#100 moths trying to write hamlet

[americanmoths]

heist me daddy

“Did you know dragons have an incredibly advanced sense of smell?” Harry’s 4:30 patient says when he arrives at St. Mungo’s at 4:53. The man—Memphis Geraldo, age 54, bald, glasses, salt-and-pepper beard—grabs a pink lollipop out of the plastic container on Harry’s desk and sticks it in his mouth. Which is odd, because his chart says he has diabetes.

“They can remember a smell for ages. Though maybe you knew that, you rode a dragon once.” Geraldo grins with the left side of his mouth. “Rumor has it you’ve ridden multiple dragons.”

“Your chart … doesn’t make any sense.”

When he looks up, Malfoy’s there, Geraldo’s grin stretched across his face.

“HEE—” Malfoy shoves the lollipop he was sucking on into Harry’s mouth. Harry’s clipboard clatters to the floor; both of his hands suddenly pulled behind his back with an incarcerous before he can reach for his wand.

“I’ve got my pitch down to two minutes; I need you to keep a lid on things until then. I am here on business. I am making you a business proposition. Yes, I am here asking for your help. I have spent the last few months figuring out the best way to break into Gringotts. I’ve done the recon; I’ve mapped the building; and I’ve put together a team. All in the name of breaking in and wiping one vault clean. Huge vault, tons of galleons, we’ll all be filthy rich. Me, Pansy, Blaise, Theo, Seamus for explosions, Luna for luck. The only thing I’m missing, is a way out. And then, what luck, Luna reminded me that you’ve already broken out of Gringotts once, and that Gringotts had the brilliant idea to track down that dragon you rode and lock her back up. And that she most definitely remembers your smell and will most definitely let you ride her again as last time it led her to freedom.” Malfoy pulls the lollipop out of Harry’s mouth. “Do you understand, Potter? I’m asking you to be my getaway driver.”

“What sorry sod are you planning on stealing everything from—”

“That’s the kicker, really.” Malfoy’s grin is lethal this time. “My father.”

--

for @drarrymicrofic prompt: pink | on ao3

[americanmoths]

the devil went down to hogsmeade

When did Draco get an instrument like that?

The blonde works one hand up and down and up and down and up and down its spine with a washcloth filled with polish until light catches on the shiny wood and bounces gold slivers against the walls of the Three Broomsticks. Draco turns the violin to him and starts tuning the A string, skilled fingers pulling the note tighter and tighter. 

Harry’s never wanted anything so badly. 

“The wood’s from a sacred fir tree. The bow’s unicorn hair. My great-great-great-great grandfather made it by hand, working every day for almost four-and-a-half years,” Draco says when he catches Harry staring. 

“Amazing.” 

When Harry stops mapping the violin’s smooth surface and finally looks up, Draco’s smiling with the unchecked glee of someone who has leverage and knows it. A devil in a three-piece suit. 

“Are you playing tonight, Potter? Do you play?” 

Harry opens a green case covered in stickers and pulls out his hand-me-down Yamaha. “I’m the best, actually.” 

Draco’s supposed to challenge his claim, but he just laughs once, sharp like the first note in an overture, like he’s warning Harry how much the songs to come will dazzle and destroy him. 

“Then let’s say we make this interesting. I’ll play, and then you play, and if the crowd likes your serenade better, then you get my violin.” 

“And if you win? What do you get?”

Draco’s eyes travel up and down Harry’s body, pulling it tighter and tighter until Harry’s attuned to Draco’s desire. 

“Deal,” Harry says, his violin already on his shoulder. He slices back and forth across the strings with practiced ease. 

--

on ao3 | @drarrymicrofic prompt: serenade

[americanmoths]

shut up and marry me

tw: child abuse (specifically: black eye, broken arm, both received offscreen) | on ao3 | for @drarrymicrofic prompt: wedding

--

The knock on the the window is loud and sudden, like Harry’s surprise when he looks out and sees Draco Malfoy on a broom outside Privet Drive.

“Shh—” Harry starts

“Don’t say anything about my eye.”

“I was going to tell you to be quiet. My aunt and uncle are light sleepers.” But now Harry can’t help but look at Draco’s eye, the blue-black stamp of violence surrounding it. Draco swallows. Harry swallows. The night is quiet, an invitation for something meaningful and transformative that Harry declines by breaking the silence. “And I was going to ask what the hell you’re doing here.”

“Right. So. I don’t want to live with my father anymore. I can’t live with him anymore. But he’s very powerful, and he knows lots of people and whole classes of spells I can’t tell you about. When I say there’s nowhere I could go he couldn’t find me, I mean it.” Draco’s matter-of-fact about the information, detached, the same tone of voice he used a few months prior when Harry found him in the Room of Requirement trying to reset his wrist after Lucius learned about Buckbeak’s escape. “But—last night I heard my mother talking to Snape about you. Did you know there’s a protective spell on you? Your mother died to save you, and it protects anywhere you and your family live. And I thought. If I were your family, the spell could protect me. And if we were living together, and I were your family, you would still be living with family, so the parameters of the spell would be satisfied and you wouldn’t have to live here anymore. Which I thought you would like.”

Harry remembers holding Draco’s arm while the bone righted itself, telling him about all the things Dumbledore never wanted to know about the Dursleys so Draco wouldn't feel so alone in his pain. Yes, he would like.

