Fluffing Hell!

It is nearly the end of the sixth year when Harry Potter finally wins the role of hero of the wizarding world. Voldemort is just a name in the history books now and a dying word on the lips of his followers that means nothing. Yes, Harry's fucking well done it.

And a year ahead of schedule as well. It was only sixth year. No one expected it until a good few months after the NEWTS.

And Harry is dazed, confused, a man lost in a sea of issues that are bigger and longer-lasting than he will ever be, but somehow he knows himself to be happy. Maybe Voldemort's death shouldn't have been a celebration, because Voldemort should not have ever existed, but that's not the point. The point is that Harry's free.

His destiny lies behind him and his future lies ahead. It is, to Harry, the best, and the most invigorating feeling in the whole world. He has right now to be guiltlessly, shamelessly, and wonderfully happy.

Some people haven't responded well to the new Harry; Pansy Parkinson in particular was so stunned when Harry wished her a sincere good morning that she spit her milky morning coffee out over Goyle, who then punched her one out of some strange, ape-like reflex. Harry didn't care too much - he was too busy not noticing that Draco sodding Malfoy was giving him the Glare of Death from across the table.

But people are coming around to Harry. Hufflepuff were won over immediately. Ravenclaw procrastinated and decided that even if Harry can't treat a lady right, he does have his uses. Slytherins say fairly unanimously that Harry Potter is still a knob, but he could be worse. At least he's not like Weasley, they say with dark, furrowed brows. And he is powerful. Anyone who kills the Dark Lord can't be completely pathetic. The most of them are also a bit busy to worry about Potter; their parents have those nasty Death Eater rumours to manage, after all.

Wanting a quiet seventh year, Harry has bought a flat near Remus and Tonks and plans to live in it in the summer and afterwards, with the understanding that Ron will be staying there too, or perhaps Hermione. The flat is open plan with huge, wide windows that let in so much light everyone but Harry is nearly blinded by them. There is also a communal garden space that is planted with evergreen trees and spring flowers, which the windows overlook. It is because of this that the faulty plumbing and the terrible décor doesn't matter so much. Harry just smiles about it and says he's glad there isn't a stairs cupboard.

The threat which has hung over his entire wizarding life is lifted and, like opening a curtain after a dark and stormy night to a beautiful morning, he feels as though he can see the entire world now. He can see the sky and the light and all the exquisite things in the world that had been taken away from him because of his parents' murdered sacrifice to Lord Voldemort.

Well. After a few loose ends are tied up anyway. And one of those is Draco Malfoy.

Malfoy is still wandering round the school like an irritant. He's still scowling and snarling but it doesn't mean anything anymore and even he knows it. Voldemort is gone. His side have lost before he even had a chance to join in. And Harry, watching Malfoy flick a quill over and over in his beautiful white hands, looking old and lost in potions, feels as if enough is enough.

So Harry finds him alone in the grounds, walking around the Quidditch pitch. Malfoy looks angry and his lips are pursed, but against what exactly Harry doesn't know. There's nothing to be against anymore - the war is over. Sides are moot. There are no followers of Voldemort, because there is no Voldemort. There are only people who used to believe in him.

"Stop a minute," Harry says to him and Malfoy jerks and looks at Harry with a sour expression.

"Go away, Potter," he says.

Malfoy speeds up and begins to walk back to the castle, nearly hitting Harry with his swinging bag on his shoulder. Harry puts his steps so they are in time with Malfoy's and so however fast the other boy walks, Harry will always catch up.

Malfoy looks at him for the briefest moment. "Come to gloat?"

"Of course not," Harry says, and they are still walking. "What would be the point?"

Malfoy thinks about this and curls his thin lips downwards. "What then?"

"I came to say that I'm sorry," Harry answers sincerely and the other boy really looks at him this time and flushes, then scowls.

"No you're not. What is it?"

"I'm sorry," Harry says again. "I'm sorry that I've been -- if I've been a bit

antagonistic. I guess there's no need anymore, is there?"

Harry tries to swallow the words 'but you've been a bloody nasty bastard yourself' that are dying to get out. Malfoy continues to stare at Harry as if he's sprouted an extra, really ugly head and is just ignoring it. Then he snarls.

"Fuck you. You're here because you're sorry for me, aren't you? Oh, poor Draco, your father's dead and your side lost. Well here's an idea, Potter: I don't need you and I don't need your sympathy."

