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the weed which strings the hangman's bag, by peachpety

A gift for @gryffindorhearts

A Wheel of Drarry Mini-Exchange 2.0

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Rating: M || TW blood & injury || angst; hopeful ending; mild hurt/comfort; smoking

Lightning flickers in the clouds above the narrow alleyway. Harry counts three Godric’s-Hollows before the boom of thunder rattles his bones. The storm approaches quickly; the last gap had been five. He pulls up his hood, muscling a shiver into submission at the caress of soft cotton against his shorn scalp.

He had been slouched at the kitchen table, his curls a dark scattering of commas on the table around him, carving stripes into the label of an empty beer bottle with the shears, when the folded crane note had flitted through Grimmauld’s kitchen window.

Gallows | 20:37

His upended chair hadn’t even hit the floor before he Apparated.

Wind howls through the pub’s alleyway like the hollow note singing from the bottleneck of a stout. Another lightning strike bleaches Harry’s vision, but it’s the crack of Apparition a moment later that shocks him. His magic eddies in his palms, coiled and ready.

Thunder rolls, and Malfoy steps from the shadows, an agonizing emergence, each step a revelation that he’s alive—a scarred Chelsea boot, soft-worn jeans sagging below a Ramones t-shirt, his blond hair.

Alive, not dead.

Relief softens Harry’s muscles, followed quickly by clenching anger. “It’s been a fucking month.”

Malfoy chuckles blithely. “It’s good to see you, too, Potter,” he says.

Harry intentionally limited interactions with his undercover agents, but this was borderline negligence. And insubordinate and dangerous and...

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck me yourself.”

Harry's shoulders relax. “You wish.”

Malfoy leans against the opposite brick wall. He lolls his head back and juts his hips forward, watching Harry with hooded eyes. The cigarette tucked behind his ear flits into his hand, and he lights it with the snap of a Muggle lighter. The flame’s glow highlights his knuckles, mangled and bloody.

Harry’s magic spikes, warming his fingertips. “You’re hurt.” He reaches for Malfoy’s hand.

Malfoy jerks his arm away. “Don’t.”

“It looks fractured.”

“It is.” Malfoy cinches his grin around the cigarette, inhaling his cheeks hollow.

Harry exhales a curse. He used to believe that Malfoy bloodied and beaten was retribution, that his broken bones were recompense. It had happened often enough at the hands of fellow trainees, and once by Harry. Only once. Instead of vindication, he’d felt as he does now—nauseated and repentant at the realization that he was the only one who could beat life into eyes as dead as slate.

“I have the information,” Draco announces.

Harry straightens. “I’ll take you in,” he says in a rush. “We can debrief Robards—”

“No.”

Harry frowns. He’d been warned by his superiors, cautious tales of undercover Aurors gone rogue, good men and women who got too involved, who couldn’t separate the job from reality.

“There’s another meeting next month,” Malfoy says. “Bigger fish.”

The clouds light up, revealing Malfoy’s face in a kinetoscope series of flashes—earnest, focused, resolute. Like that day in Robards' office when he demanded to be given the mission and Harry was assigned point. Like later that same day in the showers when Harry was on his knees and Malfoy moaned Harry’s name like a prayer.

He’d left on assignment an hour later.

Smoke curls from the tip of Malfoy’s cigarette, an ephemeral rope cast asunder by the wind, as murky as the puddles peppering the cobblestones between them. Slick film coats the water’s grey surface, shiny with misshapen rainbows.

Like Malfoy’s eyes, Harry thinks madly. Alive, not dead. Alive, not dead.

“There are other Aurors—” he begins.

“This goes deeper in the organization than we thought—”

Harry’s plea raises his voice over Malfoy’s. “Others who can do this—”

“I can do this—”

“No!”

A flash and a boom announces the storm’s arrival seconds before the sky opens up.

Malfoy narrows his eyes, mouth twisting in the rain. “You think I can’t—”

“Of course you can!” Harry slumps against the wall. The bricks dig into his shoulder blades. “You’re the best agent the Ministry’s seen since the First War.” He punches his hands into his hoodie pocket and finds a siege of paper cranes. He wads them in his fist. “You’re”—brilliant, insufferable, everything—”a twat.”

Malfoy stares. Rain pelts his face and drips from his eyelashes. He summons a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket, and in two steps he’s in front of Harry, Amazonian-tall and weed-thin. A crescent bruise mars his cheekbone.

“I only have one left,” Malfoy says softly. Blood pools in the inner white of his eye. It’s shaped like a heart, and Harry wants to drown in it.

“I don’t smoke.”

“Hey, blondie,” a greasy voice cuts through the rain. A Muggle bloke stands nearby—too close, Harry thinks. The man sways in a drunken cloud of stale beer. “You got a cigarette for me?” He licks his lips, leering at Malfoy, and Harry’s magical hackles rise.

Malfoy moves as if to offer, and Harry yanks his hand from his pocket, littering the stones with papers. He digs the cigarette out of the pack and puts it in his mouth. The taste is sharp and biting.

The drunk shuffles away. Harry wrinkles his nose and the stones beneath the man’s feet lift to trip him.

A sly grin slides onto Malfoy’s face. He crowds in closer, igniting the Muggle lighter, protecting the flame from the rain with a bubble of dry magic from his elegant broken hand. Harry cups his hand over Malfoy’s. His healing magic leaches into pale skin, knitting sinew and bone. With a deep inhale, he draws the flame onto the cigarette, smoke into his lungs, only to collapse into a coughing fit.

Malfoy’s smirk softens, and he sweeps his gaze over Harry’s face. He pauses, eyebrows furrowed, and in a swift movement he yanks the hoodie off Harry’s head. Rain wets Harry’s scalp, a pitter-pat beat matching Malfoy’s deepening inhales and exhales.

“Harry.”

“It’s been a month,” Harry rasps. “A fucking month.” He drops his gaze to his own feet. He’s not wearing shoes.

Malfoy vanishes the cigarettes and draws Harry to him with a firm hand to the back of Harry’s neck. Harry goes easily, melting into Malfoy’s comforting solidity and warming magic, tension slackening like a stayed hangman’s rope.

Alive, not dead.

“It’ll grow back by morning,” he mutters into Malfoy’s shoulder. “It always does.”

Draco chuckles. “Good. We can’t have you looking like a naked mole rat when we debrief Robards tomorrow, now can we?”

Harry’s heart shudders in his chest like paper cranes in the rain. “Fuck you.”

Malfoy guides Harry’s face to whisper against his lips, “Fuck me yourself.”

And he kisses Harry’s smile.

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For the brilliant and wonderful @gryffindorhearts! It's been a long time coming and I apologize for making you wait, but FINALLY here is your gift! Writing this was an entire journey...and while the fic is short, the path was long and I thank you for your patience in allowing me to travel at my own pace.

Big thanks to toluene and @wheezykat for the beta & encouragement. It takes a village y'all and I'm blessed.

Thanks to @hogwartsfirebolt and @drarrymicrofic for this gift exchange - it's wonderful!

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