#I literally have a running bit about being a friend's long distance court wizard for his reign of the physics club

[ganymedesclock]

I think a while ago you talked about how Pidge would be a Beast Tamer in a fantasy setting and Keith seems to often get compared to a knight in the show (shield&sword for bayard, assigned the knight pieces in the comic, etc) and we all know Allura's a (fairy) princess. So, based on the common troupes/character traits with certain fantasy roles, what do you think Shiro, Lance, Hunk and Coran would be?

Honestly I’d argue that Keith’s not really what I’d put as a knight in a pure high fantasy setting, so, I’m just going to go with a lot of my sensibilities/rough abilities that I sorted them into in Hallowed AU:

Pidge: Rogue (Beast master)

Not much to say here. Pidge offsets her own relative lack of staying power, reach, etc. with stealth, maneuverability, and tricky properties. It’s very popular to make her a wizard, but I’ve always thought it’d be interesting, rather than giving Pidge a massive font of magical power, for her to have a few very limited little magics, things she hasn’t had enough time to study or the materials to perfect since she’s on the road and on a mission, but a lot of experimentation and little flash grenades and glamours and sharp daggers. And probably poisons, too, considering her canon affinity for plant life coupled with, in this continuity, a fondness for cute little guys that just might be a little bitey if you aren’t her friend.

But of course, her bag of tricks is limited by necessity- she herself is small, slight, and not really kitted out for direct engagements. In this sense, the kind of creatures she’s liable to befriend fit nicely- she usually goes for the small ones, with the exception of Green- and even she’s small, nimble, and stealthy compared to her brethren. Just imagine Pidge fitting her faithful companion and steed with a set of saddlebags to carry all kinds of equipment and reagents without fear of them falling out if they run into trouble suddenly and need to launch evasive maneuvers.

Keith: Spellsword (Dark sorcerer)

What’s the point of having a long lost bloodline if it doesn’t give you spooky magic, right? Also, in a high fantasy setting, Keith is just set out to be a wizard. Boy’s a glass cannon, through and through.

My personal favorite spin on this is the idea of Keith’s capabilities being overwhelmingly self-taught, framing him as both kind of a prodigy, and in an awkward position since his particular brand of magic is really not socially acceptable or in fact, usually practiced by good people. Which, again, as a self-taught vagrant in the middle of nowhere puts him in just a bit of a pickle to explain himself to well-meaning local law enforcement.

No, if anybody’s a knight in here, it’s....

Shiro: Paladin (Mounted warrior)

Give him a hand-and-a-half sword, a shield with a royal crest, and some spiffy armor and just watch this guy sit straighter and carry himself as befitting a Defender Of The Realm, Ally of Justice, basically a faux-medieval superhero. While I like to reimagine the Lions in a fantasy setting as steeds, I can imagine Shiro and Black having a unique bond where they’re the most likely to actively wield proper cavalry tactics and fight more together than apart. Not that the others don’t fight together, but Shiro having like... actual training and an education in battlefield tactics and why you don’t leap over your allies’ shield wall when your enemies all have spears and you don’t wear armor, Keith.

The thing about knights is more than just Some Guy With A Sword, there’s a pretty big deal in most high fantasy about honor. “Chivalry” literally comes from the same root as cavalry, and while all of the team arguably fights for a higher, more noble cause, Shiro’s the kind of guy who I can see pursuing a career that lets him really dedicate his life to that higher cause, because frankly, whether or not he had a liege to serve and a sword in his hand, he’d be making a stand against injustice anyway. That’s just the kind of guy he is, and when we have an obvious liege that would look favorably on that sort of thing, it’s pretty clear what the result is.

Lance: Bard (Longbow fighter)

Not only is Lance a quintessential support class- he very naturally and easily falls back to let other people shine and picks off enemies with rather fearsome precision from a cozy distance- he’s someone who loves people, and, frankly, has a rather effective way with them. No, he’s not the casanova he sort of pretends he is, but he’s an actor, a charmer, a showman, and specific to Hallowed AU, he might just have a pinch of supernatural assistance in that regard.

My first reflex as weapon of choice would be a crossbow, since it has a lovely silhouette very similar to canon Lance’s rifle, but the longbow spoke to me, because the thing about Lance, is he’s very not a prodigy. This is a major point of contrast between him and Keith- and yet on several occasions in canon, we’re shown that people who are hard to impress (Commander Iverson, and the Red Lion) find Lance worthy of standing where Keith, the actual prodigy, once stood. This tells us that Lance is a hard worker. 

