Chapter Text
Harry glared at the mountain of paperwork on his desk, then looked forlornly out the window. It was dark out, and he was grumpy. On top of everything else, he hadn't even seen the sun today. The artificial sunlight that came through the charmed Ministry windows, which were actually underground, didn't count.
He wanted to go home. He never should have let himself get involved with this bloody election. He'd been spending all his free time campaigning for Penelope, and now the unthinkable had happened: Norris Rump had been elected, and Harry's backlog of work was all for nought.
He could not believe that people had actually voted for that man. Harry Potter, after fifty-five years of believing in the power of love to do things like defeat Voldemort, may have finally hit the last straw of his belief in fundamental human goodness.
The door to his office flew open; Harry looked up, frowning. He'd told Jorgen to go home an hour ago.
It was Draco.
"Oh, it's you," Harry sighed. "Come in, then. I'm not sure what the appropriate greeting is after those election returns. 'Bad evening'? 'Fuck this shit'? 'The earth is screwed'?"
Draco strode in and flopped elegantly in one of the armchairs in front of Harry's desk, his robes billowing around him. "How about, 'Can I offer you a drink'?"
Harry snorted and Summoned a bottle of whiskey from the side of the room. He knew Draco liked this particular whiskey because the first time Harry'd tasted it, it had been a gift from Draco. It was awkward, this whole combining-of-families-for-holidays thing—you had to buy a gift for your in-laws, and really, how did you buy a Christmas gift for your childhood enemy turned in-law? Whiskey was a good bet.
The things parents did for their children.
Harry poured Draco a whiskey and pushed the glass across the desk. "What are you doing here? I thought you would be with Hermione at the Lab-Mag headquarters."
"I was," Draco said, taking a sip of whiskey. "Hermione and I were talking all day. Give me one minute to figure out how to say this without freaking you out." He closed his eyes, almost like he was trying to do a micro-meditation.
"Oi!" Harry said, tempted to crumple a paper and throw it at the git's head. "What's the matter? Is something wrong with Albus? Or Scorpius?"
Draco's eyes flew open. "What? No! They're fine. I think. I haven't spoken to them in a few days, have you?" He narrowed his eyes. "What aren't you telling me?"
"No, they're fine," Harry said, then frowned. "I think. We can check later, when we're done talking."
"Yes," Draco said, seeming to remember that he wasn't here to talk about their sons. He took another sip of whiskey. "Let me say what I have to say without interruption. Can you manage that?"
Harry rolled his eyes. There was no malice in Draco's words the way there would've been decades ago. "Yes, get on with it."
"Alright," Draco said slowly. "The matter at hand is this: I'm going to bid for the Ministerial election in four years. I know you understand the political situation well enough to know why I am a good candidate. The Blimps are a complete disaster. They're terrible on social issues, despicable on queer rights, detestable on treatment of all social minorities; they are confused on fiscal policy, backward on immigration, wand-happy on defense, and contemptible on international diplomacy both Muggle and magical. They have the backing of the pure-blood traditionalists—and the right-wing Blimps more generally—only because they're scared and their xenophobic fears have been stoked by Rump and the rest of them."
Harry pinched his nose. "I've literally been campaigning for Penelope non-stop on these very issues, Draco; I know."
"I'm just trying to remind you of the stakes, Harry!" Draco said, his foot tapping in either annoyance or anxiety—Harry couldn't tell which. He only knew the foot tapping was a bad sign. The last time he'd seen Draco's foot tapping like that had been three days before Albus and Scorpius's wedding.
"Yes, okay, I'm sorry," Harry placated. "Go on."
"I am in a unique position," Draco continued. "Unlike Penelope Clearwater, I don't strike right-leaning voters as a radical choice. I come from a pure-blood family, I have pure-blood training, my parents have always voted Blimp, and I have two decades of history as a reasonable but firm left-centrist. I was a Death Eater, for Merlin's sake. If you put me up against Rump, it would make him look insane. I would be the logical choice for candidate."
"You have my vote," Harry said. "Now can you get out so I can finish this pile of work and maybe get home before tomorrow is today?"
Draco pressed his lips together.
"You have something to ask me," Harry said wearily. "Look, you know I'll do what I can as head of DMLE; you know how much I've done these past months. I'm devastated that Penelope lost. But can you give me like a week to catch my breath before I start worrying about the next one? The last election has been over for like five minutes. I'm exhausted."
The foot tapped. Harry noticed that Draco's shoes were nice—shiny, but not pretentious. There seemed to be adequate toe space—one of Harry's main fashion pet peeves was shoes without adequate toe space. Even an Undetectable Extension wasn't ideal for foot health.
"I'm not interested in how you can help as the head of DMLE," Draco finally said. "The problem is that I am a bachelor."
Harry snorted, staring at Draco and wondering what that had to do with anything. "Yes, I seem to remember stock in the Daily Prophet going up when each of our divorces were announced. What of it, Draco?"