“But you’re not my family.”

“I’m asking you to marry me!”

“Shhhhh.”

“Legal family, blood family, the spell can’t tell the difference.” Draco leans forward, his wand between them now, a whispered marriage spell alight at the tip. “Come on, Potter, don’t you want a chance at freedom?”

“I do.”

[americanmoths]

just right

for @drarrymicrofic prompt: abrupt | lil t4t for u | cw: dysphoria | on ao3

--

At the first click, the click of the door closing, he bolts from the top bunk to the foot of Draco’s bed.

A second click, this one a lock opening. All these trunks have the same security measures, and he’s already done this to the other two trunks—Ron’s and Zacharias Smith’s—in the boys eighth year dorm.

A third click, the latch gives way, and Draco’s trunk swings open. It’s like he’s stolen the sorcerer’s stone all over again; he feels young and giddy with the knowledge his whole life is about to change in some large, incomprehensible way.

He holds up Draco’s pants. Ron’s were too long, Zacharias’s too short, but Draco’s, well—he steps out of his skirt and into the black slacks. The length’s perfect. Then, quick, he slips out of his cardigan and into Draco’s shoes and white dress shirt and tie.

His heart races. He walks to the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. He closes his eyes. He defeated Voldemort; why can’t he just look at himself?

A fourth click.

“Fancy yourself a Slytherin?”

His brain whirls through a million iterations of it’s not what it looks like, trying to come up with something that doesn’t sound like I’m not what I look like.

“You’re not supposed to be back yet,” he lands on.

“Yes, and I forgot my tie. What ever would I have done if you hadn’t found it for me?” His mouth must be open, because Draco continues, “Close your mouth, Potter. Do you honestly think I’m going to tell? Let me guess: you snuck into our room somehow, probably earlier when the Weasel and Smithereens were playing chess and being too loud for anyone to think, let alone notice an intruder, and then you hid in the top bunk until all of us left for breakfast.”

Draco looks him up and down and back up again, his eyes stopping at the tie on his chest. Hopefully at the tie. And not at his chest.

“I tried something similar, when I first suspected, but I forgot Blaise is batshit about clothes. He has this special trunk that doesn’t have a lock, it just has this weird alarm spell I couldn’t ever figure out. So I ended up trying on Goyle’s clothes, which were enormous on me. It was all wrong, but also it was—enough to know.”

His gaze slides over to the mirror. The reflection is almost right, it’s so close, it’s all wrong, it’s too lumpy, it's—

“Do you know the spell?" Draco asks, his wand already out. “Pecticus.”

—flat. He stares at the tie lying flat on his flat chest. Breathes with his flat chest, and it might as well be the first breathe he’s ever taken.

Suddenly, there he is in the mirror. Exactly where he’s always been.

“What should I call you?”

“Harry,” slips out of his mouth embarrassingly quickly. It’s not as though he’s been waiting for someone to ask.

“Harry,” Draco says. Just right.

[americanmoths]

burn a phrase

“Bullet for your thoughts?” Harry asks Ron, who immediately stops unconsciously staring at Harry and starts pointedly staring at Harry. Fuck. Shit. Fucking fuck shit fuck. He’s given himself away.

“You’re sleeping with Malfoy.”

“I’m not sleeping with Malfoy.”

“Yes you are. That’s a thing Malfoy says. Bullet for your thoughts is a thing I heard Malfoy say when Pansy and Ginny brought him to pub night that one time. I only remember ‘cause it’s a kinda unsettling phase. You can’t be sleeping with Malfoy. Malfoy —” Is 5'6 inches of tight muscles usually pressed into nicely tailored, bizarrely patterned shirts? Prone to twisting innocent expressions violent and saying things like shooting a blank when he means drawing a blank? Maybe the most interesting person Harry’s ever met? “Burned down the ministry.” 

Also that. Draco did do that. Harry shrugs. “Then it’s a good thing I’m not sleeping with him.” 

Ron gives a skeptical puff of air and drums his fingers against the table. “Mate, if you know where he is —“

“I don’t know where he is.” The first true thing he’s said to Ron all evening. He remembers Draco’s crooked mouth saying, Absence makes the heart grow feral. You’ll just have to put up with missing me for a few years, for Teddy’s sake. He can’t have a normal life while he’s on the Werewolf registry so obviously I have to get rid of the Werewolf Registry. 

“Ok. I won’t make you talk about it if you don’t want to,” Ron says. “‘Course if you did want to talk about it, I’d listen. I can’t imagine sleeping with a wanted criminal’s exactly a party. You wouldn’t need to worry, I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“You’re a good friend, Ron. You’re a small fire in my heart.” 

“Errrrr …”

“It means I love you.” At least it did when Draco said it to him the last time they spoke. Six months ago now. Ron’s right, loving a wanted criminal is hard. He winds up second-guessing things a lot. Then, something like this: Harry’s mouth stretched around Draco’s phrase. A reminder that his lover is here still, in Harry’s vocabulary and his very feral heart. 

--

for @drarrymicrofic prompt: bullet | on ao3

[americanmoths]

just like a tattoo

Lillies. Roses. Daffodils.