The longbow is a very difficult weapon- they say to train a longbowman, you start with his grandfather. That saying, for me, makes me want to put one in Lance’s hands in a fantasy setting for what it implies- about him, about his family. That he started young, that he likely hails from a family of, perhaps even generations of, archers. And of course he’s not going to say that, acknowledge training until his fingers bleed, or anything like that- he’ll goof off and show off- but there’s a certain obvious respect just him having that weapon and using it effectively and when he notches an arrow, draws that fairly heavy bow back, and fires with deadly accuracy.

Hunk: Fighter (Alchemist)

Hunk seems commonly sorted as a cleric and while I can appreciate that, I think personally Hunk doesn’t have the kind of patience to pursue a skill set where he can’t barge up to the thing chewing on his friends, who he is trying to keep healthy, thank you very much, and crack ‘em solidly in the teeth. He certainly has the muscle of a frontline fighter, and I can see Hunk wielding a simple, but sturdy crooked staff.

The real danger comes in the fact that while Pidge has a foot in the magical and the alchemical, higher education likely pointing to a more aristocratic background- I can see Hunk being someone of humble roots who, out of a combination of necessity and curiosity, learned how to fix, stitch, patch, scratch, and brew, just about everything.

Hunk who smugly goes “Yeah, well, I’m no wizard, but if all you need to knock a wall down,” lights the fuse on a homemade tied-off little packet and lobs it to a satisfyingly sized explosion, or who heard you were picking a fight and brewed up a batch of greek fire for the occasion. He’d probably leave the poisons to Pidge, though- someone who takes as much pride in the culinary arts as he does isn’t going to sully his cooking with anything if he can help it.

Allura: Mage Knight (multiple weapons)

Allura’s handiness with the bladed whip makes a lot of sense as athletic royalty who has the time and leisure to acquire unusual weapons and train with them heavily, though supplementing her more eclectic decision with something as ubiquitous and versatile as a pikestaff means that even caught unarmed, she only needs to lay hands on the nearest broom, or whatever other straight, sturdy piece of wood is around to be seized.

Her being a sacred princess possessing a grand holy power able to work miracles with the right setup frankly needs absolutely no modification for a high fantasy setting except more practice and proficiency in it given it’s more common and ubiquitous in this sort of world. As a personal addition for fun in this setting, the mice are full-tilt shapeshifters able to reconfigure themselves into different forms for Allura’s needs- able to be anything from horses to handmaidens to small but aggressive dragons.

Coran: Spymaster (swordsman)

I sort of like the idea of largely nonmagical Coran, following in the wake of magic using Alfor and Allura, and yet in a context where Allura would be surrounded by a proper royal court and a lot more attendants and advisers, I’d make changes to make sure Coran properly stands out himself- because really, he’s the royal family’s steadfast blade in the dark. If there is anything they need, he’s the kind of person they can trust absolutely.

And absolutely nobody is going to suspect the older, foppish nobleman loudly recounting the time he got peas stuck up his nose to a vaguely disquieted audience is an obstacle to an assassination plot until he very politely rests a blade against their jugular and informs them that they’re going to have a friendly little talk, over there, in the room full of surly guards, about trying to drop unapproved things in the princess’s drink.

Because frankly having quick reflexes, a keen eye, and a couple of shortswords hidden up your sleeves is a very fast route to being plenty dangerous. 

[lindeaewen-a]

Posting the content of Lindir’s about page here for mobile users as the updated page is not mobile friendly. Under the cut. 

General

Name: Lindir Iavenion

Begetting Date: July 21st, S.A. 1077

Begetting Place: Eryn Galen

Languages: Silvan, Sindarin, Westron, Quenya, Rohirric, bits of others

Race: Silvan Elf

Sexual Preference: Bisexual; vers.

Occupation: Healer; personal attendant to Lord Elrond.

Sailed: Between F.A. 120 and F.A. 200

Physical

Height: 6'4"

Weight: 110 lbs (note: I consider Elves to be less ‘dense’ in body than Men)

Hair: Chestnut brown, hip length

Eyes: Dark brown

Skin: Tan

Face claim: Bret McKenzie; Vadim Shatilov

Body claim: Daniil Simkin; Maxim Zenin; Xander Parish

Voice: Bret McKenzie; Leighton Antelman (x)

Psychological

Alignment: Neutral Good

Myers-Briggs: INFP-T - The Mediator

Hogwarts House: Hufflepuff

Ilvermorny House: Thunderbird

Archetype: The Defender (x)

Element: Water (x)

Background

Lindir was born in Greenwood the Great in the first part of the Second Age. He was the second son of Ýrneth, a talented healer, and Iaven, a messenger who eventually took his own father’s place as the librarian of Eryn Galen. Ýrneth was strong in will and mind as well as in body, and so she was able to give birth to Lindir only five years after her first son, Thandir, was born. Because of their closeness of age, the two children shared many of the same friends, and grew up to be very close, communicating in an intuitive, almost twin-like way in spite of their starkly different personalities.