"Voters won't vote for an unmarried candidate," Draco recited. "Statistics show that voters feel entitled to know about the Minister's personal life and that they would worry about how dating would affect a Minister's ability to perform their duties. Even if I were to swear up and down that I wasn't interested in dating, voters wouldn't believe me. They already know I'm gay—and despite the fact that I'm open to dating a woman again even if it hasn't happened yet and am therefore technically bi, people persist in their views—and we've never had an openly gay Minister. An openly gay bachelor? Can you imagine what Rump would say? He'd probably convince the voters I would install glory holes in the Ministry loos."
Harry laughed in despair. "Fuck, I wish I couldn't imagine that happening, but after the last couple months I am sure you're not even exaggerating. So, what? You want my help finding a husband? If you haven't noticed, I haven't had much luck on that front, myself. I don't really think I'm the person to ask. Hermione would probably have ideas. Or worse comes to worst, tell Scorpius and Al that you need to get married; you know how they love a project."
"I have noticed that you're hopeless at dating. Hapless, even. Hopeless and hapless." Draco raised his glass and tipped it back, finishing off the amber liquid. "Harry, I'm suggesting you. I'm suggesting that you and I get married. It will solve all our problems, and it won't even be a big inconvenience. All we'd have to do is live together; and I have a five-story townhome. We'd never even have to see each other! I'd get elected, and you'd have my ear and I would do everything I could for all of your pet issues. We're already family because of the boys, and neither one of us has time to date. Neither one of us can date, because we," he pointed with a flourish at Harry and then at himself, "are too damn famous and infamous." He paused and narrowed his eyes. "And don't look at me like that—you know it's true! The last time you had a date you were in a bad mood for weeks because of the press. Even if you got laid that day, which for the record I don't think you did, it was definitely outweighed by the weeks of misery that followed." He paused, glaring at Harry, as if daring him to challenge his version of events. "And it's the same for me. You and I are completely screwed in the dating department. We may as well throw in the towel and embrace a marriage of convenience."
Harry stared at him, mouth opening and closing uselessly as he ran through all the different objections with which he might start his response to this cockamamie proposal.
"And if you're not fully comprehending the incredible convenience it would be," Draco said, leaning forward, "if the two of us were married and I ran for Minister, I would win. Without a doubt. And you would be able to pass any reforms you wanted, because I would push it through." Draco frowned. "Well, within reason. I still don't agree with you about the banning of cockatrice hunting on one's private lands."
"Are you insane?!" Harry spluttered, finally interrupting. "Why am I asking that—yes, the answer is yes, you're clearly insane. Draco, the next election is four years away. You want us to pretend to be married for four years?!"
"You weren't listening," Draco snapped, apparently annoyed at Harry's reaction. His foot was still, and Harry tucked away the observation that the foot tapping must indicate anxiety, not anger. "If we do this, I will win. You and I—we—will win. I'm suggesting we get married for at least eight years, perhaps twelve. And it won't be pretending to be married. The marriage would be as real as a house-elf's third nipple." Harry grimaced. "We would merely be pretending to be in love."
"For twelve years!" Harry shouted. "If we adopted a Kneazle, it'd die of old age before we could stop the charade. Everywhere we go. In front of the entire nation. For twelve years."
Draco's face twisted into pitying derision. "Kneazles often live well into their thirties, Potter. If you're going to use facts to try to make me look like an idiot, you should keep in mind that I am a solicitor and a politician and you should fact-check yourself before you try it. If we adopted a Kneazle and got divorced after I left office, we would certainly need to arrange custody of the feline."
"I don't even like Kneazles!" Harry sighed, running a hand over his face.
"You're the one who brought them up!" Draco's hand flew into the air dramatically, and Harry had a vivid impression of him on the floor of the Wizengamot, the way he always argued deftly and logically, the way he made his opponents look like morons of the highest degree.
Harry realised, suddenly, that if Draco had been running in Penelope's place, he would've won.
If he were married.
"Harry, forget the Kneazles. This isn't about Kneazles. In four years time, who knows what Rump will manage to fuck up. The stakes are incredibly high. And truly—would living together be so bad? We both live alone; you know as well as I do that it's lonely as fuck. And if Al and Scorpius are successful in adopting a baby, and they have to split their grandparent time between all our different homes, and you and I live together? Well," Draco raised his palms. "We just doubled our grandfather time."
"That is unfair!" Harry said, pointing a finger. "You can't bring the baby into this! You know I want that baby!"
Draco grinned. "Come now, Harry, I know you can't possibly be thinking more of time with your grandbaby than you are about the state of Magical Britain." The smile fell from Draco's face. "It really will be a fucking mess after four years, Harry. Rump could ban fertility treatments for gay couples. You know he's been talking circles around that. He could privatise St Mungo's. And who else could run? You know how hard we looked before deciding on Penelope."
Draco was right. Fuck it all to hell, Draco was right.
Draco's face split into a slow grin. "You just realised I'm right. I saw it in your face."