Draco runs his finger over the garden etched on Harry’s forearm. “Whenever the need for whiskey got strong enough, I cut it with a different type of pain. It’s how I’ve stayed sober a year.”

He ignores the way Harry shivers at his touch; the way he shivers at Harry shivering at his touch. Slips a finger under Harry’s rolled-up plaid shirt and peers beneath it. Color gives way to black lines and dots. Ursa Major. Hercules. Orion.

“It’s not just flowers.”

“No. Flowers are for the alcohol cravings. Stars are for —” Harry lets out a deep breath. “Bloody bond is impossible. Stars are for whenever I felt the tug toward you.”

He pulls his collar down a little. Dozens of twinkling stars, and the moon. Draco would give anything to undo the rest of the buttons and see the night sky.

It’s just the bond, he thinks. “The bond broke last June,” he says.

Harry shrugs and offers Draco his other arm. Gemini, angry and red, still covered in plastic. Fresh.

--

for @drarrymicrofic prompt: fresh | on ao3

[americanmoths]

101 limited-edition Harry Potter dolls walk into Draco’s life

The moment Ron shows him the press release announcing the “Battle of Hogwarts 10th Anniversary Collector’s Edition” doll set is the moment Harry realizes he probably shouldn’t go home today.

“Apparently, they can make ‘em cause they’re only making like 100 of each of us, so they’re not in violation of all that bloody paperwork we had to do after the war. I saw mine and Hermione’s this morning. They made her taller, which I think she’ll like. Couldn’t find any of yours though.”

He won’t be able to. Harry’s positive Draco’s bought them all.

Against his better judgement, he does end up going home. There’s a doll in their mailbox, sitting on a letter from Andromeda and Teddy. Dolls lining the walkway leading to the cottage. Dolls stuffed into each of the shoes beside their front door, on every stair, in each of the chairs in the dining room. When he looks up, there are at least five stuck to the ceiling.  

He picks one up. Ruffly black hair, an ill-fitting Hogwarts uniform, eyes a little too wide and an orange lighting scar. Orange. He hates the plastic fucker.

Draco’s sitting beside one in the living room, drinking a glass of wine. He’s given Doll Harry a glass of wine too, because of course he has.

“I could’ve sworn you were already home,” Draco says when he sees Harry. “I thought I saw you upstairs. Or was it on the porch? Was that not you in the dining room? I didn’t realize you’d changed your—” Then, Harry is straddling his lap, kissing him. Recognizing this for what it is: an attempt to make sure Harry never actually has to deal with any of the toys made of the worst day of his life. For what it’s always been: Draco’s bizarre, backdoor approach to love.

--

for @drarrymicrofic prompt: what if he wants ken not barbie

[americanmoths]

paint another lil piece of my heart now, bby

The first piece of himself Draco gives Harry is a painting of a fire.

The second is a painting of a fire.

The third too.

Turns out, Draco has painted dozens of pictures of fires.

“This one was going to be a pansy. This one was going to be my mother.” Draco points one trembling hand at acrylic flames. “But they always end up like this. I guess everything inside me just … burnt up.”

Harry gifts Draco every piece of himself he can manage. He’s been waiting so long to give them away. His story about the man at the post office who was positive Harry was his old barber. The way he takes his tea. Molly’s apple pie recipe. How stressed he gets when Ron and Hermione argue. How he can’t be in small rooms because of the whole cupboard under the stairs thing. The whole cupboard under the stairs thing, told in one long confession with minimal eye contact.

The next day, Draco gives him a painting of rolling green hills; a soothing countryside under an expansive blue sky. “It’s Wiltshire. My childhood home. I wanted you to have something spacious, something open, for when you’re feeling claustrophobic. And all of a sudden … it came back to me.”

--

found this in the back of an old notebook the other day. it was definitely written for a @drarrymicrofic prompt though at this point i can't remember which one. is it cheating if i say it was for new beginnings? because idk it feels p new beginning to me :)

on ao3

[americanmoths]

the hell out of dodge

Draco arrives to the International Portkey Office with a mystery novel in one hand and a magically-enhanced suitcase containing absolutely everything he owns in the other.

Well, not quite everything he owns. He left both his umbrella and his favorite cookbook (Accio Asiago Cheese), both presents from Harry. Two of the three sweaters Harry forgot at his place too.

Don’t think about Harry.

“France,” Draco tells the portkey officer when they ask for his destination. “Paris, to be precise. I’m moving in with my boyfriend.”

The word boyfriend sticks to his tongue. He hasn’t seen Dominic in almost six months, and then the owl. My roommate isn’t renewing his lease. Might you be interested in taking his place?

Harry hadn’t been impressed. “It’s so clinical. Where’s the romance? He lives in Paris. Shouldn’t he know about romance? You deserve someone who wants to live with you because he wants you, not just because he doesn’t want to loose his apartment. Someone who will fight for you, who will chase you if you ever try to leave because life without you is … hard to imagine.”

Don’t think about Harry. Don’t think about his pretty words.

“Passport, please,” the stewardess says when Draco gets to the front of the departure line.

He’s digging through the contents of his bag when he hears the footsteps.

“Malfoy! Don’t go!”

Draco turns around. “Ron?”