Unlike all of the Silvan and most other Elves, Lindir was not given the gift of being able to hear the song of nature. This did not affect his ability to make friends or fit in with the other Silvan and went mostly unnoticed by his peers, but it meant that he did not share their innate connection with the forest, and did not feel bound to it in any sense as many of the other Avari did.

He was always a noisy child, feeling the constant need to fill silence, and he could usually be found singing if not otherwise occupied. Only later did he discover that his constant desire to make sound was because he was filling a silence that at this time he did not know existed.

Lindir’s love for music of all kinds - which was so evident to his mother while she was carrying him that he was named after it - only grew and flourished as he got older. He had a seemingly innate ability to make beautiful music with his voice from a very young age. He was given by his paternal grandfather the harp that was left behind by his grandmother when she fled to Alquonlondë, while Thandir was given her jade pendant. It was with this harp that Lindir learned to his very first songs, and as he matured, so did the music he played, and it grew in depth and complexity. Though there was great love in Lindir’s heart for the ballads and poems of old, he loved nothing more than to weave together the sounds of his voice and his instruments in new and unique ways that stirred emotions in himself and others. Many other instruments were gifted to him over the years, but the harp remained his favourite because of the sounds he could make with it and his voice at the same time.

Lindir first learned to speak the Silvan tongue, and could read and write it proficiently fairly early on because of his easy access to two literate parents and a library full of books. He didn’t first learn to speak Sindarin until he was around ninety-five - nearly at his majority - and even then he rarely made use of it. When he did have need to speak it, it was heavily accented, most words were pronounced incorrectly, and he often forgot terms that were not often used and required assistance to remember them. The only Quenya words he knew were from poems and songs, and even then he didn’t quite know what they meant.

Lindir was just as rambunctious as any other Elfling, and was always determined to be the fastest of his peers to run and climb trees. He was raised in a time before the Darkness corrupted the Woodland, and so he spent long days with his friends in the forest, laughing and playing as children were able to do in those days. From his very earliest days, Lindir began to assist his mother as much as he was able in her duties as a healer. On occasion, they traveled as a family to nearby realms when his father had letters to carry that did not need to arrive particularly quickly. Most often they went to Lothlorien because it was nearby, and Lindir continued to flee to Lady Galadriel’s forest when he needed a moment of peace in his life.

Only one scar marked Lindir’s body, and though he greatly admired the look and feel of scarring on others, it was naught but a source of shame for him.  He obtained it when he was around forty five years old - in his pre-adolescent years (roughly equivalent to the mortal age of eight). He was playing in the forest, running throughout the trees as Elflings of his time often did in Eryn Galen. He strayed further than he usually would, distracted by a beautiful bird, and came near to the edge of the woods. On the other side of the trees lay a Mannish settlement. Because he could not hear the voices of the forest around him, he could not hear their warnings, and he ran straight into a hunting trap that had been left there years before. If not for a kind Man who helped him out of it and took him back to Eryn Galen with Lindir’s direction, Lindir would have died in the trap, so severe were the cuts and gashes left behind. The scar spreads over his lower back and wraps around his his right hip in tendrils.

Lindir chose to follow his mother into her career as a healer while Thandir followed his father into becoming a messenger. Because of his detail-oriented nature, Lindir was very good at this. Though the Magic he possessed was neither particularly strong or weak for Elves of his kind, the purity and integrity of his soul allowed him to harness it very effectively, which made him excellent at healing larger wounds that required the use of such Magic. Ýrneth was talented and hard-working. She had long since earned the right to heal important Elves - on occasion the King and his family. Lindir was often allowed to assist her in this, though because of his patience, he was most often delegated the task of bandaging the scraped knees and sprained wrists of Elflings when it was required. He always had wanted children of his own, but working with the children of others was enough in the meanwhile.