"Completely separate storeys of the house," Harry said, deflating into his chair. "And I'm not eating that fucking keto diet. And we can't have any un-unionised elves."
"Do I look like an idiot?" Draco said. "I have never employed an un-unionised elf. Can you imagine the political scandal?"
"Right," Harry said, and sighed. "Fine. But if I fall in love with someone, we're cutting it off. No questions asked."
Draco grinned and held his hands wide. "No questions asked."
"Draco," Harry started, then stopped. "Don't you—I mean, aren't you worried that you'll fall in love with someone, but be stuck with me…for politics?"
Draco met Harry's eyes. Harry had always been able to read those grey eyes pretty well, and right now he saw nothing but resignation. "I'm never going to fall in love, so it's a moot point."
Harry wanted to ask how he could be so sure, but it didn't seem his place. "Moot. Okay." He sighed.
The clock ticked as Draco waited for Harry to respond. He looked like he was restraining himself from talking, trying to give Harry some space.
Harry mentally replayed the conversation—trying to make sure he wasn't missing anything, any gaps in Draco's logic. "Have you talked about this with Hermione?"
Draco nodded. "Well, not exactly. She just said that I would've won because I don't scare the moderates like Penny did. And then she added, 'If you were married to someone respectable, of course.'"
"Ugh," Harry groaned. "Fine. I can't believe I'm going to marry you. What a crock of shit." Draco's mouth split into a tentative smile that grew wider every second. "This is what the ancient philosophers meant when they said that duty comes before pleasure. Here, we need to drink more." Harry poured more whiskey in their glasses.
"Say congratulations to the next Minister of Magic, husband," Draco said, face lit up with a smile, and clinked Harry's glass.
...
...
When Harry awoke the next morning, his body felt heavy and his eyes drooped. He had no desire to get out of his warm bed.
That thought only lasted a moment, because his second thought was about yesterday's election. Rump had won.
Harry jolted up in bed, heart pounding. He honestly couldn't believe it. They'd all been so sure that Penelope would win. The polls had all showed—
Well, fuck.
His third thought was that he'd agreed to marry Draco bloody Malfoy. To save Magical Britain.
Harry let himself flop back onto his pillows, looking up at the ceiling that, shortly after moving in, he'd charmed to mimic the sky, like the Great Hall. He'd also charmed his room to play the sounds of an English forest. It helped to keep him balanced, despite living in London, despite having a desk job that, more often than not, became awfully political.
Harry Potter, it seemed, would never be through saving the world.
Granted, marrying Draco would be a bit more pleasant than dying by Voldemort's hand. At least, he was 99 percent sure it would be.
In this quagmire of personal and political despondence, Harry attempted to concentrate on the sounds of nature, to look at the clouds drifting across his ceiling. He was fairly certain he'd succeeded at calming himself down a bit, but then he heard his phone buzz and his heart rate quickly returned to previous levels.
He grabbed his wand off the side table and Summoned his phone. It had taken him awhile, after receiving the phone as a gift from James a decade or so ago ("Because honestly Dad, I'm not keeping an owl. Do you know how outdated that is? Not to mention, my girlfriend thinks it's animal abuse and I really can't, okay?") to learn how to successfully Summon the phone off its charger, rather than accidentally Summoning the entire cord and plug or, alternately, causing the phone to shoot towards him but then reach the end of its tether and slam down on the chest of drawers. (It was Albus who'd told him in no uncertain terms that he shouldn't keep the charger directly by the bed because who knew if there were electromagnetic frequencies or something? And how would they know if it could affect the magical core?)
His lock screen swarmed with notifications. Norris Rump Becomes Minister in Surprise Victory! screamed the Prophet app. Penelope Clearwater Defeated Despite High Turnout! shouted the Witch's Mail. A text from Lily: "Dad, tell me how to fill out an application to transfer to MACUSA. I am not even joking. I can't stay here. I just keep looking at people and thinking, 'you voted for R*mp, didn't you? And you!'" And from Albus, a string of skull emojis.
Harry refused to open his digital owlmail until he'd had a cup of coffee or three. It was not a good day to be the head of Magical Law Enforcement in Britain. There were sure to be celebrations by Rump supporters and protests by angry, sad, and disillusioned leftists. Hell, if it weren't Harry's job to keep the streets of Diagon and other magical places safe and clear, he'd join the protests.
There was also a text from Draco: "Lunch to discuss details? I made us a reservation at the Gilded Thistle at noon, but can change it if need be. Dress for business, please, as we need to discuss slow implementation of our business plan."
Harry read it three times. It was such a Draco message. Straight to the point, but sufficiently vague that if it were ever intercepted it couldn't be used against either of them. What did he think Harry would show up in—jeans? Leggings? Of course Harry would dress for business!
"That's fine," Harry replied. "I hate you"
After a moment, three dots appeared to indicate Draco's impending message. "Beautiful; see you then."
Harry sighed. Could he really marry someone who used full stops and semi-colons in casual texts?