The redhead is braced against a wall. “Do you have any water? I just ran all the way here from — huff — you know, from the front. And let me tell you I am not in the same shape I was when we were in school. Whoo. Seriously, anybody got any water? I’m kind of a war hero, if that persuades you one way or the other.”

A nearby passenger hands him a water bottle.

“What are you doing here, Weasley?”

Ron downs half the bottle’s contents, swallows. “Right. I’m here to tell you not to take that portkey. Dominic’s not a good bloke, doesn’t appreciate you at all.”

“I haven’t talked to you in almost a year, and I certainly never mentioned my boyfriend to you.”

“Believe me, I don’t want to have an opinion about your boyfriend, but I have to because you’re all Harry talks about.

Oh. “Really?”

“Yes, really! And you can’t take that portkey because— because— it’ll wreck him. You're his whole world.”

“Well. If Potter really wanted me to stay, he could’ve come here himself.”

“I love him, but he’s an oblivious idiot. He’d let you go because it’s noble or something, and you’ll leave because you think it means he doesn’t care when really it all it means is … you’re both idiots! You’re perfect for one another!”

Ron gestures broadly and splashes water on the stewardess.

“Your passport, Mr. Malfoy,” she says. “Are you staying or going?”

Draco swallows.

“You have to stay! I won’t hear the end of it if you go. Here!”

Ron hands him a fistful of droopy pink tulips Draco’s pretty sure he saw in a vase at the entrance to the Portkey Office. “These are your favorite flowers, right? Pink tulips. Harry said they were your favorite flowers. Oh my god Malfoy, I know so much about you.”

It’s the fact Harry remembered the flowers Draco likes. That he cared enough to tell Ron.

Draco’s a goner.

Or not a goner, actually. Draco’s staying right here, with this ridiculous redhead and his even more ridiculous best friend.

--

for @drarrymicrofic prompt: discord by The Living Tombstone | inspired by a convo in the microfic discord and the lyric "whatever did we do to make you take our world away?" | idea by @calypsotempete | on ao3

[americanmoths]

The Hogwarts Class of 1998 Second Annual Hundred-Year Reunion

tw: implied offscreen unspecified character death(s), PTSD | @drarrymicrofic prompt: dare | on ao3

--

It’s like someone took a polaroid of the six of them at their last hundred year reunion, so little has changed. Ron, Luna, Neville, Harry, Draco, Pansy, around the same table under the same “Hogwarts Class of 1998” banner in a castle that never ages. Like someone took a picture and then stuffed it into their back pocket: the six of them are wrinklier now, balder (Ron), grayer (everyone else). There’s less people too, but don’t think about that.

“Who wants to play Truth or Dare?” Pansy asks. “This is probably our last opportunity, on account of us getting old and keeling over.”

They said the same thing at the last hundred year reunion, ten or so years ago. These events feel like nesting dolls sometimes: this moment sits in a similar moment from the last reunion and that moment in one from the reunion before that, on and on back to Hogwarts, when Harry was first playing Truth or Dare with Slytherins because they had just survived a war, and who the hell wanted to think about war? And the Slytherins were distracting, but more importantly, they were hot, but more importantly, they were distracting. Draco looked incredible eighth year. Draco looked liked Harry’s improbably still-beating heart.

Draco still looks like Harry’s improbably still-beating heart, wearing a shirt the color of Harry’s eyes and gazing at Harry rather pointedly through his glasses. Thump-thump-thump.

Harry swallows and tries to focus on the conversation at hand.

“Last time we played Truth or Dare it ended up with a threesome and I’m not really up for that today,” Luna says.

“Wha? With who?”

“Do the math, Weasley. It wasn’t you, now was it? And Harry and me were together then, and Harry can only handle one blonde so that leaves…” Draco points to Neville, who blushes, then Luna, who smiles, then Pansy, who roles their eyes.

“No! And errr, I don’t know about your logic, mate, there were errrr, more people then, errr I mean Neville was…”

“No, Draco’s on the galleons, it was us three, in the Room of Requirement, with a strap on,” Pansy says.

“Mate!”

“Grief does odd things to you,” Neville says. Ron’s expression goes soft.

Harry had said something similar eighth year, when Ron wanted to know why Draco Malfoy had left their dorm room wearing Harry’s quidditch jersey and absolutely nothing else. “I don’t know, I think the war did something weird to me. Sometimes I just feel like I’m not here, like I’m still there … At least, when we’re, ah, fucking (“Mate!”), I know where I am.”

“Where are you, Potter?” Draco asks. Glasses, green shirt, white hair. The present. Harry shrugs, and something that looks like either annoyance or concern flashes behind Draco’s eyes. He turns to the group. “I don’t want to play Truth or Dare. I have no interest in learning anything more about any of you. Let’s play spin the bottle.”

Eighth year, Draco proposes the same game, grabs Ron’s butterbeer (“Malfoy!”), dumps its contents out, and spins.

Around and around, around and around. Draco says they circle each other, or that their relationship is circular, Harry can’t ever remember which. But he remembers this feeling: every cell in his body leaning forward and hoping the bottle stops on him. Then his memory fuzzes, and then they're in Draco's bedroom, and Draco is saying between kisses, “I’ve been wanting to do this all fucking year. I planned it. I know a spell. I made the bottle land on you.”

