After Harry left the room to get more wine, Draco looked around the flat for the first time. The room was tastefully decorated. Understated, but he detected quite a few choice pieces that would not have looked out of place in Malfoy Manor, back in the day, and would not have come cheap.
Clearly there was some truth to the rumours that the Boy who Lived was minted, even though you wouldn’t think it when you met him. Though the suit he was wearing today, was well tailored. In fact it would not surprise him if it came from the same tailor as his own.
That was it, Draco thought excitedly.
‘Hey Harry,’ he said when Harry returned with the wine, ‘we can just tell people we met at our tailor.’
Harry nearly choked on his wine.
‘We have the same tailor?’
‘The cut of your suit would certainly suggest so.’
‘You have been checking out my suit?’
‘Among other things?’, Draco said with a wink, raising his glass.
Harry blushed profusely.
‘Ever wondered if we could have been friends, if we had met under different circumstances?,’ Draco asked after a pause.
‘Sure,’ Harry said.
There was another pause.
‘I grew up thinking of you as some sort of super hero, you know.’
‘I am a super hero,’ Harry said deadpan.
This time it was Draco who snorted in his wine.
‘Well you can fly, I give you that.’
‘Beat your ass more than once at quidditch, if you recall.’
‘Don’t remind me. I couldn’t even blame an inferior broom,’ Draco groaned.
Harry laughed, remembering Draco parading onto the Quidditch pitch, looking smug in his new Seeker gear, with his fellow Slytherins, all carrying the latest, fastest broom, courtesy of Malfoy Senior.
‘What are you flying these days?’
‘A Thunderbolt IX.’
‘Nice, I am more of a Firebolt Ultra Extreme guy.’
‘I bet you are. Maybe we should ditch this ball and order takeout. What do you say, Potter?’
‘But Hermione and Luna will be so disappointed. They worked so hard to organise this charity event. Raising money for orphaned dragons.’
‘Just apologise in the morning and give them a sizeable donation. Rumour has it that you are not exactly poor.’
Harry still looked uncertain. He wasn’t in the habit of letting his friends down, but then again, would they really miss him? And it was all about the donation to the charity anyway, wasn’t it?
‘You know, technically I am an orphaned dragon too, or at least semi-orphaned’, Draco said, giving Harry a puppy dog stare.
Harry giggled.
‘I never heard of the term semi-orphaned before, but let’s go with that. So are you saying you are a charity case too?’
‘If that’s what it takes to ditch the ball and spend the evening here with you and that bottle of excellent wine, then yes, consider me a charity case.’
Harry laughed, ‘Chinese or Mexican?’
‘Chinese, please.’
While Harry organised the food, Draco flicked through Harry’s extensive vinyl collection.
Draco fired up the old gramophone and put on some jazz music.
He took off his jacked and loosened his tie, as he wandered around the room, inspecting the collection of books on the shelves and picking up the odd, exquisite, knick-knack. Harry really had quite an expensive taste, he realised, when his eyes caught a real Van Gogh hanging on the far wall.
When Harry returned he was carrying another bottle of wine and like Draco he had discarded the suit jacket and loosened his tie.
‘Dinner will be on me’, Draco said. ‘It’s the least I can do to make up for this divine liquid,’ he said pointing unnecessarily at his now full glass.
‘I was only joking by the way. I am no charity case. I may have lost all my Faaaaather’s assets, but I’m not doing too badly. Being a sports editor and food critic for the Prophet pays remarkably well.’
He did not say that he also wrote the Madame Peach’s advice column. That was one secret he was not quite ready to reveal just yet.
‘Don’t sweat it, you were supposed to be my plus one for the night, so enjoy the wine. Great choice by the way,” he said, referring to the music, ‘I love this jazz album.’
‘Great collection. Muggle one, by the looks of it, but I am not complaining,’ he added quickly, holding his hands up defensively.
‘It belonged to Sirius,’ Harry said. He was pleased that he could talk about his godfather now without his throat tightening. He used to wake up in a sweat every morning, having relived Sirius’ fall through the veil of death, the echo of Bellatrix maniacal taunt of ‘I killed Sirius Black’ still ringing in his ears.
‘Must have pissed off his folks royally,’ Draco commented dryly and for the second time that evening, Harry nearly choked on his wine.
‘I guess it would have. You sound as if you know a thing or two about pissing off pure bloods.’
‘Don’t get me wrong, I loved my parents, but by the time I finally got my head straight and saw their rhetoric for what is was, I was in too deep. My only recourse was pissing them off enough to make a point.’
He was silent for a while, as he sipped his wine.
‘I nearly asked you to the Yule ball, you know, and not just to piss off my parents, I actually quite fancied you back in those days. Merlin, that wine must be stronger than I thought.’
‘To be fair, I probably would have said No. I only recently have started to acknowledge to myself that I prefer the company of men.’
Or at least one man, a little voice in his head said. How odd that he had described a facsimile of the man opposite him to the woman at ‘One’derful Dates.
‘Have you always known?’ he asked Draco.
Merlin that wine was definitely too strong. It was more potent than veritaserum.
‘That I am gay, or that I fancied you?’
A now beetroot Harry stuttered, ‘The gay bit.’
‘Yeah, probably from my early teens.’
Draco had by now kicked off his dress shoes and had made himself comfortable on the large couch. With a flick of his wand he turned over the record and with another flick he lit the fire.
Harry was pleased to see that his so called date felt at home, even if just for one night.
Before he could give it any more thought the doorbell announced that their food had arrived.
‘Might as well have it in here in front of the fire’, Draco suggested, when Harry returned with the food.
By now they were well into their second bottle.
‘Shame that we never had the chance to perform our little charade in front of our friends,’ Harry said.
And immediately mentally corrected himself my friends, not ours.
‘Do you think they would have bought that we were on a date? I still can’t believe we share the same tailor. How come I never met you there?’
‘Because I don’t go to his place, he comes to me.’
‘Lewis makes house calls?’
‘Harry James Potter, Lewis Faulkner is a pure blood of the highest order, he probably wouldn’t have given you the time of day, Saviour of the Wixen World, if you weren’t rich. Money is the one thing Lewis loves more than anything. If you had gone to him when You Know Who was still around, he probably would have killed you with a poisonous needle.’
‘That figures. I always thought he looked a bit shifty when I was there for fittings.’
He paused and looked at Draco. ‘You are allowed to say the name, you know.’
‘Quite frankly I don’t want to. I don’t even want to think about him. I want to forget that I ever knew him. Unfortunately he haunts my dreams more than you can imagine.’
‘He haunted mine too, for years, and even invaded them and manipulated them, but Voldemort is defeated and we have a right to live our lives without fear of recriminations.’
Without realising it, Harry had moved closer to Draco as he spoke and put his hand on the other man’s arm.
‘You do have the right to be happy too, you know. We can put the past behind us.’
Just for one night, he thought silently, as he felt himself being drawn into a passionate kiss.