A Prophet notification appeared on his screen. "Dennis Creevey, head of the Magical Civil Liberties Union, expresses concerns for the rights of foreign witches and wizards currently residing on British soil, and urges citizens to oppose the implementation of widespread Spell Tracking, arguing it will be used to discriminate against those with non-British magical education."
Harry knew the answer was yes. He'd have to overlook the full stops.
Breakfast was a numb affair, as Harry ignored his phone and refused to pick up the newspaper. He couldn't do that forever, but it hadn't even been twenty-four hours, and he damned well deserved a break from the news.
Work was quiet. Everyone nodded at him with facial expressions somewhere between what you'd expect when seeing someone whose loved one just died and what you'd expect from someone worried they were about to be wrongfully committed to the Janis Thickey Ward.
Harry suspected his face looked the same.
He spoke with the Head Auror, Persephone Diggle, and the outgoing Minister, Mallard Glass. He spoke with his secretary and the DMLE's on-staff Healer (who was worried about the effect of stress on everyone's magic). He didn't retain much from any of the conversations, though there wasn't much to retain. There was a lot of pabulum like, "What can you do?" and "We'll get through it," but none of it meant anything. Everyone was performing a script of how to act when the unspeakable happens, and Harry found himself struggling to act his lines.
At 11:50, the wooden lumberjack in the cuckoo clock on Harry's office wall popped out of his little door and announced, "Lunch with Draco Malfoy in ten minutes. Approximate travel time assuming Apparition and walking to and from the Apparition points, eight minutes." He swung his axe at a little wooden tree. The axe never felled the tree. Harry wondered if Wilhelm felt like Sisyphus, always swinging, never felling. Fucking hell, Harry's moroseness had extended to existential questions about a clock.
"Thank you, Wilhelm." Harry looked at his desk, still covered with papers to deal with and messages to answer (and a newspaper with horrifying headlines to read), and hopped up out of his chair. "I'll go straight away."
Wilhelm frowned, his ginger wooden eyebrows slanting inward. "Is everything alright, Harry? You don't usually leave right away, if you don't mind my saying. And you forbid me alerting you early enough to ensure your punctuality."
"If I let you alert me in time to ensure my punctuality for every commitment," Harry said, pulling on his dress DMLE robes, "I'd never have a minute's peace. I'd never get any work done. What's the office scuttlebutt?"
Wilhelm was friendly with many of the magical objects in the building. He couldn't see anything except in this office (he couldn't travel the way portrait subjects could), but he could chat with other sentient objects in the building. He got the best gossip from the Head Unspeakable's charmed stapler. Harry'd never been clear on how the objects communicated; he wasn't sure anyone knew. In fact, he suspected that many of them had no idea what a security risk it was. Wizards never seemed to think through the wisdom of charming sentience into thousands of objects and then leaving them around a building like this. Mortimer Vance's stapler had loose lips; but Harry trusted Wilhelm with national security, and with, indeed, his own life.
Wilhelm knew all of Harry's appointments, rather than merely the ones he remembered to add to the Protean schedule he shared with his secretary. Wilhelm was charmed to be alerted every time Harry thought about something he had to do, from the insignificant (remembering to buy more tea) to the imperative (remembering to make it to the Wizengamot in time to testify in cases as an expert witness).
Harry should buy Wilhelm a nice little wooden dog for his clock or something. Wilhelm's life couldn't be an easy one.
"It's roughly as you'd expect, I reckon," Wilhelm informed. "Vance is upset because he thinks they'll lose funding."
"They will lose funding."
"The Healer liaison from St Mungo's was in to visit Smith—in tears, she was. Many of the Aurors seem happy enough, damn the traitorous fuckers."
Harry sighed. "Okay, I'm off to see Malfoy."
"Put the world to rights, will ye! Raise a pint for me, lad."
"I always do," Harry said, and made sure his office door had closed and warded behind him before walking briskly to the DMLE's Restricted Apparition Point. He was shown to the head of the queue (a pomp he hated, but no one wanted to wait in a queue with their boss, anyway), turned, and landed in one of the available stalls in Diagon's busy Apparition area. He walked quickly out of the way, not wanting to get trampled by the next arrival. Sure enough, no sooner than had he walked forward, a man wearing chartreuse robes appeared where he'd been.
Diagon was crowded, but somewhat quiet. Harry expected that most of the people here had voted for Penelope. While the righter, wealthier, older, pure-blood magical people tended to live in country estates, coming to Diagon to shop and occasionally to dine or partake of the theater, many of the younger and more liberal magical people lived right in Diagon. It was the most leftist district by vote.
Harry looked at his feet as he walked towards the restaurant, avoiding eye contact. He didn't want to think about the sadness on everyone's faces, and he especially didn't want to think about the undisguised glee on the face of the owner of Slug and Jiggers, who was bloody whistling as he shot cleaning spells at his windows.
He walked into the restaurant, the door clanking behind him, and offered a sad smile befitting the occasion to the hostess. "I'm meeting Draco Malfoy for lunch."