In the present, Draco grabs Ron’s butterbeer (“Draco!”), dumps its contents out, and spins.

In his memory, Harry asks Draco to teach him the bottle-stopping spell, and Draco curses him out in at least two languages. It had been Harry’s fault, really; he had asked the question moments after telling Draco that no, he didn’t want to be real boyfriends. He didn’t know then that if you pull the rug out from under Draco, he leans on cruelty to keep from falling over.

Now he knows all of Draco’s worst qualities, his bad habits, the ugly Pureblood heirlooms he insists on keeping. Never more than ten years together, never more than ten years apart. (Unless you count the second time they were married, which was technically 11 years, but also they were separated for a few months in the middle.) Harry needs Draco to keep him present; Harry needs Draco to stop looking at him so closely.

Draco’s gaze is pointed, and definitely concerned, as he stares at Harry across the table. Or maybe Harry’s just remembering when he told Draco about the memory lapses, how hard it is for him to focus sometimes.

The bottle spins.

Harry likes their pattern: the getting together, the being together, (he could do without the falling apart), the getting rid of all of Draco's awful antique vases. It’s how it is, and he gets to have Draco in his life sometimes, and he gets to do what he wants with the curtains other times, so it’s not so bad.

Except there are less people here than there used to be (Don’t Think About That), and Harry’s gone to too many funerals alone. All those memories; it’s so easy to get lost. The older he gets, the harder it gets to avoid slipping through the trap door at the bottom of his mind that leads all the way back to “Kill the Spare,” and his mother screaming, and …

“Potter! Pay attention, it landed on you.” Draco leans across the table and bunches one hand into his shirt, pulls their faces close together with a surprising amount of strength for someone his age and then kisses him, so soft, so tender, in this moment and every memory.

Harry stops spinning.

[americanmoths]

and many more

Harry Potter has a time loop on his finger. A piece of red yarn tied in a bow over the tan line where his wedding ring once was.

“Are you trying to make sure you don’t forget something?” Hermione asks, a mirror of an image she no longer remembers. She asked the same question on that first first Sunday in June.

On that first Sunday, Harry had abruptly stood up—“Fuck!”—the linen napkin in his lap flittering to the floor as he floo’d straight to Malfoy Manor and rang the doorbell twice, three times, four.

“Open up, Malfoy! I know you’re there.” Are they on good enough terms for him to add, “You have to be there; you’re on house arrest”? They’ve only been talking since March, when Narcissa owled him from her deathbed: Befriend My Son Or Else I Invoke The Life Debt.

“I don’t want to talk to you!” Malfoy says from behind the Manor’s large oak doors.

“Happy Birthday!”

“It’s 9 p.m. Barely even my birthday anymore.”

“Ohhhhh there’s still plenty of time to celebrate. Besides that’s not the point. The point is that I remembered. You said I wouldn’t, and I did.”

The door swings open, revealing Draco in a purple bathrobe and black pajama bottoms.

“Goodie for you, Potter.” The blonde rolls his eyes, but there’s a smile strung through his sentence. Cushioning his hard consonants, lifting up on Harry’s name. Harry understands what a balloon feels like, suddenly: filled with nothing, yet drifting higher still.

He recounts the story to Hermione on the 31st? 32nd? first Sunday in June. “Then the next day, it was his birthday again, and the day after that too . . . I think it’s the string. Luna gave it to me. I’ve got a gut feeling it’s the string.”

“Luna probably got it from work. It’s Unspeakable string, Harry. Let me—“ Hermione reaches for it; he pulls his hand back quick.

“It’s really fine. Better than fine, actually.” One June 5th, he made a lemon cake in Malfoy Manor alongside Draco’s running commentary. Another, they listened to the new Weird Sisters album, When the Hurly-Burly’s Done, on repeat in the Manor garden. Some June 5ths he shows up in the morning and spends the whole day with Draco; others he takes lunch with Luna and dinner with Hermione and doesn’t see Draco until 9 p.m. Draco’s always a knot of surprise and confusion when Harry arrives; now that Narcissa’s gone, Draco hadn’t expected anyone to remember his birthday. The slightest tug, and he unravels into a small, private smile.

It’s the best part of Harry’s day, every day.

"It's ... really good." How to explain to Hermione in a way that makes him sound not completely pathetic? “I always liked Sundays the best anyways. That’s why me and Ginny broke up, more or less. She wanted more; I wanted—well mostly, I wanted to wake up late and go for a walk and not do anything at all. That’s still all I want. Maybe someday I’ll want more, and when that happens, I’ll take the string off. But right now, all I do is wake up late and surprise my, errrrr, well, my favorite person over and over again. When he lets me, I get to celebrate with him too. What more could you really want out of a life?” He shrugs. “Besides, if I untie the string, nobody will tell Draco Happy Birthday, and I don’t know. I don’t really want to live in that timeline anyway.”

--

for @drarrymicrofic prompt: tie | on ao3

[americanmoths]

the DMV at the end of the rainbow

RED

“Do you think anybody has ever fallen in love at the DMV?” Harry nods at the Veela romance novel Draco’s reading — Red Hearts After Dark. The cover matches the blonde’s red sweatshirt, red pants, red socks and red trainers. A splash of color in the Department of Magical Vehicle’s gray waiting room.

