some nights I stay up cashing in my bad luck
Title: Full Speed Ahead (2/2)
Author:
veterization
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Rating: NC-17
Genre and/or Pairing: Harry/Draco
Word Count: ~17,000
Warnings: Slight language and sexual content (second part).
Summary: After the war, the Malfoy fortune begins dwindling. Draco swallows his pride and gets a job the only place he can find one: the Knight Bus.
"In love, somehow, a man's heart is always either exceeding the speed limit, or getting parked in the wrong place." --Helen Rowland
Part I.
“So it’s true?”
Draco whips around at the sound of a familiarly sleek, yet highly amused voice wafting across the bus as Draco seats an old wizard onto a bed and shoves a mug of steaming cocoa into his fidgeting hands, a very well-tailored and crisply suited Blaise standing by Ernie in utter delight as he scans the bus and lands on Draco’s form.
“Blaise? What in Merlin’s name are you doing riding the Knight Bus?” Draco turns around and approaches the boy. He feels like he should be angry after months of virtually no contact from Blaise, nor from most of the other Slytherins he formed alliances with during school with the exception of a few brief notes from Pansy, especially angry when Blaise is standing in front of him as the epitome of a gentlemanly wizard with exceptionally higher cheekbones than usual and shiny shoes, but the indignation doesn’t come forth.
“Your mother told me you were working here and honestly, I just had to see for it myself,” Blaise tells him, sounding rather pleased at the statement turning out to be true. “So the real question is what in Merlin’s name are you doing conducting the Knight Bus?”
“Obviously, because purple’s my color,” Draco promptly snaps, a line he’s been waiting to throw at anyone who dare recognize his blond hair and pointy nose and pin him as a Malfoy and then proceed to patronize his belittling position. Blaise is hardly affronted, merely tilting his head at the random outburst, and Draco is once more reminded why it is hard to stay mad at Blaise Zabini when he is so seldom infuriated and always fails to return the heat necessary to keep a quarrel afloat.
“You know, Draco, if you needed money, you could have come to me,” Blaise tells him, a sentimental offer that Draco was hardly expecting to come from his friend’s mouth.
“Money? You actually would’ve given me gold?”
“One day, you’d pay it off. Or I’d just make you my house elf until your debt would be paid,” Blaise shrugs. Draco imagines folding Blaise’s laundry or preparing his mother cereal and is suddenly grateful for the Knight Bus and its employee vacancy.
“Well, I’ve got a job now, so it seems you’re too late.”
“Seems so,” Blaise agrees, and he looks impressed enough to cause Draco’s battered ego to swell gratefully. “I’m proud of you, Draco. Getting a job, not just waiting until your father turns broke or gets sent to prison. Draco from school never would’ve actually done labor for gold.”
“This isn’t labor,” Draco corrects, readjusting his purple blazer and brushing a stray piece of lint off of one of the golden buttons. “So don’t expect me to start sucking cock for galleons in a few weeks just because I’ve learned the art of capitalism.”
“At least you’ve still got your snark,” Blaise says fondly. Draco’s answering sneer only makes Blaise grin harder.
The bus’ doors jolt closed and Draco finds purchase on the bed behind him before Ernie begins driving. The bus shoots down the street like a rocket shooting into the stratosphere with little warning of its acceleration and Blaise goes gracelessly tumbling to the floor, landing on his hindquarters and expression quite perplexed at his own clumsiness. The wayward position of his tie startled out of place by the speed and Blaise’s horrified wide eyes as he picks himself shakily off the floor like it was an invisible jinx that sent him plummeting to the ground is enough to entertain Draco for weeks, Blaise’s indignant “that driver is a barbarian, surely he’s not licensed!” only fueling his amusement.
-
Three days after Blaise’s unceremonious visit, Harry Potter shows his face aboard the bus once more, this time not doubled over and grasping wounds, but tidied up once more and decked in his Ministry robes.
He looks extremely uncomfortable and even out of place on the shabby bus as his eyes drift from bed to bed, and then Draco realizes that’s because for once, the man doesn’t have a plausible excuse as to why he should be riding the Knight Bus over other easily accessible forms of transportation.
When Draco pockets his riding money and asks him where he’s off to and why he graced the Knight Bus with his presence today, Potter turns bright pink at the question he was clearly hoping wouldn’t be inquired and quickly mutters, “Think I dropped my wristwatch when I was here last time.”
Draco nods, but the lie is so poorly constructed and told so unconvincingly that Draco has no trouble seeing through Potter’s smokescreen. He wonders, watching as Potter gets awkwardly to his knees and begins scouring for a nonexistent watch under the beds, if Potter made up this absurd lie for his own sake if only to check up on Draco or have a witty conversation with him to help wake him up before work. The thought is oddly comforting, like despite all of his mistakes, he’s still managed to secure Harry Potter’s concern and a hint of his friendship.
“So did Weasley survive on that last mission?” Draco asks, taking seat on the bed Potter is crawling under, another one of the bus’ bumps causing him to knock his skull against the bottom of the bed and let out a stifled curse.
“Er. Yeah. He was fine,” Potter mumbles from under the bed, crawling back out and shuffling to the next. “Worried about me, mostly, when I came back with blood all over.”
"Did you tell him that Draco Malfoy was the one who healed you?” Draco asks, the thought of Weasley’s face as he’s being informed of Draco Malfoy's heroic actions providing him endlessly entertainment.
“I did, actually,” Potter worms himself out from underneath the bed and smirks at Draco. “He thought I’d been Confunded.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Still, once he finally believed me, he said it was pretty impressive magic you did. Considering how much blood was on my shirt he thought I was bleeding half to death when you found me,” Potter says.
“He’s not far off,” Draco mutters, about to shoot a disapproving glower in Potter’s direction before quickly stopping himself when he remembers that he’s not Potter’s fussy mother.
“Ah,” Potter’s voice exclaims once he ducks under the bed again. “Found the watch.”
Draco watches as Potter twists out from underneath the rickety cot and stuffs a fist in his robe that Draco is inclined to believe is holding nothing at all, seeing no flashes of shimmering jewelry over the blush tinting Potter’s cheekbones.
He’s about to get up and brush the lint off from his robes when Ernie takes a distracting bite out of his sandwich and has to swerve to avoid the old lady delicately crossing the street, Potter’s cry of unbalance failing to properly warn Draco as he suddenly gets a lapful of Harry Potter’s wriggling limbs on top of his own.
The bus twists and nearly seems to tip over, Potter’s hand gripping Draco’s shoulder with startling strength as both of them almost go rolling off the side of the bed as one tangled entity, and not until the bus seems to steady itself does Potter slowly peel himself up, nose smashed onto Draco’s chest. It’s then when Draco realizes that there’s a firm chest and sturdy thighs pressed into his own, and that this is not the same scraggly slender malnourished boy from First Year, this Potter slotted against him is hard and solid and definitely all man, full of muscles like the a defined one on his arm where Draco is gripping him and trying desperately not to feel and squeeze where the Auror training has seemed to pay off the most.
Draco swallows back on a dry mouth and tries desperately to quell the intensely flapping Snitch trapped inside his body and fluttering wildly against his ribcage, body squirming under the warm solid heat of Potter’s body.
There’s a muffled, “sorry, Malfoy,” murmured on his shirt before Potter sits up, scooting hastily off of Draco’s legs when he realizes he’s straddling his hips, and watches him with wide eyes as Draco smoothes the crinkles away from his jacket and also sits up.
“Bloody bus,” Draco dismisses gruffly, the other man nodding, and then Potter makes a beeline for the door with rumpled hair conveying that he just had a morning shag in a broom cupboard and jumps from the bus when Ernie presses on the brakes and folds open the purple doors even though he’s two stops away from where he needs to be.
-
There are a lot of inquiries regarding the illustrious Stan Shunpike, previous conductor of the Knight Bus, even weeks after Draco’s first day on the job.
From what Draco gathers, the man was a pimply, lanky, and thickly-accented gossipmonger who always kept a Daily Prophet on hand to strike up conversations with bored travelers and spilled hot chocolate on people’s pants just as much as Draco’s hands are currently prone to doing. He devoted just as many hours to enduring the Knight Bus’ many jerks and shakes for multiple years until, tragically, he was recruited and Imperiused by a gang of Death Eaters for many reasons unknown, as the man was of little help even under magical control and convinced no one that he was a willing volunteer for the Voldemort movement.
“He was a sweet boy, if not a little speckled with dreadful acne,” a regular old witch who loves to rant and ramble during her brief trips on the Knight Bus and steadfastly refuses to ride on the lower level says. “I kept telling him-boy, there’s magical cream for that. Madam Primpernelle’s Beautifying Potions-she’s right down the corner at Diagon Alley-sells wonders that could go away with a boil the size of my fist.”
She shakes a gnarled fist in Draco’s face and continues.
“Of course, he didn’t listen. Probably was too busy spending all of his gold on impressing witches,” the old woman rolls her eyes under her wrinkly eyelids. “Did you know that Stan once met Harry Potter on this bus once? I’ve seen quite a few things with these old eyes and never have I actually met Harry Potter in the flesh, yet I suspect he’s less handsome in person than the newspapers make him out to be.”
“Oh, he’s hideous,” Potter’s voice suddenly interjects into the conversation, and when Draco turns around Potter is ducking underneath the swaying chandelier and grabbing a bedpost in preparation for when the bus starts off once more. The old witch spares him a glance, nods gruffly with a slightly disappointed shrug at his confirmation, and seemingly fails to properly identify him as she returns to rummaging in her handbag a moment later.
