Draco

Draco wakes up the next morning on the floor beneath the couch, wearing clothes that aren’t his. He has a fuzzy memory of stumbling out of the bathroom into Harry’s room, and Harry saying something about never getting to have the cheesy, traditional kind of sleepover, and then the two of them trying to figure out how to have a movie night when Harry is too drunk to read any of the buttons and Draco had never even seen a DVD player before.

It was a good night, even if he’s sure that it wille back to bite them in a way he can’t figure out. But he’s okay with that, because Harry is…Harry is somewhere, and Draco is here, and he’s got all day to deal with this. He would start by cleaning up the bathroom, and then to the bedroom, and then he would sit and think up a plan of action to explain why he felt the need to climb into the bathtub with Harry (and which one of them started that? The two of them, honestly).

It was a good plan, one that made some semblance of control sink into his bones. It would have worked, too, if he hadn’t rounded the corner into the kitchen for a cup of coffee and found Harry at the kitchen table, staring down at the Daily Prophet like it might hold some answers.

“Hey.” Draco stops short, wanting to turn around until he has a moment to collect himself, but then thinks that it would make things even more awkward than he was already making them. The only thing for it was to pretend like nothing was wrong. “You hungry?”

Harry finally looks up from the paper. He is clearly exhausted, but he still manages to smile at the offer. “I could eat.” Harry, at least, does not seem to think there was anything strange about what they did last night. Maybe Draco was the only one. Maybe this is what mates did, when they had normal childhoods.

(Normal childhoods. Right. Cause Harry definitely had a normal childhood.)

Draco just nods, and then crosses the room to get to the counter, yanking out bowls and ingredients. It would be easier to make it with magic, but Draco had found that doing it the muggle way was a different sort of soothing, almost like potions. Plus, it tasted better.

Still, it was different when it was just Draco, where he could make as many mistakes as he wanted without anyone watching, and he could take up the whole kitchen, and didn’t fee strange about turning on the radio to Celestina Warbeck. When Harry was here, it was like he was always watching. Draco felt his eyes on him, like a tickle right between his shoulder blades.

He doesn’t ask him why he was here. Clearly, the conversation of last night had not been drunken nonsense, but something that he had been mulling over for a while. And Draco had meant it, when he told him that maybe it was time he learned what it was like to be just Harry. He wasn’t about to chase him out of his own kitchen, in case that stopped it from happening.

They stand in silence until Draco is satisfied that the pancakes are done, and the doles them out onto plates, sitting down across the table from him. He’s almost nervous, sitting there, and he can tell that Harry is too.

“I sent my resignation out with morning post.” Harry talks around a mouthful of food, hiding behind the paper, like that could make this less important, less life altering. “Should have got it by now.”

Draco didn’t really know what to do with that, but the sick part of him in the back of his head that wanted to keep Harry all to himself made his breathing catch. Home. Safe. Mine. But that’s wasn’t right. Harry would never be safe, this place would not be a home no matter how much Draco cleaned it, and Harry would never belong to him. Would never want to belong to him.

“Good.” It was a lame response. Everything Draco says is a lame response, with all these revelations Harry keeps dumping on him. “Have another pancake.”

Harry

He doesn’t feel guilty about it, exactly.

Really. The thought of not wanting to be an auror urred to him a while ago, before Draco even came to stay, on one of the nights where he was creeping through his own home, looking for break ins that weren’t possible. He had checked the locks three times, had Kreacher sense out any intruders twice and couldn’t stomach the thought of asking again. And he realized that if this kept going, he was going to turn into the person Mad-Eye Moody was before the second war, the kind that everyone thought was crazy because he could not live without the fight.

Harry didn’t want that. He wanted to find some peace, if just for a little while.

The thing he does feel guilty about is leaving Ron behind. He had told sent him an owl last night before the drinking started, telling him he wouldn’t be into work tomorrow. Then he asked if he would meet for lunch, because he wanted to talk about some things. But it turns out that Draco took care of all the talking and working through things, and all that was left for Harry to confess it.

Ron’s not late. He hasn’t been late to anything since the war ended, because Hermione had once been inconsolable when he didn’te home on time. She had thought that he had been taken, murdered, right at the end of things. Ron didn’t blame her, so now he’s punctual.

For once, Harry hates him. There’s half a moment as Ron says hi and unwinds the scarf from his neck that Harry wants to flee. Just turn and run when Ron has his back turned to place his order. But he doesn’t.

“So what’s up?” Ron looks concerned. They’ve all learned to be gentle with one another, but Ron is still more likely to throw a punch for you then be a shoulder to cry on.

(Honestly, Ronald, you’re a wizard, Hermione had told him, the last time she was mending his broken nose. It’d go better for you if you’d remember your wand.)