"Right this way, Mr Potter."
Draco, wearing a slim grey Muggle suit, was sat at a small table by the front window. His face was appropriately sad, a funeral face. Harry didn't know how authentically upset Draco was about Penelope's loss, or if it was an act—part of the whole political ploy. Sure, Draco didn't want Rump in charge, but he hadn't been a vocal supporter of Penelope's at first. He'd come around and worked on her campaign, but Harry knew Draco had been frustrated with how she did things. Draco's greying blond hair fell elegantly across his forehead, and Harry self-consciously rumpled his own as he dropped into the opposite seat.
"Scorpius called me in tears this morning," Draco said by way of greeting.
"I can't blame him." Harry reached for the water glass and took a long sip. "Did you remind him not to skip his meditation?"
"Yes." Draco sighed. "He thinks the adoption agency might stall same-sex adoptions because of uncertainty about the legality. In light of the election."
"I wish I could tell him it's an irrational fear, but…" Harry trailed off and looked around the restaurant, at the people on the street. "Did you request this table to be most visible? Is this part of your plan?"
Draco smirked. "I didn't have to. All I had to do was mention that I was expecting you and they put me here. No one will ever get tired of flaunting the Saviour's patronage."
Harry groaned. And he'd never stop being annoyed about it, no matter how many years had passed. In some ways his fame had only increased over time, as the papers reported all the details of his life, they solidified his place as a public figure. These days, he was just famous. He suspected most people under twenty didn't know why exactly he was famous, just that he was.
"So you want to make a plan?" Harry asked, leaning forward. "Is this what Slytherins do, secret plots? If it was up to me and Ron and Hermione, we'd probably just walk into the Ministry and start making out, plans be damned."
"All three of you?" Draco asked, raising a teasing eyebrow. "If you'd like to debate the merits of snogging in the Ministry, I'd be happy to. But in this arrangement we will only be taking action after careful deliberation, even if the action is ultimately designed to appear spontaneous."
Harry let out a long sigh. "I hate that kind of shit."
Draco took a sip of water. "You don't say? Knock me over with a Hippogriff feather."
Latching onto the idiom, Harry snapped, "Wouldn't take much to scare you where Hippogriffs are concerned."
Draco rolled his eyes, but then he leaned forward and met Harry's eyes. "I think the first step is to be seen together in public more often, like this. Until now, we've seen each other often enough, but it's usually in private."
"Okay," Harry agreed.
"Then we have to decide how we're going to break our relationship to the public. Presumably if we fell in love, we'd want to keep it secret for a while. We're both fairly private people, especially you, given your relationship with the press."
"Plus the fact that we'd be worried the papers would have a field day, considering our sons are married."
"True," Draco said. "So the question is, would our relationship be revealed accidentally, or because we decided to announce it?"
"I can't see us deciding to come clean on our own unless we were engaged and having a press release or something," Harry said, thinking. "But I am pretty impulsive, and I am known to rile you up, so I can also imagine us accidentally spilling the beans."
"What about this?" Draco started to ask, but then fell silent as a waiter approached the table.
"Gentlemen," he declared. "Are we ready to order?"
Harry knew that Draco hated when waitstaff used the royal we, and smiled as he looked down at his menu. "Yes, I'd like the burger."
"And I'll have a quiche with a side salad," Draco added.
The waiter left, and Draco picked up the paused conversation. "How about we do a few things to cause speculation, but just a tiny seed of speculation, and then we make an announcement?"
Harry wrinkled his nose. "How do we plant the seed of speculation?"
Draco leaned forward, amused. "Are you asking me to teach you how to flirt subtly, Potter?"
"No!"
"We stand too close to each other," Draco said, glittering with mischief—and Harry couldn't help but be relieved to see that look, as everyone had been looking so resigned since the election results. "I lean in and whisper something in your ear, and I'm just saying something like, 'Don't forget about tomorrow's dinner at Scorpius and Albus's,' but they'll assume I'm saying something lecherous because of the look on my face."
Harry blinked, unaccustomed to Draco looking at him like that.
Draco sat back. "Something like that, who knows." He waved his hand dismissively, as if he hadn't just leered at Harry. "If we do that, the papers will write something, right? But their scrutiny wouldn't be too intense because they're scared of you. So they would just vaguely speculate."
"And then when we made an announcement, it wouldn't be completely out of the blue?" Harry asked, trying to wrap his mind around this insanity.
"Precisely." Draco paused. "We need to let those little hints slip even to our families, so they'll believe it too."
The waiter arrived and placed a butterbeer in front of each of them. Draco smiled his thanks and turned a quelling look at Harry. "Before you say anything, yes, I know it's not keto and has a preposterous amount of sugar, but I refuse to let Rump turn me into an alcoholic and this seems like a more acceptable destructive impulse. I took the liberty of ordering one for you, too, because I figured you'd be all sad if I was drinking butterbeer and you didn't have one."