“You know, Potter, if you ride this bus any more I’ll think you’re stalking me,” Draco says as he wanders over to where the boy’s clinging onto his bedpost, wrapping his fingers around the same anchor a few inches beneath Potter’s.
“I’m getting over the flu,” Potter says quickly, very quickly, almost as if he’s rehearsed an explanation, and Draco doesn’t fail to notice that the man looks far from ill or clammy in the face. “Apparating makes me want to heave.”
Draco considers calling him out for his blatant fib, for not only is Potter missing the signature nasally tone of voice, blubbery nostrils, and pocket stuffed to the brim with crumpled tissues always signaling the symptoms of one in the horrible depths of a nasty sickness, but he’s not entirely sure he wishes to hear the real explanation nor does he want to disrupt the peace that they have ineffably created between them by starting an altercation over Potter’s candor.
“Didn’t your mum ever teach you to avoid germs and always ask for Pepper-Up when your nose starts itching?” Draco asks, waiting for the inevitable resentment to film over Potter’s eyes at the blasé mention of his mother, but he merely shrugs and idly rubs a hand under his nostrils where there should be, for all intents and purposes, a sluggish waterfall of yellow snot.
“I was out flying in the cold for a bit too long,” Potter explains. “Do you still fly?”
Draco thinks of his pristine broomstick, possibly already pawned away by his mother without his knowledge, and shrugs. “Don’t really have the time these days.”
“Shame,” Potter says. “You were pretty good. You’ll get rusty if you don’t practice.”
“Please, Potter,” Draco says hotly, “Only the amateurs need practice. I’m intrinsically skilled with flying talents.”
Potter snorts. Oddly enough, the derision doesn’t cause Draco to instantly defend his honor and his impeccable Quidditch abilities. Years ago, if Potter had insinuated he doubted his natural gift for flying, he would have punted the handle of his broomstick into Potter’s nose and listened to the crunch of wood colliding with bone with a certain amount of satisfaction that only a true Malfoy could have enjoyed from another’s physical agony.
“Maybe the Weaselette can make you some soup for your,” Draco looks at him, once more trying to find a blemish of poor health on Potter’s body. “…flu.”
Potter shakes his head, “She’s a bit busy with her boyfriend these days.”
Draco snaps his head over to look at Potter, flabbergasted. He had been certain that after the war was over and Potter had secured a spot on the winning side he would waste little time in seizing the redheaded Weasley bird and carrying her off to the altar to start afresh with his life and begin producing enough freckled children to populate an entire village. The subtle implication that this is not the case, however, and that Ginny Weasley is enamored with another wizard of which Harry has no influence in is not lost on Draco, nor is the fact that Potter made the implication in the first place.
He glances at Potter, as if waiting for him to correct himself, but his mouth is shut and his eyes are enlarged in something akin to anticipation. Draco looks down at Potter’s lips again and watches as a tongue darts out and wets them, slipping away before Draco has the chance to feel a churn in his stomach.
Oh God, he wants to kiss me, Draco thinks, and he doesn’t know what to think after that as sure enough, Potter’s face comes closer and Draco himself only feels it prudent to lean in as well even when can’t fathom why he would want to.
They’re five seconds and one foot apart, six inches and three seconds, and then the Knight Bus lurches left and Potter nearly goes barreling onto the floor, away from Draco and back to a normal propinquity away from Draco. There’s about five feet of space between them, but to Draco, it might as well have been the entire country.
He tells himself he’s not disappointed.
-
“So I think Harry Potter tried to kiss me the other day.”
Draco finally musters up the audacity to mention the incident to Blaise over tea, uncomfortably at best, after twenty minutes of small talk over Blaise’s new job and reacquainting themselves with one another, and Blaise spits a fine spray of tea over the tablecloth.
“Kissing Potter?”
“Ergh, Blaise, manners,” Draco says through a grimace as he wipes his cup clean. It feels extremely cumbersome to discuss his burgeoning liaison with Potter when he’s not inside the Knight Bus, a place where it can be hidden and remain safe from judgmental ears and Draco’s qualms, as if not mentioning the incidents refrains Draco from having to succumb to a series of life-changing evaluations concerning himself.
“Where did this happen? How did this happen?” Blaise looks truly dumbfounded by such unpredictable developments. Draco sets down his cup of tea and decides to face the situation by finally addressing that there is, in fact, a situation in existence.
“On the Knight Bus,” he admits, picking up his cup only to busy his hands. “He kept coming by and now he’s just making stupid excuses. Honestly, who wants to ride that wretched thing if they can Apparate? I didn’t know what to make of it until he told me that the Weaselette was seeing some other bloke and started leaning in.”
“Toward you?” Blaise asks.
“Toward me,” Draco confirms. His suspicions that vocalizing the incidents and ruminating over Potter’s intentions would soothe his conflicted feelings and emotional turmoil is quickly negated as Draco starts to hear the horrifying words aloud as they come out of his mouth, as if he’s processing them for the first time. Blaise looks both concerned and overwhelmed with disbelief. Unfortunately, Draco can understand both expressions, for if Theo suddenly sent him an owl depicting the details of a budding relationship with Harry Potter, Draco would write off the letter as a hoax and promptly use it as fireplace kindling.
“Do you think he’s having you on?” Blaise suggests, and Draco does not miss the blow to his ego that arises when he notices that Blaise first rifles through the possibilities of Potter’s actions being led by the intent of retribution over anything more pleasant which might imply that Draco could somehow manage to charm the very boy he stomped on and bullied only a few years ago. “Maybe he’s looking for revenge.”
“Thanks for that, Blaise,” Draco says dryly as the thought of Potter scheming an elaborate plot against him to settle the scores after years of taunting forms in his mind.
“The war’s over, though. He’s probably not keen on picking any more battles,” Blaise furrows his eyebrows. “Are you trying to tell me that you’ve actually been fairly pleasant with him?”
“I suppose so,” Draco mumbles into his teacup, shrugging. “We’re not exactly friends, if that’s what you’re getting at. But we’re being surprisingly civil.”
“Has Draco Malfoy changed that much?” Blaise says after a moment’s thought, and he looks like a proud Hufflepuff at the accusation, leaning back smugly in his chair. Draco throws a crust of bread from the bowl on the table at his chest.
“Give me some sodding advice, you great prat,” Draco says, realizing a moment later that’s he’s pitifully whining. “What part of Potter tried to kiss me isn’t registering in your skull?”
“Well, what happened after he tried to snog you?”
“What?”
“What happened? Did you hex him?”
“Why would I hex him?” Draco asks. The idea of sending Potter off the bus with blisters on his nose would surely be an incident that the Ministry would quickly receive wind of and trace directly back to Malfoy Manor with or without evidence.
“Because Harry Potter tried to kiss you,” Blaise says as if it’s obvious, and then Draco realizes that it is.
“Oh god,” Draco moans, burying his face in the tablecloth to cool down his burning cheeks as the revelation hits his brain and Blaise is reduced to peals of laughter. “I want to kiss Harry Potter.”
-
Draco’s epiphany does little for his sanity. After Blaise joyously charms Draco’s shirt into shades of Gryffindor colors and sends him on his merry way home-where Draco grumbles and hides behind one of his mother’s bushes in the garden until he reverses the jinx-his realization that after seven years of reciprocated abhorrence, he’s somehow managed to become addicted to Harry Potter and his green-eyed face on the Knight Bus, haunts him for quite a few hours.
His mother notices instantly upon laying eyes on her son’s mortified and simultaneously sulking face as he closes the front door behind him and faintly tells her that tea with Blaise was uneventful, but he refuses to answer any of her questions on his well-being and goes straight to his room, where his smudgy old wand sitting atop his dresser continues to drill into his mind and force him to reevaluate his opinions on Harry Potter and, hence, his life.
He wonders if years of teasing and taunting were simply poorly veiled excuses to garner Potter’s attention and obsess over the boy without appearing awestruck and infatuated like many of the witches that fawned over the famous Harry Potter upon his arrival at Hogwarts as a gangly, confused wizard. He wonders if saving Potter’s life from Bellatrix when even under the mask of severe swelling, he could easily make out a tautly stretched scar and unmistakable weathered glasses and failed to identify him for the Dark Lord even if doing so would rid his family of the burden that his father’s failure Voldemort punished them for was a hint. He thinks about the Knight Bus, and how without the distractions of Crabbe and Goyle shooting menacing looks over his shoulder while Weasley and Granger flank Potter with matching looks of revulsion aimed at his own face, the two of them can actually manage enjoyable conversations.
Those thoughts, however, do not soothe his brain, instead giving birth to a monster of a headache that has Draco calling in sick for five miserable days of moping, avoiding the epiphanies his own brain is supplying him with, and letting his mother spoil him with tea when she’s not occupied cleaning out the broom cupboard of Draco’s childhood mementos.
No matter how disconcerting it is to watch his mother confiscate his toy broomstick and discuss with Lucius in hushed tones over how Draco’s trying hard to earn gold, we could all make a few sacrifices, he deems it a cheerier option than going to work and watching Harry Potter climb on board and try to kiss him once more, only to be swerved away and denied by the bus’ twists and turns while Draco retches on the floor like a seasick old man with a weak stomach.
-
Five days into his supposed sick leave, the wispy wizard who first granted Draco the Knight Bus position sends over an enormous owl politely requesting his return to work as Ernie has nearly run over three small children and succeeded in snapping a light post resting by the Leaky Cauldron in half by crashing headfirst into its base and clearly requires the assistance of another on board to avoid possible future decapitation and formal inquiries from the Ministry.
