp. Harry’s hand slid down his forearm, catching Malfoy’s spindly fingers instead.
“Let go of me!”
“I’m sorry about what I said,” Harry said, gripping Malfoy’s hand tighter. “I don’t—that is not what I think of you.”
Malfoy’s eyes locked on Harry’s, red-rimmed and angry and glistening. Harry forced himself not to look away, not even when a furious tear escaped the corner of Malfoy’s eye.
“I don’t care what you think of me,” Malfoy spat, but his voice was trembling. “I don’t care if the Chosen One hates me so much that he thinks I would…I don’t know, suck cock to solve a damned case—”
“I’m so sorry,” Harry said miserably. He let go of Malfoy’s hand. “I didn’t mean that, of course I didn’t mean that. Malfoy, I was just—I just really…”
He stopped, trying to find the words for it. Malfoy’s pale face was blotchy, and his pointy nose was very red. Strands of hair were sticking to his ruddy cheeks.
An old, devastating thought: I love the way his hair falls across his face.
The realisation of it struck Harry anew. Thoughts he’d forcefully tried weeding out kept coming to him now: I love watching him work. I love listening to him talk. I love what he wears to sleep. I love spending time with him.
I love it when he smiles.
“Will you stop your gormless gawking?!” Malfoy hissed. His flush had spread down his neck. Harry knew what that looked like against Malfoy’s nightshirt. His eyes dropped to Malfoy’s hands—they were shaking.
“Why do you keep avoiding me in the real world?” Harry asked.
Malfoy stared at him, blinking rapidly. “What?”
“You never talk to me when we see each other out there.” This suddenly seemed so important, and the look on Malfoy’s face only reaffirmed this line of thinking. “You never even…you barely say hi to me. I tried talking to you so many times—”
“Is this a joke? What does that have anything to do with—”
“The memo for this case,” Harry interrupted, realisation building in him. He was about to take this conversation where it’d needed to go since the day they set foot here. “It clearly said I was the Auror assigned to it. You never said yes to any case I was assigned to—you could’ve said no to this one. Why didn’t you?”
Malfoy stared at him. Opened his mouth to say something, closed it again.
Good, because Harry was on a roll. “And you knew time worked differently here, right? You assumed we’d be stuck here for days—”
“I absolutely did not assume that! Why would I want to be stuck at the fucking North Pole for three weeks?!” Malfoy screeched. “Just because I packed—! What insane person doesn’t at least bring some basic necessities when travelling four thousand miles away from home!”
“Well,” Harry said, biting back a laugh. “It was magical travel. Malfoy, it took us less than three hours to get here.”
“Still!” Malfoy squawked. “Still.” He stopped, breathing loudly. And then it poured out. “Well, since we’re having it out now, yes! I presumed we’d be spending a night or two here. Everyone knows Nick has to be convinced of how nice you are before he lifts a finger for you, it’s an egregious character flaw. But I did not expect it to take this long—in hindsight, I should have accounted for his love of unpaid labour, given the sheer number of house-elves he has—”
“Malfoy,” Harry cut in, looking him directly in the eye. “Just tell me why?”
Malfoy fell silent, huffing a few times. Then, squaring his shoulders, he met Harry’s gaze head-on.
“Oh, all right,” he said on a huff. “Maybe I had an old school nemesis who saved my life on multiple occasions despite my horrid worldviews and crimes I committed at the time. Maybe that same nemesis also ensured that I didn’t rot in prison for said crimes. And maybe I’ve worked on myself in the meantime, to become—someone who isn’t the loud, insufferable person my erstwhile nemesis remembers from school. Someone calm and composed. Enigmatic, but, you know, in a charming way.”
“It is very charming,” Harry said under his breath, but Malfoy ignored him.
“Maybe I ended up building a career I love, and when that career brought me to work alongside my old school nemesis, I thought: this could be my chance. To show I’m no longer—to prove that I’m…” He broke off, breathed in sharply. “Besides, who tries talking to anyone in the lifts? Lifts are where even small talk goes to die. You practically ran for the hills when you saw me at a potions shop a couple of years ago, how was I supposed to interpret that—”
Laughter bubbled up in Harry’s throat, but he smothered it down. He was having a difficult time reining in the urge to gather Malfoy in his arms, or something equally barmy and momentous.
“So, yes, Potter,” Malfoy continued, voice quite thready now. “Maybe I did see your name on the memo and thought—why not? Maybe this would be my chance.” He sniffed. “And anyway, it’s the holidays. So.”