Harry’s been waiting to get his flying motorcycle license renewed for … well, long enough that striking up a conversation with Draco Malfoy seems like a good idea.

“Nobody has ever had a single positive thought at the DMV let alone fallen in love,” Draco says.

“Sounds like a challenge then.”

Draco drops his book. He reaches down to pick it up, eyes narrowed and focused on Harry. “Are you flirting with me? What are you planning, Potter? Stop smiling. I’m an Unspeakable. I will figure out what is going on and I will put a stop to it—”

“Potter comma Harry,” the sole DMV employee calls. Perfect timing. Harry imagines Draco tossing and turning in his bed, trying to work through Harry’s plan. I bet his sheets are red. His bathrobe too. I bet he sleeps in red pajamas. I bet when he gets ready for bed he uses red toothpaste. I bet —

“Potter comma Harry,” the employee calls again.

ORANGE

Harry’s been at the DMV for 41 minutes when Draco walks in wearing an orange fringe jacket, orange jeans and orange cowboy boots. “Oh dear Merlin, you’re here again, Potter?”

“They misspelled the name on my license.” As Parry Hotter, not that Draco needs to know the specifics. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here on important Unspeakable business. Business I’m not allowed to speak of.”

“He keeps failing his driver’s test,” the DMV employee says.

“Steve!” Draco swears colorfully and in at least two languages, and Harry definitely Does Not find it endearing.

YELLOW

“Seems we need to renew the registration on the Ford,” Arthur reads off a yellow sheet of paper. “I’ll clear my schedule and go tomorrow afternoon.”

“I’ll go!” The beginnings of an idea start to take shape in Harry's brain.

GREEN

“I will do unspeakable things to you if you do something like this again.” Draco says. Harry’s wearing green glasses, a green hat and the green robes Luna made him buy so they could dress up as The Forbidden Forest for Halloween.

“We match,” Harry says. Draco’s in a green poncho and sage jeans. “Even though you’re not quite as committed as I am. Even my eyes are green.”

“This isn’t some flight of fancy, Potter. It’s important. How dare you.”

Draco grabs his green tote bag and marches out of the office. Harry stares at gray walls and tries not to think about eyes the same color.

BLUE

“I’m, ah, sorry. I didn’t realize the monochromatic thing was important to you. Maybe you should explain it to me?”

Draco crosses one blue ankle over the other. Studies him.

“When I was a kid, I had a blind chameleon. I could always find him. He’d be green on my desk; brown in the grass. Except. He was also eating the grass, and I didn’t realize for almost a month because I was too focused on how he was always the wrong color. I want people to notice what I want them to notice and not—”

He yanks the blue sleeve of his left arm up. What’s beneath is splotchy, tacky, multicolored. Harry traces the dark mark with his middle finger, travels up Draco’s arm, over his collarbone, neck, chin, lips. He holds the other boy’s face and leans forward, finally! —

The lights go off.

“DMV’s closed,” Steve says. “Both of you need to leave. Especially you, Parry comma Hotter. You didn’t even have an appointment today.”

Draco stares at Harry, almost tender. “Maybe I could drive you to my place then? I passed my test yesterday.”

PURPLE

Draco’s bedsheets are purple. At the end of the rainbow, Harry kisses him gold.

--

for @drarrymicrofic prompt: wait | on ao3

[americanmoths]

Picture Draco Malfoy as Wizarding Ben Franklin, with The Sorcerer’s Stone tied to a key tied to a kite

Hermione has never regretted teaching Draco to pick locks more than when he switches the lights on in her bedroom at 3 a.m. on the only day-off she’s had in months.

“I figured it out, and you will not believe. You will not believe. It’s a key.” Draco says. “An actual key.”

Had she not seen Draco rant his way to multiple epiphanies, she would tell him to get the fuck out of her room. But she was there when he figured out the sorcerer’s stone drained all the magic from the world, and she was there when he discovered that electrical currents have the same atomic structure as magic, so — “What’s a key, Draco? What are you talking about?”

“I should’ve figured it out ages ago. It was literally on the cover of that physics textbook you gave me. I couldn’t sleep, so I was reading it again, and when I finished, I still couldn’t sleep, so I was going to read it again again, but I didn’t have to because it was right there on the cover. You’ve seen it. The bald guy with the beard flying a kite with a key on it. You’ve seen it.”

“Yes?”

“That’s our answer. That’s how we jumpstart magic. Kite. Key.” He mimics an explosion with one hand. “Lightning.”

—

Yes, it is odd Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger are friends; thank you for asking.

Sometimes Hermione will remember exactly how odd; she’ll look at Draco and see all the ways they’re antonyms instead of their decade-old friendship sparkling underneath.

Their Hogwarts class had been small. Her, Draco, Neville Longbottom, Ron Weasley, and that’s it. Doesn’t that mean something? Did you hear that there were more squibs born in the 90s than any decade prior? The youngest Greenglass girl has no magical ability whatsoever. What the fuck does that mean? The Parkinson child, too.

The four of them hadn’t worried about it. Too many other things going on. A teacher with a lisp and a lumpy head; a troll attack that resulted in Draco and Hermione’s unlikely friendship; an end-of year feast where Neville and Ron won last-minute bonus points for being brave and getting Quirrell fired.