The request encourages his mother to offer Draco similar motivations to peel himself off his bed and return to work before he turns lazier still and is eventually fired from the one and only job Draco has ever had. Unfortunately, it’s his mother’s urges that Draco can’t disobey, and with a spot of Gryffindor courage in his morning coffee and crumpet, he pulls on his purple uniform and goes to work.
Several regulars seem surprisingly relieved to see Draco leading them onto the bus and are swift to relay tales of terror and danger to him regarding the days he spent at home brooding over his fixation with Potter that the Knight Bus went through at the lone hands of Ernie, who, despite being a reserved soul, apparently requires the presence of another in order to function properly as a driver and is even bold enough to offer Draco a silent wave when he boards the bus in the morning.
It takes Draco two hours of holding onto the bedposts with both arms for him to accustom himself once more to the unnaturally quick curves and serpentine swaying of the bus after nearly a week of standing on solid, pleasantly still ground. He crashes into the back window during Ernie’s first stop at Diagon Alley and instantly feels the ache of an oncoming bruise forming on his knee, furling up his pants to watch the blue and green hues bubble up to the surface of his skin. He wonders, idly, as he looks down at the sensitive bump on his leg, if Potter would have Healed it for him had he been on board, and with a sweep of his eyes across the rolling beds coming up empty of their target of black hair and glasses, he sighs and does it himself with a wave of his wand.
After two weeks of no Boy-Who-Lived sightings, Draco wonders if Potter was on the bus during his brief absence and took Draco’s lack of attendance as a sign that he had been too forward or too pushy and had therefore decided to no longer bother the blond at work when his advances had been wordlessly rejected. He wonders what would happen if Potter would ride on the bus and try to lean in for a kiss once more and if Draco would pull back, run away, or grab him by the lapels and push their lips together without any hesitation of his certainty.
-
One thing that Draco can concede is bloody brilliant about conducting the Knight Bus compared to any desk job or teaching position he could have been granted with is the amount of time he can spend slumbering away on a coat in the back once his body adjusts to the interruptions of rapid jerks and acceleration without a single disgruntled superior tapping him on the shoulder and fixing him with a stern glare and strict words to return to work.
He’s snoozing peacefully on a musty bed, ignorant of Ernie’s spontaneous halts and twists and of the snoring of the witch two beds away, head burrowed into the flat pillow and fingers curled in the sheets tucked neatly onto the mattress underneath him. The moonlight is filtering through the flimsy curtains hung over the bus windows, alerting Draco that sometime in between then and now, night hit and his shift is nearly over, and with that comforting thought, he rolls onto his stomach and allows himself to take a nap until the bus drops him off at home.
When he wakes up, Blaise is driving the Knight Bus and skirting past gutters and Harry Potter is nestled into his arms, hair tickling his shoulder and leg thrown over his waist so his midsection tingles pleasantly and pools with sleepy heat. He tries to yell at Blaise to pull over so he won’t be caught for stealing a public vehicle of transportation without disturbing the snoozing boy comfortably melded against his side, but before he can make such a demand, the Knight Bus becomes airborne and soars next to the clouds, no longer jerking this way and that but smoothly slipping past the moon and stars like a silky broomstick ride, and then Harry pokes him in the ribs and goes “sleeping on the job, are you?” and Draco promptly is jerked back to reality and wakes up.
A thick film of sleep blurs Draco’s vision before he can rub his eyelids free of his dreams and realize that Harry Potter is looming over him and his cot and poking him in the chest repeatedly. Draco slaps the offending hand away and attempts to deliver his most threatening glower when his drowsiness is impeding his ability to provoke any fear in another with his countenance alone.
“Wake up, Draco,” Potter tells him, sitting on the edge of the bed, and Draco instantly sits up.
“What are you doing here?”
“Going home. Late night at the Ministry.”
Draco checks his watch and notes that two a.m. definitely constitutes as a late night of work, especially when he was due with a date with his bed’s comforter and fluffy pillows over an hour ago. He sighs and rubs a knot formed during his slumber on a Knight Bus bargain mattress out of his neck with his thumbs.
“And I suppose you didn’t feel like Apparating?” Draco asks, waiting for Potter to confirm the suspicions that are making his stomach flutter like he’s drunken too much firewhiskey or he’s channeling a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl that Potter’s true reason for traveling so frequently with the Knight Bus is not for the thrilling driving but rather the man on board.
“Not really,” Potter says. He looks at Draco for one moment, two moments, too many moments, and then leans in to place a soft, almost chaste kiss on his bottom lip that miraculously, Ernie’s driving doesn’t interrupt.
When they pull apart, Draco realizes that somehow, he’s jus t been kissed by Harry Potter and the world ceased to implode, which is reassuring at the very least. Potter’s staring at him with wide, very green eyes, waiting patiently for a contributory emotion or a reaction, and before Draco can form and find the words he deems are articulate enough to properly verbalize exactly what is running through his brain at speeds the Knight Bus could only dream of, the bus jerks suddenly left and both of them are nearly knocked off the bed. It breaks the silence, Potter being the first to chuckle.
“Well, this certainly isn’t mental,” Draco feels the need to point out. “I didn’t know you were a flaming pouf, Potter.”
“Are you complaining?”
Draco shakes his head, only mildly surprised that the cowardly, Slytherin part of himself isn’t roaring in ridicule and spewing homophobic diatribes as the very thing he was fretting over for days throws itself into his face. Instead he grabs Potter’s cloak and decides to pull him closer until he can smell the faint scent of aftershave and pushes their lips together more firmly than before.
The fact that his works, unexplainably works, is a mystery meant for geniuses to attempt to decipher. Years ago, the mere thought of snogging with Harry Potter on transportation as rudimentary as the Knight Bus, in purple pants, no less, would have terrified Draco to the very core, and yet here he is, the face of maturity and startling composure as he zeroes in on the soft feel of Potter’s evening stubble and gentle lips parting beneath his and refuses to let his mind focus on anything less important such as thinking.
Who needs thoughts, Draco dismisses, his free hand gripping Potter’s thigh as the man lets loose a soft-throated moan that falls straight into Draco’s mouth.
He’s incredibly glad-more so than he ever was before-that the train is empty of travelers. The snoring witch left during his fleeting nap and any young ruffians have been dropped off from the train many stops ago, leaving nothing but Ernie, Draco, Potter, and Potter’s sinful hands. Suddenly, the thought of slowing down and making sense of this and halting the roaming of his hands down Potter’s chest seems ludicrous, so instead of even entertaining the idea of breaking away from their kiss, Draco gets to his knees and pushes Potter insistently down on the squeaky mattress.
“Whoa,” Potter says breathlessly as his head hits the pillow and Draco sucks on his bottom lip before descending down to lick a journey down his neck, a neck that has never before looked so delectable. “You think this is a bit fast?”
“Despite being on the Knight Bus, we’ve been moving at a glacial speed, Potter,” Draco assures him, and Potter seems inclined to agree when his arms wind around his shoulder and he nudges Draco’s cheek with his nose to encourage him to tilt up his chin and press their mouths back together in an open-mouthed kiss. Their tongues slide together.
“Glacially,” Potter repeats dazedly when the kiss breaks. Draco nods firmly and pushes away Potter’s robes and jacket and other offending garments until he can slide his hands up the pale expanse of Potter’s exposed chest and play with a pebbled nipple without the obstruction of fabric getting in his hand’s way.
The bus gives a great lurch and the beds rolls and wheel left in protest, Potter’s hands gripping onto Draco’s elbows only to keep from toppling off the side of the bed. When the beds still once more into a default shake, Potter only squeezes harder until Draco meets his eyes.
“What?”
“Careful,” Potter warns him. “You’ll knee me in the crotch when the bus swerves again if you’re not careful.”
Draco waves away his concerns and proceeds to silence them by kissing him squarely on the mouth once more, Potter’s answering groan of rapture enough to ensure that his nerves regarding the bus’ safety are forgotten. Instead, there is a scrambling of hands to reach wherever they can find purchase, Potter’s fingers alternating from rubbing circles on Draco’s hips to tweaking a nipple under his purple blazer that soon joins Potter’s traveling cloak on the floor to slide around aimlessly with the bus’ turns.
“This is okay, right?” Draco takes a moment to ask, hands poised over Potter’s pants ready to unzip and shimmy them down his ankles the moment he receives the green light. Potter gives a shaky nod, eyes alight with a fire Draco’s never been addressed with before that tell him that Potter’s just as eager and invested in this fumbling around together on the Knight Bus as he is if the relentless pounding of his heart against his ribcage and the blood rushing down southward is any indication.
He unbuttons Potter’s pants in mere nanoseconds, shucking them off his thighs and tossing them aside as he focuses on his real goal, the tented bulge protruding from his boxers that Draco promptly feels his pulse race and mouth salivate at. He reaches out to tuck Potter’s erection out of its confines, taking a moment to let his eyes rove over the length in his hand, hot and heavy just as he hoped it would be, his hungry inspection only cut to a halt when Potter’s thighs squirm and he clears his throat with a cough that returns Draco to the task at hand. He wraps his fingers firmly around the shaft, thumb brushing over the slit at the sticky head, already dotted with beads of precome that Draco can’t resist to lean in and taste when Potter suddenly seizes his wrist to stop him.
“Don’t bite me either,” Potter pleads as the bus jolts.
“Please, as if I-” Draco is promptly cut off as the bus takes a sharp turn and sends both of them careening to the floor and gripping each other’s limbs as they tumble, Draco letting out several high-pitched yelps as the unexpected swerve has him landing hard on his backside and Potter flat on his chest. The beds roll and bump into them, knocking into Draco’s shoulders and sure to leave bruises, but Potter’s breathless snicker and warm breath on his neck has all thoughts of bruises and backaches flying from his brain as if summoned away.