Several decades after reaching his maturity, Lindir began to realise that he was not connected to the forest in the same way as his friends and family were. Thinking himself to be inadequate and defective because of it, Lindir spent more and more of his spare time alone with his books and music, both to hide himself away and to desperately search for a solution. Though he was certain that both his father and mother knew, the only person he explicitly confided his worries in was Thandir. His scar became a constant remind for him of what he is missing; of how he is not a whole Elf.  In doing this, he began to distance himself emotionally from those he loved. During this time, he learned much of the histories of Arda in depth, and history became a source of fascination to him, to which he could escape when the present became too much for him.

She was not the first Elleth who ever touched his heart, but the first to truly hold it was named Lauredis. She was also Silvan, and they had known each other since they were little children. Before reaching adulthood, Lauredis left Eryn Galen to study lore in Lothlorien. When they were around five hundred, she returned, and Lindir found himself quite enamoured by the woman she had become. They quickly fell back into their old friendship and into each other’s beds, and within five years of her return, they were happily courting one another. Seventy years after this, the topic of children and marriage crept its way into their thoughtful conversation, and they became engaged. Lindir became increasingly insecure that she would not want him in this way anymore if she knew that he was not quite like other Elves - that he was a broken one. He also feared that if they did have children, they would come out defective like he was, and he did not want that for his children. In the process of his worrying, another emotional wall was slowly constructed between himself and his fiancee.

At nearly six hundred years old, Lindir left Eryn Galen on his own to seek out Radagast the Brown in the hopes that he had the appropriate Magic to fix him, so that he could marry and have children and be a normal Ellon. It took more than a year to find him. He begged the Wizard for a solution to his problem, but Radagast had no answers for him, nor any Magic to help. He did, however, suggest that Lindir consult one of the wise Elven Lords and Ladies of the time. Lindir had read much about Lord Elrond of Imladris in his books as history unfolded and admired him greatly, but he’d taken already a year of leave from his duties in the Woodland, so he had not the means to travel to the newly founded realm of Rivendell. And so on the 25th day of March in the 1705th year of the Second Age, their exchange of letters began. In his first letter, Lindir told Elrond all of the worries he had about his scar and his future marriage and children, and everything else that was on his mind. Elrond also had no solution for him, but Lindir made a new friend in these letters. He felt unable to open up to his friends or family very much, and so he wrote back and forth to Elrond for millennia about what he could not bring himself to speak about. Over time, a great love grew in Lindir’s heart for the Lord, though it took him far too long to admit that it was so, even to himself. Around this time, Lindir’s father inherited the position of the librarian of Mirkwood when his own father sailed to Valinor.

Lindir lost Lauredis to the emotional distance he created between the two of them; to her it was as if he did not trust her, and it was not something she wanted for the rest of eternity. Lindir was, of course, distraught, but with his family and his correspondence with Lord Elrond, he ended up just fine, and later in life he and Lauredis were able to be good friends again. Several mostly physical relationships with both Ellyth and Ellyn followed over the course of the next thousand years.  

In the last five hundred years of the Second Age, Thandir made the choice to change his career from being a messenger to become a warrior because of his great love for his home and for other Elves, and his desire to protect them. In the 120th year of the Third Age, Thandir was killed violently by a band of Orcs. It was rare to find such Dark creatures outside of their mountain caves in those days. What was recovered of his body was not a pleasant sight, but it was buried in his beloved forest nonetheless. His pendant was found also and given to Lindir, and Lindir went nowhere without it.

After less than a year, the pain of Thandir’s death proved to be too much for his family. Lindir’s father, being half Teleri, felt the call of the sea the strongest and wanted to sail immediately. Lindir’s mother agreed that she wanted to sail soon, but there were parts of Middle Earth that she still dreamed of seeing first, and she wanted to do this before she left forever. Lindir felt no sea-longing, but he pretended that he was ready to sail so the he would not be parted from the rest of his family. There was nothing left in Eryn Galen for him, anyways. He hoped he’d be able to start a family in the Undying Lands.

They had been wandering between various settlements for a short while when they reached Imladris in T.A. 125. The presence of Elrond and was more soothing to his grief than anything else could have been. As he got to know the inhabitants of Rivendell and their customs, Lindir became more and more reluctant to leave, and when his parents’ time in the valley came to an end, he found he was unable to part with it. His mother and father moved west to sail, and Lindir stayed in Rivendell indefinitely, quickly moving into the Last Homely House to serve as Lord Elrond’s personal attendant when he was offered the position.