Harry laughed, a bright sound that drew glances from the people around them. He shut his mouth. "Thank you. So…my question is, who do we tell the truth to? The kids? Our ex-wives? Ron and Hermione? Your parents? It's hard to know, because once we tell one person we have to tell about a dozen."
Draco's mouth tightened, a tiny bit of butterbeer foam on his lip. "Too right. I don't like it, but I don't think we can tell anyone. Not even our kids." He sighed. "Because if we tell just our kids, that's four people, plus two partners of James or Lily's, plus Teddy because you'd feel guilty not treating him the same as your biological children, that's seven, plus if Teddy tells a partner that's eight."
Harry scowled, but he couldn't deny Draco's point. They told zero children or they told…eight. And that was assuming his kids wouldn't spill to their cousins. "We could probably tell Gin and Astoria, but…" He sighed. "Gin is actually the person I'd least want to tell about this. She'd be mad at me for giving up on finding The One, or something."
A ding sounded, and Harry and Draco each leaned back, taking their hands and elbows off the table just in time for their dishes to appear with a faint pop!
Draco picked up his fork and stabbed a cherry tomato. "Quite right. I have no idea what Astoria would say, but I doubt it would be…strategic. And thank you kindly, but if we're to be married, you should know that I tell my parents exactly nothing. I make up information about my life to tell them, rather than ever telling them anything true. Sometimes I pull a memoir off the shelf, open to a random page, and whatever is there, I report to my parents as my recent news."
Harry tipped his head back and laughed. "Alright, fine. We tell no one. I don't like it, though." He sighed. "But how are we going to convince these people who know us so well that we're a couple?"
Draco's eyes scanned Harry. "Yes, I agree with you, it won't be easy. We're just going to act the part. Close your eyes and pretend I'm…whomever it is you fancy." He paused and cocked his head with interest. "Whom do you fancy? What's your type, Harry Potter?"
Harry rolled his eyes. "What are you, fifteen? I don't have a type. I'm attracted to all sorts of people. Usually people who don't care what people think of them. And since you are literally a politician and your job is to care about what people think of you, that may be a struggle for me."
Draco dipped the point of his index finger in the butterbeer and flicked it at Harry's face.
Harry, unperturbed, stuck his tongue out to lick up the drop of sweet liquid on his upper lip.
"I'll have you know," Draco drawled, "I am a fucking catch. You have no idea how lucky you are. I do yoga and speak four languages and have tons of money."
"I don't need your money," Harry said, holding up one finger. "I only speak one language so I'm not sure why your being able to speak languages I don't understand would be considered a selling point." Two fingers. "And how does your doing yoga benefit me?"
Draco raised an eyebrow. "The fact that you just asked that question tells me that you're getting a better deal out of this farce of a relationship than I am."
Harry leaned forward, looking around at the people in the restaurant, and whispered, "Were we having sex, I suppose it might be relevant? Maybe? If you want to make stereotyped jokes about being able to get into various sex positions? But we did not agree to have sex!" By the end, Harry's voice had unintentionally risen in volume, and some of the people nearby seemed to be staring.
Draco leaned closer, over his quiche. "Looks like we're starting to plant the seeds right now. Good. All I'm saying is, yes, it might be difficult to pretend to be in love, especially at first when everyone expects us to be all lovey-dovey. But don't pretend that we're not both excellent catches. No one is making out poorly in this arrangement, and you can't convince me otherwise."
"Fine," Harry said, munching a chip. "You're fit enough for an old man; I'll give you that."
"I am fifty-five years old." Draco scowled. "I'm in my prime."
Harry picked up his burger and took a large bite; sauce dripped down his chin and he reached for a napkin.
"The real problem," Draco said, using his knife and fork to cut his quiche, "is that you have never been able to disguise your face."
"What are you talking about?" Harry was excellent at Glamours.
"Whatever Harry Potter thinks, Harry Potter's face shows. Remember that time you had to be sent away from negotiations with the French Minister because you couldn't keep your face under control?"
"That was one time!"
"Regardless," Draco said, bringing his fork to his mouth, "I'm sure I'll have an easier time feigning interest than you. Which should work out well, because I'm so good-looking, it's not like you'll have to feign attraction."
"Vain son of a bellend," Harry murmured.
"I'll drink to that," Draco said, holding up his butterbeer for a toast.
Harry ignored him and took another bite of his burger. "We don't have to move in together yet, do we?"
"No," Draco said, "but if you want to come over and see about renovating the fourth floor to your taste, I'd be happy to call my designer. Or you can hire some Gryffindorish designer, if you like."
"I don't need a designer," Harry scoffed. "I just need your shit out of there so I can put mine in."
Draco sighed. "Fine. My bedroom is on the second floor, the third has the library and my office, the first floor is obviously the kitchen, dining, and sitting room."
"Draco. I have been there," Harry said. "Many times. I helped host an engagement party in your house."