“Knew it would happen,” Potter chuckles, reaching for the bedpost to pull himself back up, but Draco’s hand darts out to grab his shoulder before he can get to his feet and return to the cot.
“No,” he shakes his head, sitting up to quickly shrug off any remaining garments and unbutton his pants, an action which Potter follows with his eyes as if he’s a parched man watching the rush and trickle of a stream. He smirks and pulls Potter back into his lap. “We’ll just fall again.”
Potter shrugs, and with that concession, he’s flipping them over once more, hands fumbling to push down Draco’s trousers and slide into his underwear, unyielding fingers gripping Draco’s cock and proceeding to stroke him to a slow rhythm until Draco’s breath hitches audibly in his throat.
“As you were,” he says, rather cheekily, and Draco is surprisingly eager to oblige as he slides down Potter’s body, legs already shining with the slight sheen of sweat as he plants a few affectionate nips to his hipbone before returning to his earlier task of licking over the head of Potter’s erection, tongue digging into the slit to taste the drops of precome while Potter lets loose a loud moan that Draco can only hope Ernie’s ears aren’t picking up at the front of the bus.
Draco tries not to think too hard about Harry Potter’s dick is in my mouth, for he knows that the second he lets his brain feast on that thought the ludicrousness of the situation might cause him to pull back and laugh into Potter’s thigh. The thirteen-year-old boy in his head that still thinks it’s cool to slick back his hair and gossip to Crabbe and Goyle about Potter’s inept attempts to succeed at Potions is shrieking in horror, as is the pallid face of his father, and perhaps even Blaise in the sense that should Draco ever be found naked romping about with Harry Potter by Blaise’s eyes, he knows he’ll be cursed with boils for weeks. He focuses instead on his tongue and the delicious whimpers it seems to elicit from Potter’s lips, so delicious that he feels eternally sorry for anyone who never has the pleasure of hearing them for their own ears. Draco lets his hands hold down Potter’s twitching hips when he can feel the pleasure mounting and coiling in Potter’s bones, the sight of his heaving chest and sweat-dappled arms while Draco bobs his head and tickles his tongue over the underside of Potter’s length arousing enough to convince Draco that even if the bus jerks and crashes, he won’t cease his ministrations.
A hand worms its way into his blond hair, twisting the locks in its fingers while Draco continues his alternation of sucking and licking stripes up Potter’s erection, the taste engulfing his tongue failing to dampen his own erection but rather spurring it on, a fact that Draco will never admit vocally even under the harshest brews of Veritaserum. He wraps his lips around the head, suckling and letting the flat of his tongue swirl around the flesh. It’s unlike anything he’s ever tasted or put on his tongue before, and he’s incredibly astonished at how erotic he finds it when he’s not even on the receiving end of a warm, velvety heat engulfing his dick.
The hand in Draco’s hair begins tugging, and Potter manages to rasp out a breathless, “C’mere,” that Draco obliges with one last teasing suck and kiss to the side of Potter’s shaft before he’s bodily lugged up Potter’s torso just in time for another one of the bus’ hefty turns down a corner that nearly sends Draco rolling under all of the beds and colliding with the back of Ernie’s chair all the way in the front before Potter grabs hold of his wrist and reels him back in.
He’s about to peek out over the rows of beds and holler for Ernie to ease up on the steering wheel in the vain hopes that the man should take heed of his words when Potter busies himself with licking and biting on the sensitive skin behind Draco’s ear-a spot he had yet to discover was so sensitive to tongues-and pushing their mouths together. Their kiss doesn’t end until the bus skirts narrowly by a line of Muggle cars and their teeth clack together.
“Owfuck,” Draco hisses, Potter silencing him with another, softer kiss.
“Hips up,” Potter instructs him, and when Draco does so, he pushes his boxers down and away, leaving both of them frighteningly bare of clothes, and that’s when he first realizes that Harry Potter is staring at him while he’s naked.
It would be better, Draco thinks, if an entire horde of senior witches and wizards leaving their Saturday evening Exploding Snap game would board the bus and stare unashamedly at Draco’s nude form rather than have Potter, the very boy that was plotted to be killed in his very own house, staring at his quivering legs and throbbing dick and pale chest. His nerves are eased, however, when Potter murmurs directly on Draco’s lips a muffled compliment sounding something like so hot and lets his hand wind around his dick once more to resume the stroking it had begun earlier.
“No,” Draco says, batting Potter’s hand away. “Together.”
Potter nods after a moment, looping one arm around his neck and the other around both of their dicks, slender fingers pumping their lengths together. The feel of Potter’s erection, still slick, grinding against his own and creating friction heavenly enough to cause Draco to grab Potter’s face and demand he promise to stay in his bed for years to come if it means he’ll be gifted with brilliant handjobs from the Chosen One whenever he pleases, is enough to tempt Draco to cry out and inadvertently alert Ernie to whatever malarkey is occurring in the back of his bus.
“Join me, Draco. C’mon, touch me,” Potter pleads, eyes naked and earnest and free of any masks, the sight of such a startling green causing Draco to instantly reach between their legs and wrap his own dominant hand around their slick neighboring dicks rubbing together, fingers catching on the rhythm of Potter’s strokes swiftly.
Draco kisses him again, and god, he hopes that this thing that he and Harry have somehow created between them like fizz and magic and volcano eruptions all at once isn’t something that only thrives in the Knight Bus. The idea of the two of them squabbling over who gets to kick off the Quidditch game and necking on the couch like teenagers minus the duels and insults is overwhelming in a delightful way, a feeling so warm and fond Draco didn’t know Malfoys could even feel such a sensation.
He pulls up on Potter’s next down stroke, the feeling so hot and spicy in his throat that both of them cry out and Draco repeats himself, hands fumbling to counteract Potter’s equally feverish strokes. The bus jerks again and again, but this time its curves only seem to catch their fingers off guard, Draco’s thumb flitting over the base of Potter’s cock and Potter’s hand tightening into a firm squeeze on Draco’s erection when the bus slides left and right, the feeling of tumbling around with Harry on the floor of this grimy bus pushing him straight to the brink of unbridled pleasure.
Harry moans, kissing Draco once more with his tongue brushing surely against Draco’s as he cries out, twice in a row, and then his entire body shudders under Draco’s and his hand momentarily jerks to a stop before he opens his eyes, brighter than before, and picks up his pace until Draco is a babbling mess on top of him, rutting into his and Potter’s hands, their combined efforts causing him to come three seconds later before he lands on Potter’s relaxed chest and pushes his nose under his ear, smelling the scent of sweat and sex, two odors he desperately hopes can be removed from the bus before the day ends. He feels Potter’s smile break out on top of his head, lazy and amused, thinking the exact same thing Draco is and wondering how the hell both of them thought doing this in a bus was a good idea.
This, Draco thinks blissfully, eyes slipping closed at the sound of Harry’s sated exhale as come cools in between their stomachs, this is what magic is.
“Accio clothes,” Potter whispers as quietly as he can as if he wasn’t letting out guttural moans thankfully quieted by the sound of screeching tire and burning rubber and honking cars a minute ago. A wad of boxers and shirts go flying into his hand, several garments skidding over the floor. Draco deftly catches his own pants, the alarming hue of purple catching his eyes, before they go soaring into Potter’s grip.
“Ernie won’t hear you,” Draco drawls, fitting his legs into his pant legs after slipping his boxers back on.
“Do you really want to test that?”
Draco shrugs, petting the strands of his hair fisted into disarray back into position and shrugging his shirt on. Potter struggles to fit his own arms in the sleeves of his jacket and the sight is so endearing that instead of scoffing and pointing, as Draco does feel compelled to do, he leans in for another kiss that misses his lips and goes three inches up on his eyebrow as the bus turns once more. Draco grumbles.
“Going for my mouth?” Potter asks, chuckling, fingers brushing over where Draco’s lips landed above his eyelid.
“Shut up, Scarhead.”
“So as much as I like the Knight Bus,” Potter says, failing to indulge in Draco’s command. “How about we take this elsewhere? Maybe somewhere that isn’t moving?”
Potter’s fingers push closer to Draco’s on the floor, their hands side-by-side on the ground and little fingers pressed together in a gentle facsimile of hand holding that both of them won’t feel the need to mock or pull away from, an action that could easily be written off as an accidental invasion of personal space. Draco knocks his hand against Potter’s, bumping shoulders, and realizes that Potter’s negating his very fears, that this whole thing is Knight-Bus-exclusive and won’t see the light of day for reasons that Draco can understand all too well-Weasley and Granger would have a panic attack, Draco’s father would have a heart attack, the Daily Prophet would be killing wizards to get the full scoop on their forbidden Shakespearean romance.
“Your friends will disown you,” Draco tells him bluntly.
“They’ll think I’m going around the twist,” Potter retorts, taking it all in stride, and Draco is about to nod and tease him further with some good-natured Slytherin snark when the Knight Bus screeches to another unsuspected stop and both of them barrel into the bed.
Draco watches as Potter lets out a litany of curses and rubs at a blooming, sensitive bruise on the back of his head, messy mop of hair doing little to cushion the blow, and Draco laughs at the sight of graceful Harry Potter attempting to mend a bruise on the back of his head with his wand.
Who is he bloody kidding? He loves his job.
A/N: I finally got around to making my Draco/Harry rec list. Naturally, it took forever and a half, but being able to reread the masterpieces that entertained me in the good ol' days was definitely worth it.
Anyone who wants to see the epic Harry/Draco Lego photography my lovely comrade Sarah and I created in tribute of this fanfiction, come take a look.