Lindir never had children of his own while in Middle Earth, but when Gilraen came to Imladris with her little Estel, he was absolutely taken by the child. He considered Estel to be the closest thing to a son he’d ever had after taking initiative in raising him, and stayed in Middle Earth until the King of Gondor died.

[briannamarguerite]

Nothing Worse Than Jury Duty

A drarry drabble. sorry i gave the English wizarding world jury duty ...

There was something worse than jury duty, Harry Potter realized as he stumbled into the dark chambers of the court. There was jury duty with Draco Malfoy.

Harry had been running late, of course. He blamed that on the fact that he’d been pretending his summons wasn’t a real thing. It had arrived two weeks ago, warning him of the upcoming requirements. Despite several -- embarrassing in retrospect -- attempts to set it on fire, it remained crisp and somehow judgmental of his efforts to dodge the duty.

So when the day finally arrived, he’d slept through three alarms, burnt his toast and spent an extra fifteen minutes looking for his keys before he remembered he was a wizard and could just accio them. He was also pretty sure he was wearing mismatched socks.

And, because this was his life after all, Malfoy looked flawless and composed. Stunning, really. He was definitely wearing socks of the same color. Harry didn’t even need to see them to know that. Perhaps they even coordinated with the man’s deep emerald robes that had not a single wrinkle in them.

Harry smoothed a hand over his own plaid button down that he’d thrown over a paint-splattered black t-shirt. The jeans he’d been able to scrounge off the top of his laundry basket were battered and ripped and there was a hole right below his butt cheek that he was just pretending wasn’t there.

There was nothing he could do about it now, though. Resigned to his fate, he took the only remaining seat -- of course it was next to Malfoy -- ducking his head to avoid the judge’s disapproving glare.

“Thank you for joining us Mr. Potter. As I was saying …” the judge, replete with a heavy, old-fashioned white wig, continued. It made him feel all of eleven, which was appropriate considering his school boy nemesis was perched beside him, smirking.  

They may have long-moved on from the days of stinging hexes and nasty slurs -- and god so much worse -- but there was still something that sat heavy and charged between them. Harry was now just able to recognize the origin of it a little better than he had years ago.

“Potter,” Malfoy said as his greeting, not even turning to look at him. Which Harry was glad about. It gave him a moment to take him in and adjust to his nearness. It wasn’t like they avoided each other these days. The wizarding world was a small one. They ran in the same circles, had many of the same friends. Malfoy even came to pub nights a couple times a month. Harry would have thought he’d have gotten used to the man by now. But no. His palms were already sweating.

It was just that he was so pretty. And smelled really fucking good. Like lemons and soap. Harry let his eyes trace over his sharp jawline and down the long column of his pale throat. He wanted to bite down into that soft space above Malfoy’s delicate clavicle. The thought shook him out of his trance, and he sucked in a deep breath. Which immediately backfired when the waft of citrus hit his nostrils.

There was a faint blush cresting along Malfoy’s cheeks. “Can I help you, Potter?” Even the way his cultured rasp rolled along Harry’s name sent shivers of anticipation down his spine. He wanted to hear it whispered to him. Moaned out between those lips. Well, ideally it would be Harry instead of Potter, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Harry had no retort, so he just mumbled something that was definitely unintelligible and dragged his eyes off Malfoy. Fucking jury duty.

Somehow despite his huge and raging crush on the man, Harry was able to hide it. It involved a lot of plotting -- such as coming up with creative ways of avoiding sitting right fucking next to him unexpectedly -- and well-timed trips to the loo. Sometimes for a wank. But those were only in his weakest moments. Usually he could at least wait til he got home to imagine finally getting his hands and mouth and tongue all over that lithe, beautiful body.

This wouldn’t do, though. If the thorough directions on the summons were to be believed - and why wouldn’t they be? - he would be stuck in this little room with Malfoy for the next three days waiting to see if they were picked for the jury. Now that he knew they were both in the pool, he couldn’t well avoid him either. That would be rude.

Bloody fucking hell. How was he supposed to get through this without Malfoy realizing? Merlin, it was hopeless.

It wasn’t that Harry thought he’d mock him, anymore.

In the years after the war, Malfoy had matured. His humor tended to run a little closer to dry sarcasm than others’, but the malice behind it was gone. That had been stripped away in the brutal days when none of them knew how to move forward, but somehow were forced to keep surviving. It had been stripped during the weeks Malfoy returned to help rebuild Hogwarts in the brutal heat of the summer following the battle. It had been stripped away by the at first tentative attempts at apologies that turned into actual friendships.