It’s the concern that guts Harry. They had been in this together, from the very beginning, when they sat down together in the same trainpartment. They started this long ride together, and now Harry was trying to get off early. But he had to. “I’ve got something to tell you.” Ron’s got his eyebrows raised, and Harry knows that whatever he thinks he will hear next, it will not be this. “I quit the auror program.”

The reaction is not as loud as Harry had been expecting. He counts it as a good sign that Ron leans across the table to whisper-yell into his face instead of flipping the table. Maybe it was the shock. “What?” A blink, and then a smile, like he was half hoping that Harry was joking. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” He raises his hands, realizes that might draw attention, and then lies them flat on the table. “I never got the chance to choose, you know? None of us did. We just got thrust into the fight.”

Ron didn’t get it. He was all anger, now. This was the only thing he knew. “So?”

“So, maybe I don’t want to fight.”

“What do you want to do instead?”

Ron isn’t angry. He looks resigned, a bit, like he knew that this was only a matter of time. It validates Harry’s decision like nothing else could, that Ron did not seem to think that this was a bad idea. “Nothing. I don’t want to be anything right now. I spent so long being the Chosen One, that I never got to figure out what I would have wanted to do, given the choice. It was fight or die.” He swallowed, hard, because this was bringing up memories that he would rather not think about. About a basilisk, about Quirrel’s screams, about the first time he ever cruicio’d someone. He was a warrior, and he was a good one, but now the fight was done. “I just want to rest.”

“I get that.” They’re food has gone cold. neither of them has eaten, and it is already time for Ron to start heading back to the office. “I do, Harry. And I’m glad that you’re trying to make yourself happy.” A pause. “But I’m not quitting. This really is what I want to do.”

Harry knew that. But he had to ask, to put the option out there. “Don’t you ever get tired of the fight?”

Ron laughs, shakes his head, and then makes a fist, and his own set of scarred letters shines up at Harry, bright under the lighting of the diner. I will not resist.

“It’s all I’ve ever known.” That was true, too. Harry had dragged him along, and sometimes he thinks that ruined him. “I’ll keep going until the end.”

Draco

Harry had came back from his meeting with Ron with a smile on his face. Draco took it as a good sign.

“Everything go okay?” He cannot help the concern that wells up in him, because he knows how much of this decision relied on Ron’s approval.

“It went fantastic. So great, in fact,” Harry’s grabs him by the arms, spins him around, and then let go just as fast. “I’m buying us dinner. Leaky Cauldron, the good stuff. I’ll be ready in fifteen.”

Draco felt one side of his mouth quirk up in a smile. “Fancy.”

Harry’s laugh floats down the hallway, and Draco knows in that moment that this is it for him, he will spend the rest of his life trying to find a place as happy as he is with Harry. “Only the best for you.”

It does end up being mildly…special.

Not special in the sense of linen tablecloths and fine china, but maybe in the idea that no one is bothering them, and they are tucked into a corner booth where its quiet, and the two of them have gotten to enjoy a meal in peace, for once, with the two of them stealing forks full of food off each other’s plate. If Draco didn’t know better, he could almost believe that Harry meant this as a date.

But he does know better, so it is just two mates hanging out in a bar.

(Or, a guy and his court ordered mentor-like person, if he’s getting technical.)

Harry reaches across the table and covers Draco’s hand with his own. It stops Draco in his tracks like a deer in the headlights, and he waits for Harry to make the next move, wide eyed and barely breathing, because it’s really getting hard to think that Harry doesn’t have feeling for him.

“Thank you.” Harry’s eyes are earnest, searching Draco’s face for something. “I wanted you to know how much I mean that.”

“It’s no problem.” Draco is trying to be nonchalant. He does not know why. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism. “You mean a lot to me.”

Stupid.

It’s a stupid thing to say, but Harry’s voice gets even softer, if that was possible. “You mean a lot to me, too.”

“I would hope so.” Beneath the table, Draco digs his nails into his thigh, tries to push through the ache that had suddenly sprung into his chest. “I don’t climb into bath tubs with just any man, you know.”

It was, admittedly, a very unsubtle way of feeling out where they stand from last night, but it works. The tension (and the look in Harry’s eyes, whatever it meant) disappears, and suddenly Harry is laughing harder than Draco had ever heard him, and Draco can’t help it, he starts laughing, too. “That was so bloody weird.” Harry agrees, finally, and the moment should be over but he is still staring at Draco with that fond expression and he still has his hand on Draco’s arm. “Drunk people, huh?”

Draco smiles, relieved, and then pulls his hand away, trying hard to chase off the feeling that he was missing something. “Drunk people.”

Harry

He’s gone for all of three mi

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