Author:
veterization
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Rating: NC-17
Genre and/or Pairing: Harry/Draco
Word Count: ~17,000
Warnings: Slight language and sexual content (second part).
Summary: After the war, the Malfoy fortune begins dwindling. Draco swallows his pride and gets a job the only place he can find one: the Knight Bus.
"In love, somehow, a man's heart is always either exceeding the speed limit, or getting parked in the wrong place." --Helen Rowland
Part I.
“So it’s true?”
Draco whips around at the sound of a familiarly sleek, yet highly amused voice wafting across the bus as Draco seats an old wizard onto a bed and shoves a mug of steaming cocoa into his fidgeting hands, a very well-tailored and crisply suited Blaise standing by Ernie in utter delight as he scans the bus and lands on Draco’s form.
“Blaise? What in Merlin’s name are you doing riding the Knight Bus?” Draco turns around and approaches the boy. He feels like he should be angry after months of virtually no contact from Blaise, nor from most of the other Slytherins he formed alliances with during school with the exception of a few brief notes from Pansy, especially angry when Blaise is standing in front of him as the epitome of a gentlemanly wizard with exceptionally higher cheekbones than usual and shiny shoes, but the indignation doesn’t come forth.
“Your mother told me you were working here and honestly, I just had to see for it myself,” Blaise tells him, sounding rather pleased at the statement turning out to be true. “So the real question is what in Merlin’s name are you doing conducting the Knight Bus?”
“Obviously, because purple’s my color,” Draco promptly snaps, a line he’s been waiting to throw at anyone who dare recognize his blond hair and pointy nose and pin him as a Malfoy and then proceed to patronize his belittling position. Blaise is hardly affronted, merely tilting his head at the random outburst, and Draco is once more reminded why it is hard to stay mad at Blaise Zabini when he is so seldom infuriated and always fails to return the heat necessary to keep a quarrel afloat.
“You know, Draco, if you needed money, you could have come to me,” Blaise tells him, a sentimental offer that Draco was hardly expecting to come from his friend’s mouth.
“Money? You actually would’ve given me gold?”
“One day, you’d pay it off. Or I’d just make you my house elf until your debt would be paid,” Blaise shrugs. Draco imagines folding Blaise’s laundry or preparing his mother cereal and is suddenly grateful for the Knight Bus and its employee vacancy.
“Well, I’ve got a job now, so it seems you’re too late.”
“Seems so,” Blaise agrees, and he looks impressed enough to cause Draco’s battered ego to swell gratefully. “I’m proud of you, Draco. Getting a job, not just waiting until your father turns broke or gets sent to prison. Draco from school never would’ve actually done labor for gold.”
“This isn’t labor,” Draco corrects, readjusting his purple blazer and brushing a stray piece of lint off of one of the golden buttons. “So don’t expect me to start sucking cock for galleons in a few weeks just because I’ve learned the art of capitalism.”
“At least you’ve still got your snark,” Blaise says fondly. Draco’s answering sneer only makes Blaise grin harder.
The bus’ doors jolt closed and Draco finds purchase on the bed behind him before Ernie begins driving. The bus shoots down the street like a rocket shooting into the stratosphere with little warning of its acceleration and Blaise goes gracelessly tumbling to the floor, landing on his hindquarters and expression quite perplexed at his own clumsiness. The wayward position of his tie startled out of place by the speed and Blaise’s horrified wide eyes as he picks himself shakily off the floor like it was an invisible jinx that sent him plummeting to the ground is enough to entertain Draco for weeks, Blaise’s indignant “that driver is a barbarian, surely he’s not licensed!” only fueling his amusement.
-
Three days after Blaise’s unceremonious visit, Harry Potter shows his face aboard the bus once more, this time not doubled over and grasping wounds, but tidied up once more and decked in his Ministry robes.
He looks extremely uncomfortable and even out of place on the shabby bus as his eyes drift from bed to bed, and then Draco realizes that’s because for once, the man doesn’t have a plausible excuse as to why he should be riding the Knight Bus over other easily accessible forms of transportation.
When Draco pockets his riding money and asks him where he’s off to and why he graced the Knight Bus with his presence today, Potter turns bright pink at the question he was clearly hoping wouldn’t be inquired and quickly mutters, “Think I dropped my wristwatch when I was here last time.”
Draco nods, but the lie is so poorly constructed and told so unconvincingly that Draco has no trouble seeing through Potter’s smokescreen. He wonders, watching as Potter gets awkwardly to his knees and begins scouring for a nonexistent watch under the beds, if Potter made up this absurd lie for his own sake if only to check up on Draco or have a witty conversation with him to help wake him up before work. The thought is oddly comforting, like despite all of his mistakes, he’s still managed to secure Harry Potter’s concern and a hint of his friendship.
“So did Weasley survive on that last mission?” Draco asks, taking seat on the bed Potter is crawling under, another one of the bus’ bumps causing him to knock his skull against the bottom of the bed and let out a stifled curse.
“Er. Yeah. He was fine,” Potter mumbles from under the bed, crawling back out and shuffling to the next. “Worried about me, mostly, when I came back with blood all over.”
"Did you tell him that Draco Malfoy was the one who healed you?” Draco asks, the thought of Weasley’s face as he’s being informed of Draco Malfoy's heroic actions providing him endlessly entertainment.
“I did, actually,” Potter worms himself out from underneath the bed and smirks at Draco. “He thought I’d been Confunded.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Still, once he finally believed me, he said it was pretty impressive magic you did. Considering how much blood was on my shirt he thought I was bleeding half to death when you found me,” Potter says.
“He’s not far off,” Draco mutters, about to shoot a disapproving glower in Potter’s direction before quickly stopping himself when he remembers that he’s not Potter’s fussy mother.
“Ah,” Potter’s voice exclaims once he ducks under the bed again. “Found the watch.”
Draco watches as Potter twists out from underneath the rickety cot and stuffs a fist in his robe that Draco is inclined to believe is holding nothing at all, seeing no flashes of shimmering jewelry over the blush tinting Potter’s cheekbones.
He’s about to get up and brush the lint off from his robes when Ernie takes a distracting bite out of his sandwich and has to swerve to avoid the old lady delicately crossing the street, Potter’s cry of unbalance failing to properly warn Draco as he suddenly gets a lapful of Harry Potter’s wriggling limbs on top of his own.
The bus twists and nearly seems to tip over, Potter’s hand gripping Draco’s shoulder with startling strength as both of them almost go rolling off the side of the bed as one tangled entity, and not until the bus seems to steady itself does Potter slowly peel himself up, nose smashed onto Draco’s chest. It’s then when Draco realizes that there’s a firm chest and sturdy thighs pressed into his own, and that this is not the same scraggly slender malnourished boy from First Year, this Potter slotted against him is hard and solid and definitely all man, full of muscles like the a defined one on his arm where Draco is gripping him and trying desperately not to feel and squeeze where the Auror training has seemed to pay off the most.
Draco swallows back on a dry mouth and tries desperately to quell the intensely flapping Snitch trapped inside his body and fluttering wildly against his ribcage, body squirming under the warm solid heat of Potter’s body.
There’s a muffled, “sorry, Malfoy,” murmured on his shirt before Potter sits up, scooting hastily off of Draco’s legs when he realizes he’s straddling his hips, and watches him with wide eyes as Draco smoothes the crinkles away from his jacket and also sits up.
“Bloody bus,” Draco dismisses gruffly, the other man nodding, and then Potter makes a beeline for the door with rumpled hair conveying that he just had a morning shag in a broom cupboard and jumps from the bus when Ernie presses on the brakes and folds open the purple doors even though he’s two stops away from where he needs to be.
-
There are a lot of inquiries regarding the illustrious Stan Shunpike, previous conductor of the Knight Bus, even weeks after Draco’s first day on the job.
From what Draco gathers, the man was a pimply, lanky, and thickly-accented gossipmonger who always kept a Daily Prophet on hand to strike up conversations with bored travelers and spilled hot chocolate on people’s pants just as much as Draco’s hands are currently prone to doing. He devoted just as many hours to enduring the Knight Bus’ many jerks and shakes for multiple years until, tragically, he was recruited and Imperiused by a gang of Death Eaters for many reasons unknown, as the man was of little help even under magical control and convinced no one that he was a willing volunteer for the Voldemort movement.
“He was a sweet boy, if not a little speckled with dreadful acne,” a regular old witch who loves to rant and ramble during her brief trips on the Knight Bus and steadfastly refuses to ride on the lower level says. “I kept telling him-boy, there’s magical cream for that. Madam Primpernelle’s Beautifying Potions-she’s right down the corner at Diagon Alley-sells wonders that could go away with a boil the size of my fist.”
She shakes a gnarled fist in Draco’s face and continues.
“Of course, he didn’t listen. Probably was too busy spending all of his gold on impressing witches,” the old woman rolls her eyes under her wrinkly eyelids. “Did you know that Stan once met Harry Potter on this bus once? I’ve seen quite a few things with these old eyes and never have I actually met Harry Potter in the flesh, yet I suspect he’s less handsome in person than the newspapers make him out to be.”
“Oh, he’s hideous,” Potter’s voice suddenly interjects into the conversation, and when Draco turns around Potter is ducking underneath the swaying chandelier and grabbing a bedpost in preparation for when the bus starts off once more. The old witch spares him a glance, nods gruffly with a slightly disappointed shrug at his confirmation, and seemingly fails to properly identify him as she returns to rummaging in her handbag a moment later.