Hermione remembers the banners changing from Slytherin green to Gryffindor gold; standing on a chair and cheering, lifting her fist in the air, and then — darkness.

The lights at Hogwarts would never come back on. Magic, though they hadn’t realized it at the time, had run out.

—

A few nights after Draco's epiphany, Hermione wakes to thunder. A storm that jostles their house and sends her alarm clock tumbling to the floor, green digits stuck flashing 11:11 over and over again. I wish Draco was reasonable, she thinks, even as she spies him atop the hill in their garden, trying to control a kite with a red stone and a key tied to it.

“COME ON,” Draco shouts at the sky. “HIT ME! I CAN TAKE IT! I’VE TAKEN EVERYTHING ELSE YOU’VE THROWN AT ME. YOU TOOK MY PARENTS. YOU TOOK MY FRIENDS. AND NOW IM OFFERING YOU A FREE SHOT AND WHERE ARE YOU—”

Crack!

A white flash of lightning zizzles down the kite string.

“Draco!” She says and runs into the storm.

There’s a large burnt spot where lightning met Earth. Draco’s on one side of it, the charred kite bobbing up and down on his chest. He's breathing, Thank Merlin.

A man with a lightning bolt scar bisecting his face yawns and stretches in the center of the circle, one hand grasped around the key.

“How long was I asleep for?” The man asks. He squints at Hermione. “Do I know you? Sorry it’s hard to tell from here; my eyesights never been good and it's dark. Let me just—” He points the key in the air the way they used to point wands, when they still used those. “Lumos.”

The end of the key lights up. Almost like magic.

--

for @drarrymicrofic prompt: sleepy | on ao3

[americanmoths]

The Department of Perfect Timing

for @drarrymicrofic prompt: adoption | tw: mentions of child abuse | nsfw: mentions of blow jobs | ao3 link

--

Potter has a habit of showing up in Draco’s life at the absolute worst possible moments, except for that one time when he pulled Draco from the Fiendfyre or that other time when he arrived late to Luna’s karaoke birthday party and Draco was already unbutton-all-of-the-buttons-on-his-shirt drunk and they dueted You’re the One-Eyed Newt for Me and then Potter blew him in the bathroom. Don’t tell anyone, but Draco wanks to that memory almost daily.

But Potter turning up frenetic and wet to the Department of Magical Family Matters and Nonmagical Emotional Affairs at the very tail-end of Draco’s first day? Awful timing. Draco’s spent eight endless hours listening to people who’ve never bet on familial love and lost discuss the bullshit legal definition of family, and the robe Pansy loaned him fits all wrong, and there’s a hole in his shoe. He’s tired, and now Potter is here, dripping rainwater all over the paperwork Draco just finished organizing.

“I want to adopt a child. Today, if possible.” Awful timing. When Draco’s in charge of the department, he’ll cut all sorts of corners for Potter just to show him he can. Also, he’ll color-code the filing system and send lots of howlers that preach angry sermons about non-traditional family units. But Draco’s only a secretary at the moment, only here because Theo Nott hates owing Draco a life debt more than he hates Draco. Which means, realistically, there’s not much Draco can do other than his bullshit job.

“Are you married?”

Potter sputters. “What? No.”

“Don’t be so —“ Draco doesn’t exactly know what he’s trying to say so he just gestures generally to the other man. “It’s just a segue so I can tell you that you can’t do anything in this department if you’re not married. Thou shalt not adopt a crup if thee be single. I’m only kidding a little bit. The phrasing’s a joke, but that’s a real law.”

“Does that change if he’s muggleborn? He only just got his Hogwarts letter.”

Draco didn’t know Potter was friendly with any muggle children, but also it doesn’t matter. “It doesn’t matter. If you’re married, you can do whatever you want. If you’re not, you can’t. It’s a ridiculous antiquated law that reduces complicated affairs to a fucking yes or no question.”

“Is there. Any way around that?” Potter’s eyes are closed; each word deliberate, pleading, fierce, painful. A lion politely warning you it will kill you if you don’t remove the thorn from its paw now.

“The legislation is uncharacteristically clear. Only couples shall be permitted the joy and challenge of a child. That’s a direct quote. Isn’t it horrible? Of course, you could always pretend. Get married, adopt, wait a nonsuspicious amount of time, divorce, celebrate a triumphant return to bachelorhood by retaining legal custody.”

“All of my friends are married. Except for Luna and she’s … preoccupied these days.” With muggle hallucinogens, Pansy and walking around her apartment naked, none of which are especially appropriate for a child. “Malfoy, please. Can you pull some strings? It’s my cousin’s kid. They haven’t been feeding him.”

Don’t tell anyone, but it’s the please that does it.

“I’ll marry you.”

“What.” Somehow, even the water Potter splashes on Draco’s desk is incredulous.

“I can’t change the law, but I do work here. I can streamline the process. We can get married in the morning, file the paperwork after and pick up the child by tomorrow evening.”

He casts a drying charm so he has something to do other than feel disgustingly exposed while he waits for Potter’s answer.

“Why would you offer to do something like that?”

Because there’s a child in a home he doesn’t fit in. Because you called yourself untethered and then blew me in a bathroom. Because you said please, Draco thinks, and then tries hard not to think and says, “I need somewhere to stay. I’ll help you with this if you get me off of Luna’s couch.”