He looked quite done there, but Harry needed to make sure. “Are you quite done there?”
Malfoy sneered, but Harry could tell his heart wasn’t in it. It was time for Harry to soothe him back to full sneering power. So he cupped Malfoy’s face in his palm and kissed him.
It started out soft, Malfoy slow and hesitant but moving against him nonetheless, and then, when Harry pulled back to check if he was okay, that Harry hadn’t misread anything, Malfoy surged forwards, one hand tangling in Harry’s hair, the other pressing flat on Harry’s chest, pushing until Harry thumped his back against a tree with an oomph.
Malfoy made a sound like a choked laugh before kissing him proper—again and again—leaning into him, one hand slipping down to Harry’s nape, the other gripping Harry’s shirt tightly, and Harry’s only thought was, I can’t believe we waited so long to do this. He caught Malfoy’s bottom lip between his own, and Malfoy gasped, pressing closer until their bodies were flush. Harry’s hands found the small of Malfoy’s back, fingers flexing and inching lower, and Malfoy deepened the kiss, making it messier, louder—
Then Malfoy broke away and said, “Harry, the runes.”
“Ugh, fuck the runes,” Harry said, chasing Malfoy’s mouth again, wanting it back on his own immediately. “We’ll find them—later, Draco, we’ll—”
Saying Malfoy’s name while snogging made him lose his mind a little. His hands tightened at Malfoy’s waist, pulled him back in.
Malfoy laughed, the sound muffled against Harry’s mouth. “No, you knobhead,” he said, turning his face so that their cheeks brushed, his breath tickling Harry’s ear. “The runes are behind you.”
This shook Harry out of his horny stupor. He whirled around, still holding onto Malfoy’s sides, and saw the runic shapes glowing and pulsing faintly on the tree bark.
“Ah,” Harry said. “Right. We should get to that, I s’pose.”
Malfoy snorted into the crook of his neck.
*
Fixing the runes was a matter of some elaborate wand movements and spells that Malfoy read out loud from a small notebook. Or, as Harry had said—and received an unamused look for it—bish bash bosh.
They were out of the basement realm and on the small landing together within half an hour. Harry closed the lock with a satisfying click and turned to face Malfoy. Well, Draco, now. The first-name switch was going to take some getting used to. Harry felt giddy about it.
Draco’s eyes were downcast, arms hanging loosely by his sides. “What happens when we go back?” he asked the floor.
Harry grinned, then proceeded to crowd him against the tiny corner between the wall and the door. He nudged Draco’s chin up, smacked a loud kiss against his lovely mouth.
“Christmas Eve at mine, I think,” he said. “Unless you have other plans?”
Draco scoffed. “You’d miss the Weasley Christmas bash for me, Potter?”
“Unless you have other plans,” Harry repeated, thumb swiping at Draco’s brow.
Draco’s eyes fluttered shut. “I don’t have any plans.”
“Good.” Harry kissed him again, he couldn’t help himself. “We’re going out tomorrow, though. Somewhere nice and public. I mean it, Malfoy.”
“Oh, all right,” Draco said, eyes closed, mouth curling against Harry’s.
*
The motorbike was conveniently parked just outside the house thanks to Harry’s meltdown yesterday. He was about to detach and shrink the sidecar—Draco was riding behind him this time, obviously—when Nick emerged from the house, carrying a dozen humongous sacks in his two burly arms.
“This is your lot,” he said, and dumped the sacks into the sidecar.
“Er,” Harry croaked.
Draco had finished exchanging farewells with his elf troupe and was now stepping forward to shake Nick’s hand. “It’s been a pleasure, Mr Claus.”
“Pleasure’s all mine, boys. Good luck with the presents.”
“Hang on,” Harry said. “How are we supposed to…”
“The magic will follow you until you’re done delivering them,” Nick said. “Just ask that stag of yours to show you the way.”
Harry and Malfoy went equally still.
“Paid me a visit while I was trying to nap, didn’t he?” Nick said, unperturbed. “I gave him a few pointers of my own. He’ll lead the way.”
Harry looked at Draco blankly.
Draco, the git, was smirking. “Don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet now, Potty,” he said, taking Harry’s earmuffs and placing them on Harry’s head.
“Not a chance,” Harry said, giddiness blooming in his chest again. He was so done for.
He looked at Draco’s smiling face, and summoned his Patronus.