“You know, Potter, if you ride this bus any more I’ll think you’re stalking me,” Draco says as he wanders over to where the boy’s clinging onto his bedpost, wrapping his fingers around the same anchor a few inches beneath Potter’s.
“I’m getting over the flu,” Potter says quickly, very quickly, almost as if he’s rehearsed an explanation, and Draco doesn’t fail to notice that the man looks far from ill or clammy in the face. “Apparating makes me want to heave.”
Draco considers calling him out for his blatant fib, for not only is Potter missing the signature nasally tone of voice, blubbery nostrils, and pocket stuffed to the brim with crumpled tissues always signaling the symptoms of one in the horrible depths of a nasty sickness, but he’s not entirely sure he wishes to hear the real explanation nor does he want to disrupt the peace that they have ineffably created between them by starting an altercation over Potter’s candor.
“Didn’t your mum ever teach you to avoid germs and always ask for Pepper-Up when your nose starts itching?” Draco asks, waiting for the inevitable resentment to film over Potter’s eyes at the blasé mention of his mother, but he merely shrugs and idly rubs a hand under his nostrils where there should be, for all intents and purposes, a sluggish waterfall of yellow snot.
“I was out flying in the cold for a bit too long,” Potter explains. “Do you still fly?”
Draco thinks of his pristine broomstick, possibly already pawned away by his mother without his knowledge, and shrugs. “Don’t really have the time these days.”
“Shame,” Potter says. “You were pretty good. You’ll get rusty if you don’t practice.”
“Please, Potter,” Draco says hotly, “Only the amateurs need practice. I’m intrinsically skilled with flying talents.”
Potter snorts. Oddly enough, the derision doesn’t cause Draco to instantly defend his honor and his impeccable Quidditch abilities. Years ago, if Potter had insinuated he doubted his natural gift for flying, he would have punted the handle of his broomstick into Potter’s nose and listened to the crunch of wood colliding with bone with a certain amount of satisfaction that only a true Malfoy could have enjoyed from another’s physical agony.
“Maybe the Weaselette can make you some soup for your,” Draco looks at him, once more trying to find a blemish of poor health on Potter’s body. “…flu.”
Potter shakes his head, “She’s a bit busy with her boyfriend these days.”
Draco snaps his head over to look at Potter, flabbergasted. He had been certain that after the war was over and Potter had secured a spot on the winning side he would waste little time in seizing the redheaded Weasley bird and carrying her off to the altar to start afresh with his life and begin producing enough freckled children to populate an entire village. The subtle implication that this is not the case, however, and that Ginny Weasley is enamored with another wizard of which Harry has no influence in is not lost on Draco, nor is the fact that Potter made the implication in the first place.
He glances at Potter, as if waiting for him to correct himself, but his mouth is shut and his eyes are enlarged in something akin to anticipation. Draco looks down at Potter’s lips again and watches as a tongue darts out and wets them, slipping away before Draco has the chance to feel a churn in his stomach.
Oh God, he wants to kiss me, Draco thinks, and he doesn’t know what to think after that as sure enough, Potter’s face comes closer and Draco himself only feels it prudent to lean in as well even when can’t fathom why he would want to.
They’re five seconds and one foot apart, six inches and three seconds, and then the Knight Bus lurches left and Potter nearly goes barreling onto the floor, away from Draco and back to a normal propinquity away from Draco. There’s about five feet of space between them, but to Draco, it might as well have been the entire country.
He tells himself he’s not disappointed.
-
“So I think Harry Potter tried to kiss me the other day.”
Draco finally musters up the audacity to mention the incident to Blaise over tea, uncomfortably at best, after twenty minutes of small talk over Blaise’s new job and reacquainting themselves with one another, and Blaise spits a fine spray of tea over the tablecloth.
“Kissing Potter?”
“Ergh, Blaise, manners,” Draco says through a grimace as he wipes his cup clean. It feels extremely cumbersome to discuss his burgeoning liaison with Potter when he’s not inside the Knight Bus, a place where it can be hidden and remain safe from judgmental ears and Draco’s qualms, as if not mentioning the incidents refrains Draco from having to succumb to a series of life-changing evaluations concerning himself.
“Where did this happen? How did this happen?” Blaise looks truly dumbfounded by such unpredictable developments. Draco sets down his cup of tea and decides to face the situation by finally addressing that there is, in fact, a situation in existence.
“On the Knight Bus,” he admits, picking up his cup only to busy his hands. “He kept coming by and now he’s just making stupid excuses. Honestly, who wants to ride that wretched thing if they can Apparate? I didn’t know what to make of it until he told me that the Weaselette was seeing some other bloke and started leaning in.”
“Toward you?” Blaise asks.
“Toward me,” Draco confirms. His suspicions that vocalizing the incidents and ruminating over Potter’s intentions would soothe his conflicted feelings and emotional turmoil is quickly negated as Draco starts to hear the horrifying words aloud as they come out of his mouth, as if he’s processing them for the first time. Blaise looks both concerned and overwhelmed with disbelief. Unfortunately, Draco can understand both expressions, for if Theo suddenly sent him an owl depicting the details of a budding relationship with Harry Potter, Draco would write off the letter as a hoax and promptly use it as fireplace kindling.
“Do you think he’s having you on?” Blaise suggests, and Draco does not miss the blow to his ego that arises when he notices that Blaise first rifles through the possibilities of Potter’s actions being led by the intent of retribution over anything more pleasant which might imply that Draco could somehow manage to charm the very boy he stomped on and bullied only a few years ago. “Maybe he’s looking for revenge.”
“Thanks for that, Blaise,” Draco says dryly as the thought of Potter scheming an elaborate plot against him to settle the scores after years of taunting forms in his mind.
“The war’s over, though. He’s probably not keen on picking any more battles,” Blaise furrows his eyebrows. “Are you trying to tell me that you’ve actually been fairly pleasant with him?”
“I suppose so,” Draco mumbles into his teacup, shrugging. “We’re not exactly friends, if that’s what you’re getting at. But we’re being surprisingly civil.”
“Has Draco Malfoy changed that much?” Blaise says after a moment’s thought, and he looks like a proud Hufflepuff at the accusation, leaning back smugly in his chair. Draco throws a crust of bread from the bowl on the table at his chest.
“Give me some sodding advice, you great prat,” Draco says, realizing a moment later that’s he’s pitifully whining. “What part of Potter tried to kiss me isn’t registering in your skull?”
“Well, what happened after he tried to snog you?”
“What?”
“What happened? Did you hex him?”
“Why would I hex him?” Draco asks. The idea of sending Potter off the bus with blisters on his nose would surely be an incident that the Ministry would quickly receive wind of and trace directly back to Malfoy Manor with or without evidence.
“Because Harry Potter tried to kiss you,” Blaise says as if it’s obvious, and then Draco realizes that it is.
“Oh god,” Draco moans, burying his face in the tablecloth to cool down his burning cheeks as the revelation hits his brain and Blaise is reduced to peals of laughter. “I want to kiss Harry Potter.”
-
Draco’s epiphany does little for his sanity. After Blaise joyously charms Draco’s shirt into shades of Gryffindor colors and sends him on his merry way home-where Draco grumbles and hides behind one of his mother’s bushes in the garden until he reverses the jinx-his realization that after seven years of reciprocated abhorrence, he’s somehow managed to become addicted to Harry Potter and his green-eyed face on the Knight Bus, haunts him for quite a few hours.
His mother notices instantly upon laying eyes on her son’s mortified and simultaneously sulking face as he closes the front door behind him and faintly tells her that tea with Blaise was uneventful, but he refuses to answer any of her questions on his well-being and goes straight to his room, where his smudgy old wand sitting atop his dresser continues to drill into his mind and force him to reevaluate his opinions on Harry Potter and, hence, his life.
He wonders if years of teasing and taunting were simply poorly veiled excuses to garner Potter’s attention and obsess over the boy without appearing awestruck and infatuated like many of the witches that fawned over the famous Harry Potter upon his arrival at Hogwarts as a gangly, confused wizard. He wonders if saving Potter’s life from Bellatrix when even under the mask of severe swelling, he could easily make out a tautly stretched scar and unmistakable weathered glasses and failed to identify him for the Dark Lord even if doing so would rid his family of the burden that his father’s failure Voldemort punished them for was a hint. He thinks about the Knight Bus, and how without the distractions of Crabbe and Goyle shooting menacing looks over his shoulder while Weasley and Granger flank Potter with matching looks of revulsion aimed at his own face, the two of them can actually manage enjoyable conversations.
Those thoughts, however, do not soothe his brain, instead giving birth to a monster of a headache that has Draco calling in sick for five miserable days of moping, avoiding the epiphanies his own brain is supplying him with, and letting his mother spoil him with tea when she’s not occupied cleaning out the broom cupboard of Draco’s childhood mementos.
No matter how disconcerting it is to watch his mother confiscate his toy broomstick and discuss with Lucius in hushed tones over how Draco’s trying hard to earn gold, we could all make a few sacrifices, he deems it a cheerier option than going to work and watching Harry Potter climb on board and try to kiss him once more, only to be swerved away and denied by the bus’ twists and turns while Draco retches on the floor like a seasick old man with a weak stomach.
-
Five days into his supposed sick leave, the wispy wizard who first granted Draco the Knight Bus position sends over an enormous owl politely requesting his return to work as Ernie has nearly run over three small children and succeeded in snapping a light post resting by the Leaky Cauldron in half by crashing headfirst into its base and clearly requires the assistance of another on board to avoid possible future decapitation and formal inquiries from the Ministry.