“This had better not be a joke.”

“Merlin, of course not. A child’s life is at stake.”

The hard line of Potter’s mouth softens just a little bit. “Do you have any experience with kids?”

“I took care of Teddy for a month while I was staying with Andromeda.”

He was great at it too, even if Teddy kept on asking him why he cried so much and Draco had never figured out a polite way to say that he kept seeing flashes of his mother in Andromeda’s face.

Potter nods. “Alright. Just until we get him out of my cousin’s house. Errr … thanks. This is … good of you.”

“When can I move into your place?” Draco asks. Now that it’s happening, he wants it to have already happened. He wants to go to the zoo with Potter and the kid, wants late night talks after the kid has gone to sleep. Hopefully, the boy’s named after a constellation, though actually Draco’s been burnt off the Black family tapestry already, so he doesn’t have any obligation to have celestial-themed offspring anymore. He’s always liked the name Micah, maybe the kid will too? The name change process is considerably less complicated than the adoption process. You can basically rename yourself anything as long as it has less than six Z’s.

Potter shrugs, smiles sheepishly. “Is now a good time?”

Draco only has 8 galleons, two friends and a job he hates. There’s a hole in his shoe, and a storm outside. It’s the worst time, but maybe the best time, actually?

[americanmoths]

paper hearts

“You can’t love me. I don’t have a heart. I just have a lot of wet paper where a heart should be,” Draco says 6 minutes into their parent-teacher conference, in response to what the principal of the school Harry teaches Wizarding Kindergarten at would consider “unprofessional communication with the father of a student.” Harry considers it telling the bloke he’s been seeing for four months I love you for the first time.

“So you don’t love me back then?” Harry asks. “Sorry, I, ah, didn’t quite understand what you said.”

“Of course I love you back. That’s not the problem. The problem is that you shouldn’t love me in the first place. I’m all wrong on the inside. Don’t make me say it. I’m fragile, and falling apart, and soaked through with I don’t know what, but it’s heavy. You can’t love me.”

“I do though. All of that’s bullshit, but even if it weren’t, even if you are filled with wet paper, that’d be ok.” Harry gestures to his arts-and-crafts corner; the DIY globe and work-in-progress unicorn head. “I like papier-mâché.”

--

for @drarrymicrofic prompt: paper | on ao3

[americanmoths]

two boys one tent

Do you know how long it took us to domesticate wolves?

Harry decides, in the moment he kills Voldemort, that actually he’s not all that interested in rejoining a society that needs a teenager to exorcise its demons. He’s been living in a tent for six months and that’s been going well, more or less, so he chucks the elder wand off a bridge and goes back to camping. He becomes a hermit, a shade, a man who smells badly and gets twigs caught in his bushy beard.

That’s the first thing Draco notes when he finds him on the outskirts of a mountain in Bulgaria. “You have a bird’s nest on your face. I’m not surprised.”

Draco writes something down in a small leather book. “I’ve been looking for you for ages. I was hoping I could interview you.”

Harry picks a bug out of his hair and eats it. A woman in … somewhere else taught him about edible bugs and now he rarely goes into town for food. He’s out of practice talking to people, so he says nothing and hopes Draco will just leave.

“I know we’re not friends, but I did save your life that one time, and it’s only an interview. Look. I want to be a journalist, but no respectable outlet will give me the time of day because … I’m sure you can guess why. My career’s on the line here, and really my whole life, because writings the only skill I have. Stop with the silent treatment Potter, it makes you seem holy in a weird way. Did you know there are cults that follow you now? The war made people lose their shit. Would you join a cult? I always thought I wouldn’t, but then I kind of did, so now I spend my nights lying awake thinking about what other cults I might join since I joined that one. I can’t say there’s zero possibility I wouldn’t join a cult that used you as a figurehead.”

“SHUT UP.”

Draco goes quiet. “He speaks.”

Harry flicks him off and moves the next day. Draco follows, asks questions about where he’s going and how he can help pitch the tent and no questions that seem remotely like journalism.

Then, spring. Harry gets sick. Draco takes care of him. Heavy rain. A tree crushes part of the tent, fucks up the extension charm and forces them closer together. Summer: humidity, sweat, and — finally! — fucking. Time turns to putty under the weight of bare bodies and long nights.

Harry speaks full sentences again, then paragraphs, then suddenly he’s telling Draco about the war, starting with, “I really fucking hate Voldemort,” and ending with, “I think I miss my friends.”

Draco doesn’t write any of it down. He takes Harry’s hand and presses cool metal into it. A key. “You have a home, you know. If you want it, there’s a place that’s permanent and yours.”

Harry turns the unfamiliar object over. “Where did you get this?”

Draco shrugs. “Hermione thought if anyone was going to convince you to come back, it’d be me.”

Harry brushes long blonde hair out of Draco’s face, runs his hand along a jaw he’s never seen grow stubble because Draco cheats and uses a shaving charm. Kisses him fiercely, once, twice, three times, each a reminder that the best things in life are found in other people.

Do you know how long it took us to domesticate wolves? Harry doesn’t, but within a month of him and Draco moving into Grimmauld Place, they get a dog.

--

for @drarrymicrofic prompt: wolf | on ao3