"Oh shut up would you," Harry answers impatiently, not being completely impervious to irritation, and Malfoy closes his mouth from the little disgusted, sneering 'o' it has formed. "What is it with you? I'm here because I want to put the past away and because I can't see how it can possibly help you to be so - so - irritating all the time."

So, Harry holds out his hand, feeling an absolute moron now but he determinedly smiles at Draco all the same. He is very pointedly ignoring how attractive he is finding Draco's discomfort; how well the confusion sits on the sharply elegant features, how neatly Draco's hand smoothes his silky white hair down. "Isn't it time we grew up?"

For a moment nothing happens. Time is frozen as Harry Potter holds out his hand to Draco Malfoy, who has stopped walking and is standing deadly still, captured like a frozen image on film. His face is framed against a windswept backdrop of the hills, lake and Hogwarts rising majestically into the great blue sky.

Then, slowly, very hesitantly, as the uncurling of a budded flower, Draco's hand unfurls from his side, stretches out and reaches to take Harry's palm in his almost as if he cannot help this automated, instinctive response triggered by nothing more complex than sunlight. Harry's fingers tighten around Draco's, and clasp the other boys hand tightly.

Just as Draco is starting to pull his hand away, still not meeting Harry's eyes, Harry realises, somewhat choked, he cannot bear to let go. So he sweeps Draco up into a hug that threatens to strangle the other boy it is so tight. Harry's arms are around Draco's body and his head is pressed slightly into Draco's cool neck, where Harry can smell the woody aftershave and the smell that is entirely Draco's own. He can feel almost every inch of Draco Malfoy.

Draco squeaks and stays with his hands down, not daring to hardly move because he is awkward and because generally, Slytherin boys don't hug people. In his father's case 'people' even extended to his own wife. But then Harry Potter shuffles and tries to pull away, clearly embarrassed by his sudden impulse that he feels has backfired horribly. Draco reacts instinctively and doesn't let it go. He very nervously puts his hand on Harry's back for a moment, soaks up everything he can of Harry's presence and then sharply backs off.

"That was very girlie, you know," Draco says coldly as they have both pulled away and are looking at each other warily. If Harry hadn't seen the smile that flickered behind his eyes, he would have thought Draco was appalled. As it was, Harry has caught the smile and knows that really, it's quite all right.

Harry grins and slings an easy arm around Malfoy's shoulder that feels all too comfortable there. "I don't care." A thought hits him. "Hey Malfoy, don't suppose you fancy playing Quidditch?"

Draco seems to consider this. Then he really does smile at Harry, and it's such a real smile that it seems to shift everything slightly in both their universes and pull them just that little bit closer together.

"Yes, all right," says Draco. "I'd like to play Quidditch with you sometime."

****

"You're so very wrong Potter," Draco says to Harry indignantly a few days later as they are lazing on the grass next to the lake, comfortable and very definitely together. "That manoeuvre was pathetic. If Jenkins was any worse a player they'd be recruiting him for Hufflepuff seeker."

Harry flinches. " I -" he says.

"What now, you complete idiot?" Draco asks with a frown. Then he obviously realises. "Oh, right. We don't mention Hufflepuff seekers, is that it? Well, I am mentioning it. I'm not your other friends, Potter. I'm not tiptoeing around your complexes."

"I can't believe you said that. What gives you the right?" Harry asks. Sometimes he and Draco just don't meet and he knows it and, increasingly, he hates it.

"No one gives me the right. I can talk about what I like. It's a free country these days. Cedric Diggory died. He was killed, Potter, by the Dark Lord. He was the Hufflepuff seeker, and if you ask me, he wasn't all that great at it anyway."

Harry blazes up on instinct and moves closer to Draco, his fists clenching. "You - that!"

"Be quiet, would you?" Draco continues with such sharpness in his tone that Harry wonders if the last few days have meant anything at all to Draco. "I'm not saying I'm glad he's dead because he was a lousy Quidditch player. Not even I have such depths of insensitivity. What I'm saying is, he died. He died, but Quidditch playing and Hufflepuff seekers did not. Whether I say his name over and over again, he's going to be dead, and whether I don't dare mention anything vaguely connected to him, he will still be dead. I can say what I like about him. It won't change a thing. If I say he was lovely and wonderful and good and kind, he'll still be stone dead and rotting."

"Yeah," Harry says. "Yeah. I know that. Do you think I don't?"

"I think you would rather you didn't know it," Draco says in a careful, considered voice.

"And I think I wish you'd shut up, Draco," Harry snaps.

"That was rendered less effective by your use of my first name," the other boy

answers with a very small smile that Harry has the sudden, inexplicable urge to wipe of his face somehow. "I didn't allow you to do that."