The request encourages his mother to offer Draco similar motivations to peel himself off his bed and return to work before he turns lazier still and is eventually fired from the one and only job Draco has ever had. Unfortunately, it’s his mother’s urges that Draco can’t disobey, and with a spot of Gryffindor courage in his morning coffee and crumpet, he pulls on his purple uniform and goes to work.
Several regulars seem surprisingly relieved to see Draco leading them onto the bus and are swift to relay tales of terror and danger to him regarding the days he spent at home brooding over his fixation with Potter that the Knight Bus went through at the lone hands of Ernie, who, despite being a reserved soul, apparently requires the presence of another in order to function properly as a driver and is even bold enough to offer Draco a silent wave when he boards the bus in the morning.
It takes Draco two hours of holding onto the bedposts with both arms for him to accustom himself once more to the unnaturally quick curves and serpentine swaying of the bus after nearly a week of standing on solid, pleasantly still ground. He crashes into the back window during Ernie’s first stop at Diagon Alley and instantly feels the ache of an oncoming bruise forming on his knee, furling up his pants to watch the blue and green hues bubble up to the surface of his skin. He wonders, idly, as he looks down at the sensitive bump on his leg, if Potter would have Healed it for him had he been on board, and with a sweep of his eyes across the rolling beds coming up empty of their target of black hair and glasses, he sighs and does it himself with a wave of his wand.
After two weeks of no Boy-Who-Lived sightings, Draco wonders if Potter was on the bus during his brief absence and took Draco’s lack of attendance as a sign that he had been too forward or too pushy and had therefore decided to no longer bother the blond at work when his advances had been wordlessly rejected. He wonders what would happen if Potter would ride on the bus and try to lean in for a kiss once more and if Draco would pull back, run away, or grab him by the lapels and push their lips together without any hesitation of his certainty.
-
One thing that Draco can concede is bloody brilliant about conducting the Knight Bus compared to any desk job or teaching position he could have been granted with is the amount of time he can spend slumbering away on a coat in the back once his body adjusts to the interruptions of rapid jerks and acceleration without a single disgruntled superior tapping him on the shoulder and fixing him with a stern glare and strict words to return to work.
He’s snoozing peacefully on a musty bed, ignorant of Ernie’s spontaneous halts and twists and of the snoring of the witch two beds away, head burrowed into the flat pillow and fingers curled in the sheets tucked neatly onto the mattress underneath him. The moonlight is filtering through the flimsy curtains hung over the bus windows, alerting Draco that sometime in between then and now, night hit and his shift is nearly over, and with that comforting thought, he rolls onto his stomach and allows himself to take a nap until the bus drops him off at home.
When he wakes up, Blaise is driving the Knight Bus and skirting past gutters and Harry Potter is nestled into his arms, hair tickling his shoulder and leg thrown over his waist so his midsection tingles pleasantly and pools with sleepy heat. He tries to yell at Blaise to pull over so he won’t be caught for stealing a public vehicle of transportation without disturbing the snoozing boy comfortably melded against his side, but before he can make such a demand, the Knight Bus becomes airborne and soars next to the clouds, no longer jerking this way and that but smoothly slipping past the moon and stars like a silky broomstick ride, and then Harry pokes him in the ribs and goes “sleeping on the job, are you?” and Draco promptly is jerked back to reality and wakes up.
A thick film of sleep blurs Draco’s vision before he can rub his eyelids free of his dreams and realize that Harry Potter is looming over him and his cot and poking him in the chest repeatedly. Draco slaps the offending hand away and attempts to deliver his most threatening glower when his drowsiness is impeding his ability to provoke any fear in another with his countenance alone.
“Wake up, Draco,” Potter tells him, sitting on the edge of the bed, and Draco instantly sits up.
“What are you doing here?”
“Going home. Late night at the Ministry.”
Draco checks his watch and notes that two a.m. definitely constitutes as a late night of work, especially when he was due with a date with his bed’s comforter and fluffy pillows over an hour ago. He sighs and rubs a knot formed during his slumber on a Knight Bus bargain mattress out of his neck with his thumbs.
“And I suppose you didn’t feel like Apparating?” Draco asks, waiting for Potter to confirm the suspicions that are making his stomach flutter like he’s drunken too much firewhiskey or he’s channeling a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl that Potter’s true reason for traveling so frequently with the Knight Bus is not for the thrilling driving but rather the man on board.
“Not really,” Potter says. He looks at Draco for one moment, two moments, too many moments, and then leans in to place a soft, almost chaste kiss on his bottom lip that miraculously, Ernie’s driving doesn’t interrupt.
When they pull apart, Draco realizes that somehow, he’s jus t been kissed by Harry Potter and the world ceased to implode, which is reassuring at the very least. Potter’s staring at him with wide, very green eyes, waiting patiently for a contributory emotion or a reaction, and before Draco can form and find the words he deems are articulate enough to properly verbalize exactly what is running through his brain at speeds the Knight Bus could only dream of, the bus jerks suddenly left and both of them are nearly knocked off the bed. It breaks the silence, Potter being the first to chuckle.
“Well, this certainly isn’t mental,” Draco feels the need to point out. “I didn’t know you were a flaming pouf, Potter.”
“Are you complaining?”
Draco shakes his head, only mildly surprised that the cowardly, Slytherin part of himself isn’t roaring in ridicule and spewing homophobic diatribes as the very thing he was fretting over for days throws itself into his face. Instead he grabs Potter’s cloak and decides to pull him closer until he can smell the faint scent of aftershave and pushes their lips together more firmly than before.
The fact that his works, unexplainably works, is a mystery meant for geniuses to attempt to decipher. Years ago, the mere thought of snogging with Harry Potter on transportation as rudimentary as the Knight Bus, in purple pants, no less, would have terrified Draco to the very core, and yet here he is, the face of maturity and startling composure as he zeroes in on the soft feel of Potter’s evening stubble and gentle lips parting beneath his and refuses to let his mind focus on anything less important such as thinking.
Who needs thoughts, Draco dismisses, his free hand gripping Potter’s thigh as the man lets loose a soft-throated moan that falls straight into Draco’s mouth.
He’s incredibly glad-more so than he ever was before-that the train is empty of travelers. The snoring witch left during his fleeting nap and any young ruffians have been dropped off from the train many stops ago, leaving nothing but Ernie, Draco, Potter, and Potter’s sinful hands. Suddenly, the thought of slowing down and making sense of this and halting the roaming of his hands down Potter’s chest seems ludicrous, so instead of even entertaining the idea of breaking away from their kiss, Draco gets to his knees and pushes Potter insistently down on the squeaky mattress.
“Whoa,” Potter says breathlessly as his head hits the pillow and Draco sucks on his bottom lip before descending down to lick a journey down his neck, a neck that has never before looked so delectable. “You think this is a bit fast?”
“Despite being on the Knight Bus, we’ve been moving at a glacial speed, Potter,” Draco assures him, and Potter seems inclined to agree when his arms wind around his shoulder and he nudges Draco’s cheek with his nose to encourage him to tilt up his chin and press their mouths back together in an open-mouthed kiss. Their tongues slide together.
“Glacially,” Potter repeats dazedly when the kiss breaks. Draco nods firmly and pushes away Potter’s robes and jacket and other offending garments until he can slide his hands up the pale expanse of Potter’s exposed chest and play with a pebbled nipple without the obstruction of fabric getting in his hand’s way.
The bus gives a great lurch and the beds rolls and wheel left in protest, Potter’s hands gripping onto Draco’s elbows only to keep from toppling off the side of the bed. When the beds still once more into a default shake, Potter only squeezes harder until Draco meets his eyes.
“What?”
“Careful,” Potter warns him. “You’ll knee me in the crotch when the bus swerves again if you’re not careful.”
Draco waves away his concerns and proceeds to silence them by kissing him squarely on the mouth once more, Potter’s answering groan of rapture enough to ensure that his nerves regarding the bus’ safety are forgotten. Instead, there is a scrambling of hands to reach wherever they can find purchase, Potter’s fingers alternating from rubbing circles on Draco’s hips to tweaking a nipple under his purple blazer that soon joins Potter’s traveling cloak on the floor to slide around aimlessly with the bus’ turns.
“This is okay, right?” Draco takes a moment to ask, hands poised over Potter’s pants ready to unzip and shimmy them down his ankles the moment he receives the green light. Potter gives a shaky nod, eyes alight with a fire Draco’s never been addressed with before that tell him that Potter’s just as eager and invested in this fumbling around together on the Knight Bus as he is if the relentless pounding of his heart against his ribcage and the blood rushing down southward is any indication.
He unbuttons Potter’s pants in mere nanoseconds, shucking them off his thighs and tossing them aside as he focuses on his real goal, the tented bulge protruding from his boxers that Draco promptly feels his pulse race and mouth salivate at. He reaches out to tuck Potter’s erection out of its confines, taking a moment to let his eyes rove over the length in his hand, hot and heavy just as he hoped it would be, his hungry inspection only cut to a halt when Potter’s thighs squirm and he clears his throat with a cough that returns Draco to the task at hand. He wraps his fingers firmly around the shaft, thumb brushing over the slit at the sticky head, already dotted with beads of precome that Draco can’t resist to lean in and taste when Potter suddenly seizes his wrist to stop him.
“Don’t bite me either,” Potter pleads as the bus jolts.
“Please, as if I-” Draco is promptly cut off as the bus takes a sharp turn and sends both of them careening to the floor and gripping each other’s limbs as they tumble, Draco letting out several high-pitched yelps as the unexpected swerve has him landing hard on his backside and Potter flat on his chest. The beds roll and bump into them, knocking into Draco’s shoulders and sure to leave bruises, but Potter’s breathless snicker and warm breath on his neck has all thoughts of bruises and backaches flying from his brain as if summoned away.