"Well you haven't been upstairs much, have you?" Draco snapped. "I'm just trying to explain." A moment passed, and Draco pointed a finger at Harry. "And you may have helped pay for the engagement party, but you surely didn't do anything that falls under the heading of 'hosting'."
"You're such a snob."
"You're such a slob." Draco wiped his mouth delicately with his napkin. "So tomorrow let's go out somewhere visible again. Flourish and Blotts to browse the books? Out for a nightcap at the Drunken Cat? What do you fancy?"
Harry let his head fall back. "I fancy sitting on my ass, watching Quidditch, and whining about how the world is going to shit."
"How about we go to the Rowdy Growler? They show Quidditch in hologram, and we can still whine about the world going to shit. That's what pubs are for."
It was a compromise and Harry knew it. "Alright."
...
...
Harry was not prepared for Draco to add him to a group text with Ron and Hermione the following week. If teenage Draco could see himself now! The surreal quality of the whole thing was tempered somewhat by Harry's eagerness to see Draco's reaction to the experience of Ron in a group text. Ron was the worst sort of group texter.
Would you be interested in dinner at my place tomorrow evening, 7pm? Was hoping to have a post-mortem on the election, and Lorraine has been asking to make her favourite meat pie; she'd be delighted for the chance to feed a full table.
Harry would never get over the fact that Draco's unionised house-elf was named Lorraine.
He dropped his phone on the kitchen counter and stared at his pantry, uncertain what he wanted to eat. Breakfast was such a chore. It didn't used to be, when he lived with Ginny and three kids. Well, back then it had been a chore in a different way—the monotony of food prep for demanding children, James always wanting meat and Albus demanding melon, Lily sneaking chocolate if you didn't find a way to work it into her breakfast. But the eating itself hadn't been a chore. Now, the eating felt like a chore. He could eat oatmeal again, he supposed.
As he grabbed a sachet of Orville's Oats (Just Add Magic!), his phone buzzed. Shaking the sachet, he leaned over to look at his lock screen.
Ron emphasized 'Would you be interested in dinner at my place …'
The thought of Draco's reaction to Ron's !! on his text made Harry happy enough to eat his sad oats and get on with his day. Even if he was sure that this dinner with Ron and Hermione would be a disaster.
On the other hand, convincing Ron and Hermione that he and Draco were a couple would be the biggest hurdle of this whole charade, so he had to concede it made sense to get the Snitch flying, as it were.
...
...
Arrive at 6:45 so they see us together when they get here.
Harry sighed and stared at his closet. If he were trying to impress someone, what would he wear? Hermione would never believe he was developing a crush on Draco if he wore an old Gryffindor t-shirt that Lily had produced and sold as a fundraiser when she was in sixth year.
What had he worn the last time he went on a date? He couldn't even remember, and that seemed somewhat pitiful. How would he attract someone? He sent up a silent prayer to the ghost of Sirius, whom he always thought of as his fashion role model and whom he wished were here to help, and grabbed blindly for some garment that would usually seem too tight. That's how people dressed to attract others, wasn't it? He pulled the clothes on, refused to dwell on it, grabbed a bottle of wine and a bottle of the fancy mineral water Hermione liked, and disappeared into the Floo.
When the spinning stopped, Harry coughed and shouted, "Oi, Draco!"
Draco walked in wearing a slim dress shirt and a pair of elegant trousers. He looked markedly more Muggle than usual—he often wore Muggle clothes for work, but at home he usually wore casual robes.
"Here," Harry said, holding out the bottles. "Do I look okay?"
Draco raised an eyebrow. "That is definitely the first time you've ever asked me that. Yes, you look…normal, but trying a little? And that seems like what we're aiming for."
Harry smiled. "Excellent, because I don't fancy you charming my clothes." He walked to the sofa and flopped onto it. "Ugh. Work is unbearable with everyone talking about Rump."
"Mood," Draco said, sitting in the armchair opposite. He frowned. "Did I use that correctly? Is that what Albus is always saying?"
"I think so." Harry put his feet on Draco's table. "How's Scorpius?"
"He's complaining about how everyone keeps asking him how this will be written in the history books of the future."
Harry laughed. "Goes with the territory."
Scorpius was a magical historian. He taught classes sometimes, but more often wrote articles and books. Albus and Harry had been trying to convince him to write some history books meant for popular audiences.
Draco nodded, then asked, "Is there anything we need to coordinate before Ron and Hermione arrive?"
Harry frowned. "We're not saying anything to them today, so—nothing? I was planning to just like, linger."
"Linger?" Draco asked, unimpressed. "What do you mean?"
"Like, my eyes. My eyes should linger on you." This was awkward. Harry wondered if this was the most awkward he had ever felt, but he forced himself to look at Draco with what he hoped was an approximation of confidence.
"I suppose that'll do." Draco crossed one leg over the other. "I thought you meant you were going to linger around me, like leaning languidly nearby me."
"I was not planning to lean languidly."
"I meant, should we have a backstory?" Draco clarified. "I'm just thinking that it might be easier to coordinate in the long term if we plan ahead."