"Yeah, I suppose," Harry says, still angry and not wanting to change the topic. "What's your point anyway?"

"My point is, Harry, I don't want you to pigeonhole me with your other friends. Diggory wasn't all that great at Quidditch. You're better. I'm better. I'm being honest about him. Didn't you see it?"

"No! But, I suppose you're not being completely - as bad as you used to be," Harry says grumpily and Draco just laughs.

"It'll do," he says.

Harry gives him a slightly resentful smile back as much to say, I'm still mad with you but this is not the end. Draco's response is to touch Harry's arm with his hand as if he cannot quite prevent himself from doing this. Harry flushes at the contact and then doesn't find anything else to say. Draco disquiets him so much some hours that he hardly knows how to act.

"Now then Harry," Draco suddenly says with a definite mockery, rolling the syllables around his tongue, emphasising each one with practised flare. "Shall we go to Hogsmeade and get a drink? I don't really want to spend all my Saturday lurking around here."

"Fine," Harry answers. "But Ron has to come too."

Draco rolls his eyes. "Just what is it with you people and loyalty? Don't you ever get tired of it?"

****

It is the last day of sixth year. It has been five weeks since Harry defeated Voldemort and round about three weeks since he and Draco Malfoy started spending time together. A lot of time together.

Both of them act as though there is nothing at all strange about any of it, which only makes it more annoying to people trying to fathom it out. Draco just scowls and says 'Harry and I may do as we like, and will continue to do so' in a voice that suggests he and Harry have always done what they liked and people are mad for wondering why they are continuing to do so. When Crabbe points out that Draco has a list entitled 'things I hate about Potter' nailed to the bedroom wall, Draco just smiles and says he's sure Crabbe is completely mistaken.

Harry just bats it all off with good humour and the continual assertion that, 'Draco and I have sorted it all out. It was a misunderstanding.' When Hermione points out scandalised that Draco has been vindictively awful for six years to them all, Harry just smiles and says he's sure Hermione is reading the situation completely wrong.

****

The summer holidays go without much event. There is no Voldemort of course, although there are trials of various rounded up Death Eaters, amongst them Draco's mother Narcissa Malfoy, who is sent down for a very long time for her involvement in the production of Polyjuice and her hosting of numerous death eater meetings. When she gives testimony that it was all Lucius' doing, no one believes her. Throughout all this, Draco Malfoy (and for that matter Harry Potter) cannot be traced.

When asked, Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley say without deviation that, 'Draco and Harry are both taking holidays. They want to relax after a stressful year.'

Everyone always gets the feeling it is crowd control.

****

In mid August, the Dursleys get a knock on the door. They have been out in the back garden, hosting a barbeque and are not grateful for the interruption. They haven't really minded that Harry hasn't come home this year - they assume that he's died and they can't say they're sorry. Vernon's work has suffered a bit of a depression, and they've all, with the exception of Dudley of course, had to tighten their belts.

On their step stands a slim, blond boy with a haughty face and cool grey eyes. Petunia gives him the once over and decides that he's fully middle class, of white descent and therefore worthy of her front step. His clothes are slightly strange, but they're not ...from those sort of people.

"I'm here to collect Harry's things," he says without waiting for her to introduce herself and she quivers. "Bring them."

"I don't think so. That boy doesn't deserve anything from us. We gave him a home and food and how does he repay us?"

"I don't think you understand me," Draco says very firmly with the kind of sneer that Harry would recognize as Draco's former look towards him. "I'm here. To collect. Harry's things. All of them. Every last thing he owns in your god-forsaken, provincial, cheap little house will be coming with me. And as to how he repays you, I think you're lucky he hasn't killed you. I couldn't say I would have been as generous." He stands there on the step and his arms are clenched across his body.

"Fine. I'll be glad to be rid of them," she says and disappears into the house.

The offending items (not that there are many) are thrown them at Draco's feet, and he looks at them with distaste.

"A bag, if you wouldn't mind," he says coolly. "I'm sure you can spare one. I'll owl it back if I must."

"No," she says. "I'm calling my husband in a minute if you don't leave. I'm -"

"Oh do what you like," Draco snorts. "As if I'd care. God. Harry really was right about you."

He scoops up Harry's possessions and, in full public display, disappears from Privet Drive with a cracking sound. Petunia wonders about whether magic is still illegal in the holidays and if he will get some kind of punishment for it. But he is gone, and presumably so is Harry, so she just doesn't mention any of it to anyone else.