What was left was Draco. Strong and broken and insecure and not quite kind but not quite an asshole either. What was left was a man Harry actually admired. Far too much for Harry’s own good.

So, he wasn’t worried Draco would mock him when -- not if, because let’s be honest, that’s just how things were looking for him today -- he found out. It was the fear of seeing pity in Draco’s eyes as he let him down gently. That would be too much to take. Harry would have to become a hermit. Perhaps even move to a different county. Not that he was being dramatic or anything.

“You didn’t come to the last pub night,” Draco said, just loud enough for Harry to hear. The interview portion had started with an elderly witch in a large sparkly purple hat who had to use an ear trumpet and still made the barrister repeat every question. This was going to be awhile.

“You noticed?” Harry asked, swallowing hard.

There was a pause, as if Draco just realized he had just admitted to something. The rose pink on his cheeks deepened and Harry thanked Merlin for his own swarthy complexion. “Ron had wanted to challenge you to some ridiculous drinking challenge. That’s all.”

Harry laughed under his breath. “Did anyone take him up on it.”

“Seamus. He ended up in a skirt singing Celestina Warbeck’s latest single on top of the bar.” Draco smiled fully this time, turning to look at Harry for the first time since he’d arrived. Their eyes caught and held and suddenly there were just sitting there grinning at each other. Close enough for Harry to see all of the thick lashes that blinked over liquid silver eyes in a long slow sweep.

“Rookie move, Seamus,” Harry murmured, his eyes dropping to Draco’s lips when his teeth dug into the soft flesh there. Fuck. “Don’t bet against Ron.”

There was a beat of silence and then Draco shifted to face the front of the room once again.

“Hot date, then?” he drawled.  

Ha. That was funny. Hermione kept trying to set him up with various friends and co-workers, but the last one he’d given into had spent the entire night talking about obscure troll history and then had snuck out when the bill had come, leaving Harry to cover all of it while trying not to burst into flames from the mortification of being ditched. The waiters’ expressions had been the worst part.

That had been three months ago and he’d firmly put his foot down over any more blind dates. Which left him spending most nights with a nice glass of red wine and a contrary house elf for company. He was kind of okay with it, too. Unless, of course, a particular blonde bloke felt like joining him. He wouldn’t mind that.  

“Um. No,” Harry pressed his palms into the rough fabric of his jeans. “I’m at the end of a big renovation project. Sometimes I get a bit carried away, forget about the time.”

Draco’s lips tipped up. It looked almost....fond. But Harry must be imagining it.

“That’s right, you and your houses,” Draco said like he was remembering something he’d forgotten. Harry knew that Draco knew all about it, though. Draco even asked him about his latest projects with some frequency.

Everyone after the war had been pushing him to become an auror. He was made for it. Even he thought so. But once training had started, the idea of years and years of continued violence and dark magic became a nightmare instead of a dream realized. He’d quit one month in and traveled for a bit.

After he returned to England, he’d been a bit restless until he’d started tackling the monster that was Grimmauld Place and discovered that swinging a sledgehammer into actively complaining walls made him feel better than anything else in his life.

It was like free therapy. Where he didn’t have to talk about all of the things that lurked in the darkest corners of his mind and woke him up at night covered in a cold sweat.

“Yeah,” Harry said. Dumbly. Merlin, it wasn’t like he thought he was the wittiest person ever, but this was a low point. He literally could not think of any other words to say.

The smirk was back. But then Draco surprised him. “I’d like to see one, some day. If you wouldn’t mind.”

Harry’s mind went blank. And then everything rushed back in, a roaring wave of thoughts and ideas and sounds and emotions. “I’d love that. You can even…”

Draco glanced at him, one slim eyebrow lifted. “Yes?”

Come on, Potter You defeated Voldemort. You saved the wizarding world. You’re a fucking Gryffindor. This shouldn’t be that hard.

He took a deep breath, and there was that hint of lemons again. “Tonight? And we could get dinner afterward if you want.” He said it. He said it quickly so that it was all one word, but he said it.

The soft, gentle smile crinkled the lines around Malfoy’s eyes. “That sounds perfect. Harry.”

They both turned back to watch as the elderly witch was finally dismissed from the stand and a young wizard with a spiky mohawk that was changing colors took her place.

Draco’s arm pressed against his and neither of them moved to put distance between them. The warm heat radiated through the rest of Harry’s body and he tried not to think about what might come after dinner.

Perhaps jury duty wasn’t so bad after all.