everydaydrarry:Draco performs the counter-curse with complete professionalism, and gives Harry one l

everydaydrarry:Draco performs the counter-curse with complete professionalism, and gives Harry one last inscrutable look before having a quick word with Junior Healer Kelly and disappearing back into the hallway.Junior Healer Kelly is almost apologetic as he applies a (now familiar) sticky pink potion to Harry’s arm and bandages it, but he has nothing to say for himself, and Harry doesn’t feel much like talking. He leaves with a warning to stay out of the field until he’s rested and been back for a checkup, so he heads back to the Ministry, to finish out the day with definitely paperwork, maybe sympathy, and probably gossip.If he stays in the office a bit longer than usual, no one calls him out on it.He’s home first anyway, greeted only by their cats, a gang of three calicos whose favorite pastime is sleeping in the kitchen sink. He pauses at the front door to scratch each one on the head, and then lifts the largest of them and holds her against his chest. He flicks lights on throughout the old house with his wand as he makes his way into the kitchen, Clotho still purring against his chest, and starts to look in the cabinets and fridge for something that will at least give him a head start on an apology. He’s inspecting a bag of potatoes from the pantry when he hears the front door, and Clotho wriggles out of his grasp, no doubt to join her sisters in getting hair all over Draco’s pant legs. “Is that a robber or my husband?” Draco calls down the stairs. Harry hears him murmuring to the cats immediately after, and he feels awful. He really should know better than to enter a situation like the one he encountered today without taking every single precaution, but there’s just never time. He’s been an Auror for almost twice as long as they’ve been married, and it’s hard to break a life-long habit of now-or-never. “It depends on who you’d be happier to see,” Harry calls back. Draco just sighs, and then Harry hears him climbing up the stairs, leaving Harry with his guilt, a bag of chicken breasts, and the start of a gratin. He appears in the doorway to the kitchen forty minutes later. His hair is damp from the shower and he’s changed into sweatpants and a joke shirt that Ron gave Harry years ago—it says “boy band reject” in huge white letters across the front, and Draco would kill Harry if he told anyone how much he wears it. It does nothing to cut the tension in the room. Draco remains silent as he puts the kettle on, and he won’t let Harry catch his eye until they are both seated at one end of the long scrubbed wood table, the still-sizzling pan of gratin between them.He waits for Draco to take a bite of his chicken, then of the gratin, and then he blurts out, “I’m sorry.”Draco sighs again, and he digs his thumbs into his temples as he finishes chewing. “I know,” he says, finally. He looks over the table at Harry with that same inscrutable look he had at St. Mungo’s. “I know you’re sorry, and I know that you will be next time, and the next, until there isn’t a next time.”Harry says nothing. It’s not a new argument.“I wish you’d do something less dangerous,” he says, “but.”“But?”“I know this is what you love,” Draco says, and it looks as if the words cost him a great deal.Harry considers that. “I love you, too,” he says, finally. “And I know I make you worry.”“I’m not asking you to quit being an Auror,” Draco says. “I know.”“I’m not even asking you to stop running in to save the day,” Draco says, and Harry shuts his mouth around the latent “I know,” because he expected something different. “I’m just asking you to exercise caution a bit more. Look both ways. Use the cunning I know you have in there.”Harry reaches his good hand across the table, palm up, but instead of taking it, Draco stands up and shuffles over to sit on the bench beside him, practically on top of him. He grabs Harry’s face with both hands and kisses him, intent, gentle, and thorough. When he pulls back, Harry can see that Draco’s eyes are damp at the corners, and he’s squeezing them shut.“Hey,” he says, “I’m okay. What’s gotten into you today?”Again, Draco sighs. He releases Harry’s face, opens his eyes, and slumps over, head resting on Harry’s good shoulder. He mumbles something that could be “love you” into the fabric of Harry’s robes, and Harry smooths` his still-wet hair back and kisses the top of his head. “You’re not allowed to die on me, Potter,” Draco says. “I don’t care how much trauma you have.”They finish the meal quietly, side by side, and Draco flicks little pieces of chicken across the room for the cats to find and eat. Harry watches the routine with a full heart and only feeble complaints about the cats’ addiction to people food. When they’ve all eaten their fill, Draco makes tea, and Harry sets the wash going with a wave of his wand.It could be any evening, now. The tension from earlier is gone, but Harry still feels the weight of his guilt. He could always stand to be more careful. For Draco, for Teddy, for Ron and Hermione. For all the Weasleys. For his cats. He doesn’t apologize again, though. Instead, he thinks about the Auror Safety and Protocol Operations manual in his desk at work, and promises himself that he will reread it in the coming days. Harry has always been awful at considering how his actions will look from the outside. He thought maybe he’d have gotten better by now, well into his thirties, but apparently he still has a bit to learn.He does know, however, that if he tries to say any of this to Draco, it will start a fight. He can only be emotionally vulnerable so many times a day before he starts to get angry about it. He drinks his tea, instead.“When Healer Kelly came to get me, he made it sound like you were dying,” Draco says, unprompted, as they climb into bed hours later. He pushes one of the cats away gently by her chest so he can turn down the blankets, and he doesn’t look at Draco. “I asked him to get anyone but you,” Harry admits, and Draco just bursts into laughter.“I know you did. You always do, and they always come get me straight away.” He pulls a face and mimics, “‘Oh, Healer Malfoy, it’s Harry Potter, he’s injured again-’ ‘Healer Malfoy, it’s Auror Potter,’ ‘Healer, your husband tried to give me three galleons to get a healer who wasn’t you.’” He cracks up again, snorting a little. “Only three galleons! No wonder.”“What happened to those galleons?” Harry wonders. He remembers thinking it might sway Healer Hu’s heart, but also that he had recently been confunded. “I thought she kept it anyway but there was no time to ask once you started in on me.”“I got lunch with it,” Draco says. He props his chin on his hand, and gives Harry a smug look. “My date couldn’t make it, seeing as he decided to take five stunners to the back.”“That was not my best day,” Harry agrees. He gives up trying to dislodge Clotho, who has settled herself in the crook of his bad arm, paw stretched across his chest. Draco dims the light and pulls the coverings of the bed mostly closed, sighing as they feel the bed jolt with the weight of the remaining two cats. “Ladies, please,” he says, nudging them with his feet. “I’ll do better,” Harry tells him. “Tomorrow, and afterwards.”Draco smiles at him, then leans over to kiss him, hand braced on his knee. “I know you’ll try,” he says. “I love you,” Harry says. Draco groans.“I love you, too, you awful man.” Draco sighs again. “Goodnight.” -- source link

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