It is the last Petunia and Vernon Dursley ever hear of the wizarding world, and of Harry Potter, until by some gross misfortune of fate, their only grandchild Eleanor Dursley levitates a bone-china teapot and several croissants into the air in the middle of Sunday tea and subsequently receives a handsome letter through the post.

***

School comes back in without much event.

Hermione is made Head Girl and Justin is made Head Boy. Both of them seem quite pleased with their lot. Draco and Harry smirk at each other when it's announced. Everyone in the room has noticed how much the two boys are looking at each other. It's not new exactly, but the expression they share certainly is.

McGonagall, whose name now precedes the title of Headmistress, declares that the meal may commence and Draco Malfoy, without so much as an explanation, promptly moves across to the Gryffindor table and sits next to Harry amidst jeering and guffawing from a few of his housemates.

"Well done Granger," he says across the table to Hermione, patting her hand. "You can terrorise us all something rotten now with that shiny badge."

"Aren't I even good enough to say hello to then?" Harry says indignantly as he watches Draco pick at some grape and strawberry salad daintily. Draco looks at him askance with a little smile and Harry can't resist putting a possessive, steadying hand to Draco's shoulder.

"Don't know, Potter. Maybe, maybe not," Draco says.

"Well, Malfoy," Harry answers, "I suggest you find out. Here, give me a grape."

He takes a grape straight out of Draco's fruit bowl. Draco squeaks and taps his hand away but doesn't really put up much of a fight.

Across the table, Ron and Hermione sigh.

****

The first Gryffindor vs. Slytherin match of the season ends with Draco Malfoy winning.

This is surprising and alarming enough but what's worse is that afterwards, when the two teams are on the pitch together, Harry Potter - in full view of the stadium's sizable crowd - gives Draco a very long, and somewhat indecent kiss.

Although Draco appears to hold Harry off for a moment, spectators who zoomed in noted that soon tongues were definitely in play. The first years in the crowd are horrified, the seventh years merely amused.

Ron, up in the stands, gives Hermione a look. "I knew they were coming out," he said. "But did they really have to do it like that?"

After that, of course, everyone knows.

Ginny Weasley is terribly disappointed. Harry consoles her by setting her up with Blaise Zabini. This backfires terribly as Blaise tries to transfigure her into a brunette whilst she is sleeping, but Draco and Harry maintain that they saw no reason why it couldn't have worked.

****

Snape issues a ban on Potter and Malfoy working together on the grounds that Harry affects Draco's work for the worse. When Draco furiously asks if it's not more to do with Snape being a petty, jealous bastard who wouldn't know what sex was if it came dancing in front of him shouting 'I'm sex', he is unsurprisingly evicted from the class.

It does wonders for Draco's popularity amongst the Gryffindors.

****

Muggle customs spread like wildfire in seventh year. Padma learned it from Lavender, who learned it from her cousin that you have to have a leaver's book when you finish school, so it ends up that all the students have a book of scrawled, affectionate messages from their fellows.

Most of the messages are fairly simply. Ron writes in everyone except Hermione and Harry's books: 'Great to know you, hope it all goes well mate, have a blast, Ron.'

Except Draco's to Harry is something else. Anyone who happens to sign Harry's book - and there are an awful lot of signers, because Harry and Draco are flavours of the month this year - tends to read it with slightly raised eyebrows.

Potter,

it reads.

I hate you. I have always hated you. You are very annoying. I don't like your scar. I don't like your messy hair. I think you are a disgrace to our world. I wish Voldemort had killed you when he had the chance, because I would not have missed you. I would very much like to take you, up against the corridor wall because I find it very sexually tense and hot when we fight. No! No, I mean, who do you think you are, expecting me to sign your book? Burn in hell.

Yours truly, Draco Malfoy.

Then, if they turn the page, they see that the same script starts again.

Harry

, it reads this time.

That's what I would have written a long time ago. Things are different now. Very different. Apart from the bit about the wall, I suppose.

Yours, Draco.

P.S. You remain very girlie, Potter and your throwing arm is rubbish, but I like you anyway. I wish you didn't snore though.

Harry's to Draco was even simpler.

Draco,

I love you. Absolutely.

Harry.

***

Ron and Hermione moved into the flat with the communal garden and the wide windows in the end.

Harry Potter was much too busy being happy in Wiltshire in a big, bloody over-ostentatious house with a moveable drawing room floor that had dark arts things underneath it to even think about living in London.

If people wanted him, well, they'd just have to come to one of his and Draco's cocktail parties, wouldn't they?