“Knew it would happen,” Potter chuckles, reaching for the bedpost to pull himself back up, but Draco’s hand darts out to grab his shoulder before he can get to his feet and return to the cot.
“No,” he shakes his head, sitting up to quickly shrug off any remaining garments and unbutton his pants, an action which Potter follows with his eyes as if he’s a parched man watching the rush and trickle of a stream. He smirks and pulls Potter back into his lap. “We’ll just fall again.”
Potter shrugs, and with that concession, he’s flipping them over once more, hands fumbling to push down Draco’s trousers and slide into his underwear, unyielding fingers gripping Draco’s cock and proceeding to stroke him to a slow rhythm until Draco’s breath hitches audibly in his throat.
“As you were,” he says, rather cheekily, and Draco is surprisingly eager to oblige as he slides down Potter’s body, legs already shining with the slight sheen of sweat as he plants a few affectionate nips to his hipbone before returning to his earlier task of licking over the head of Potter’s erection, tongue digging into the slit to taste the drops of precome while Potter lets loose a loud moan that Draco can only hope Ernie’s ears aren’t picking up at the front of the bus.
Draco tries not to think too hard about Harry Potter’s dick is in my mouth, for he knows that the second he lets his brain feast on that thought the ludicrousness of the situation might cause him to pull back and laugh into Potter’s thigh. The thirteen-year-old boy in his head that still thinks it’s cool to slick back his hair and gossip to Crabbe and Goyle about Potter’s inept attempts to succeed at Potions is shrieking in horror, as is the pallid face of his father, and perhaps even Blaise in the sense that should Draco ever be found naked romping about with Harry Potter by Blaise’s eyes, he knows he’ll be cursed with boils for weeks. He focuses instead on his tongue and the delicious whimpers it seems to elicit from Potter’s lips, so delicious that he feels eternally sorry for anyone who never has the pleasure of hearing them for their own ears. Draco lets his hands hold down Potter’s twitching hips when he can feel the pleasure mounting and coiling in Potter’s bones, the sight of his heaving chest and sweat-dappled arms while Draco bobs his head and tickles his tongue over the underside of Potter’s length arousing enough to convince Draco that even if the bus jerks and crashes, he won’t cease his ministrations.
A hand worms its way into his blond hair, twisting the locks in its fingers while Draco continues his alternation of sucking and licking stripes up Potter’s erection, the taste engulfing his tongue failing to dampen his own erection but rather spurring it on, a fact that Draco will never admit vocally even under the harshest brews of Veritaserum. He wraps his lips around the head, suckling and letting the flat of his tongue swirl around the flesh. It’s unlike anything he’s ever tasted or put on his tongue before, and he’s incredibly astonished at how erotic he finds it when he’s not even on the receiving end of a warm, velvety heat engulfing his dick.
The hand in Draco’s hair begins tugging, and Potter manages to rasp out a breathless, “C’mere,” that Draco obliges with one last teasing suck and kiss to the side of Potter’s shaft before he’s bodily lugged up Potter’s torso just in time for another one of the bus’ hefty turns down a corner that nearly sends Draco rolling under all of the beds and colliding with the back of Ernie’s chair all the way in the front before Potter grabs hold of his wrist and reels him back in.
He’s about to peek out over the rows of beds and holler for Ernie to ease up on the steering wheel in the vain hopes that the man should take heed of his words when Potter busies himself with licking and biting on the sensitive skin behind Draco’s ear-a spot he had yet to discover was so sensitive to tongues-and pushing their mouths together. Their kiss doesn’t end until the bus skirts narrowly by a line of Muggle cars and their teeth clack together.
“Owfuck,” Draco hisses, Potter silencing him with another, softer kiss.
“Hips up,” Potter instructs him, and when Draco does so, he pushes his boxers down and away, leaving both of them frighteningly bare of clothes, and that’s when he first realizes that Harry Potter is staring at him while he’s naked.
It would be better, Draco thinks, if an entire horde of senior witches and wizards leaving their Saturday evening Exploding Snap game would board the bus and stare unashamedly at Draco’s nude form rather than have Potter, the very boy that was plotted to be killed in his very own house, staring at his quivering legs and throbbing dick and pale chest. His nerves are eased, however, when Potter murmurs directly on Draco’s lips a muffled compliment sounding something like so hot and lets his hand wind around his dick once more to resume the stroking it had begun earlier.
“No,” Draco says, batting Potter’s hand away. “Together.”
Potter nods after a moment, looping one arm around his neck and the other around both of their dicks, slender fingers pumping their lengths together. The feel of Potter’s erection, still slick, grinding against his own and creating friction heavenly enough to cause Draco to grab Potter’s face and demand he promise to stay in his bed for years to come if it means he’ll be gifted with brilliant handjobs from the Chosen One whenever he pleases, is enough to tempt Draco to cry out and inadvertently alert Ernie to whatever malarkey is occurring in the back of his bus.
“Join me, Draco. C’mon, touch me,” Potter pleads, eyes naked and earnest and free of any masks, the sight of such a startling green causing Draco to instantly reach between their legs and wrap his own dominant hand around their slick neighboring dicks rubbing together, fingers catching on the rhythm of Potter’s strokes swiftly.
Draco kisses him again, and god, he hopes that this thing that he and Harry have somehow created between them like fizz and magic and volcano eruptions all at once isn’t something that only thrives in the Knight Bus. The idea of the two of them squabbling over who gets to kick off the Quidditch game and necking on the couch like teenagers minus the duels and insults is overwhelming in a delightful way, a feeling so warm and fond Draco didn’t know Malfoys could even feel such a sensation.
He pulls up on Potter’s next down stroke, the feeling so hot and spicy in his throat that both of them cry out and Draco repeats himself, hands fumbling to counteract Potter’s equally feverish strokes. The bus jerks again and again, but this time its curves only seem to catch their fingers off guard, Draco’s thumb flitting over the base of Potter’s cock and Potter’s hand tightening into a firm squeeze on Draco’s erection when the bus slides left and right, the feeling of tumbling around with Harry on the floor of this grimy bus pushing him straight to the brink of unbridled pleasure.
Harry moans, kissing Draco once more with his tongue brushing surely against Draco’s as he cries out, twice in a row, and then his entire body shudders under Draco’s and his hand momentarily jerks to a stop before he opens his eyes, brighter than before, and picks up his pace until Draco is a babbling mess on top of him, rutting into his and Potter’s hands, their combined efforts causing him to come three seconds later before he lands on Potter’s relaxed chest and pushes his nose under his ear, smelling the scent of sweat and sex, two odors he desperately hopes can be removed from the bus before the day ends. He feels Potter’s smile break out on top of his head, lazy and amused, thinking the exact same thing Draco is and wondering how the hell both of them thought doing this in a bus was a good idea.
This, Draco thinks blissfully, eyes slipping closed at the sound of Harry’s sated exhale as come cools in between their stomachs, this is what magic is.
“Accio clothes,” Potter whispers as quietly as he can as if he wasn’t letting out guttural moans thankfully quieted by the sound of screeching tire and burning rubber and honking cars a minute ago. A wad of boxers and shirts go flying into his hand, several garments skidding over the floor. Draco deftly catches his own pants, the alarming hue of purple catching his eyes, before they go soaring into Potter’s grip.
“Ernie won’t hear you,” Draco drawls, fitting his legs into his pant legs after slipping his boxers back on.
“Do you really want to test that?”
Draco shrugs, petting the strands of his hair fisted into disarray back into position and shrugging his shirt on. Potter struggles to fit his own arms in the sleeves of his jacket and the sight is so endearing that instead of scoffing and pointing, as Draco does feel compelled to do, he leans in for another kiss that misses his lips and goes three inches up on his eyebrow as the bus turns once more. Draco grumbles.
“Going for my mouth?” Potter asks, chuckling, fingers brushing over where Draco’s lips landed above his eyelid.
“Shut up, Scarhead.”
“So as much as I like the Knight Bus,” Potter says, failing to indulge in Draco’s command. “How about we take this elsewhere? Maybe somewhere that isn’t moving?”
Potter’s fingers push closer to Draco’s on the floor, their hands side-by-side on the ground and little fingers pressed together in a gentle facsimile of hand holding that both of them won’t feel the need to mock or pull away from, an action that could easily be written off as an accidental invasion of personal space. Draco knocks his hand against Potter’s, bumping shoulders, and realizes that Potter’s negating his very fears, that this whole thing is Knight-Bus-exclusive and won’t see the light of day for reasons that Draco can understand all too well-Weasley and Granger would have a panic attack, Draco’s father would have a heart attack, the Daily Prophet would be killing wizards to get the full scoop on their forbidden Shakespearean romance.
“Your friends will disown you,” Draco tells him bluntly.
“They’ll think I’m going around the twist,” Potter retorts, taking it all in stride, and Draco is about to nod and tease him further with some good-natured Slytherin snark when the Knight Bus screeches to another unsuspected stop and both of them barrel into the bed.
Draco watches as Potter lets out a litany of curses and rubs at a blooming, sensitive bruise on the back of his head, messy mop of hair doing little to cushion the blow, and Draco laughs at the sight of graceful Harry Potter attempting to mend a bruise on the back of his head with his wand.
Who is he bloody kidding? He loves his job.
A/N: I finally got around to making my Draco/Harry rec list. Naturally, it took forever and a half, but being able to reread the masterpieces that entertained me in the good ol' days was definitely worth it.
Anyone who wants to see the epic Harry/Draco Lego photography my lovely comrade Sarah and I created in tribute of this fanfiction, come take a look.