"They're going to be here in like three minutes," Harry said. "There's no time."
Draco held up a finger. "We hooked up in secret at a party at the Ministry a couple months ago."
"We don't have time to hash this out!" Harry interrupted.
"We hooked up in secret," Draco continued, "and we saw each other after in the course of our regular lives and it is currently in the process of slowly evolving into an actual relationship rather than just sex."
Harry wrinkled his nose. "Wait, what? Where are we meant to have hooked up at a Ministry party? In the loo? Because we're way too old for that."
"We're in our primes," Draco objected with a genuinely aghast expression. "In the loo or like, hidden in an alcove or something? Or in your office?"
"No way would I do that!"
"Potter," Draco sighed. "You're not thinking in the right mindset. You're trying to think rationally about whether you'd have sex, but if that had actually happened we would've been all swept away by the moment. It wouldn't have been rational."
"Draco, are you trying to tell me your masterful backstory is that we're fifty-five years old and we couldn't stop thinking with our dicks at a work event?"
"It's believable!" Draco snapped.
"Maybe for you!" Harry leaned forward. "I can't think of a more unsexy setting than a Ministry party. Getting it up while the Minister and all of my Aurors are in the next room is my idea of a nightmare."
"Oh for the love of…" Draco murmured. "Alright, so when I say we 'hooked up at a Ministry function', what I mean is that we left and fucked at one of our homes, in a bed, with no one else in the house. Is that better?"
"Yes, much. Ta."
Harry supposed he could work with that. Trying to decide what was 'believable' about him conducting a secret relationship with Draco was a preposterous exercise, anyway.
The Floo whooshed.
"Don't fuck this up, Potter," Draco said, standing and striding towards the fireplace. "Hermione, Ron." He leaned forward to press a kiss to Hermione's cheek. Harry still found that strange, even after all this time—the way they worked together now, that they were all kind-of friends.
Hermione went to wrap Harry in a hug. "How are you two? I've been in a stupor. I still can't believe it."
"Same," Harry said—but that was a bit of a lie. This whole thing with Draco had been distracting him slightly from the Rump nightmare, which was a blessing, in a way.
"What would you like to drink?" Draco asked, taking their orders and walking towards the bar cart, putting his hand on Harry's lower back as he walked past.
Harry stiffened—Draco never touched him like that. They were really doing this. Harry looked at Hermione—wanting nothing more than to spill his guts about this situation he'd gotten himself into, but he couldn't. The only person he could discuss it with was Draco himself.
"Are you alright?" Ron squinted at him, a confused look on his face.
Shit. They should've practiced this whole routine on people who would be more easily fooled—it was expecting too much, starting with Ron and Hermione. They knew him too well. Harry didn't know how to react to Draco's hand lingering on his back, even though lingering had been his plan. Harry didn't know how to flirt back in a way that looked like he was trying not to flirt. He needed to act like he was flirting by accident while trying not to flirt. He couldn't do this!
Harry smiled. "Yeah, mate, I'm fine. Just upset about…you know, all of it."
Ron launched into a story about how Rose was reacting to the election, and Harry walked over to Draco to help him with the drinks. Harry supposed he could just imitate what Draco was doing. That'd be enough.
He put his hand on Draco's back, his pinky finger resting on Draco's belt. "How can I help?"
Draco turned toward him, catching his eye and raising an eyebrow slightly, out of Ron and Hermione's view. "This one is for Hermione."
Harry grabbed the lime fizz and, turning and letting his hand stay on Draco's back for a second too long, carried it back to Hermione. That was good, right? He thought he'd done okay. "Here you go, Mi."
"Thanks," she said, taking the drink and sitting in an armchair. "I talked with Penny today. She's doing alright, all things considered. She's going to take a holiday to try to recover from all the campaigning."
Draco joined them, Levitating three glasses. "A well-deserved break. She worked herself to the bone."
"So did all of you," Ron said, grabbing his glass out of the air. "Cheers."
"Whole lot of good it did," Harry grumped, taking a sip of the drink Draco had made him.
"It made a difference," Hermione said, leaning forward. "We got everyone talking about the issues. We made sure people were talking about how racist and xenophobic Rump is." She frowned. "I have to believe it made some difference."
Draco sat next to Harry on the sofa, and if it wasn't Harry's imagination, he sat closer than he normally would. "We did. Almost half the people voted for us, after all. Our message is out there."
"What do we do now?" Hermione asked, looking uncharacteristically lost. Harry understood how she felt.
"We take a break," Draco sighed. He was sat close enough for his arm to rest warmly against Harry's. "Nothing we can do, just now."
For most people, that was true—there was nothing to do just now. Activism and mobilisation and supporting vulnerable people would come soon enough, but not quite yet. It was a time of mourning, not of action.
In a way, Harry was lucky. There was something he could do, even now. He could plant the seed for his oldest friends to believe he was falling in love. Harry turned to look at Draco, caught his eye, and smiled.