Angel on the cover

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A/N: ok, so I have finally caught up on AFF, I should be updating a new chapter by next week.

Thanks for reading this far, hope you've liked my first fic :)





Harry’s legs were numb by the time Draco showed any sign of moving. They sat on the cold tile floor, tears having dried and breathing gotten under control long ago. Harry treasured the feel of Draco in his arms and the familiar weight him in his lap.



“Did you fraternise with anyone while you were there?” Draco asked him, speaking into Harry’s chest.



“Of course not,” Harry answered with no hesitation.



“Did you think of me?”



“Every moment of every day,” Harry vowed fervently.



“All those fights with Voldemort have really addled your brains, haven’t they?”



“Erm, I don’t know,” the brunet answered uncertainly.



“That’s the problem. You never know; you never think, Potter.” Draco sighed in resignation, absentmindedly rubbing his abdomen.



Harry reacted to the arm moving against his stomach and glanced down to the see the position of Draco’s arm.



“I can’t believe you’re pregnant,” Harry said softly, in awe, but he quickly grew serious. “Draco, I shouldn’t be here.”



“Shut up. You owe me so much for this stunt. You don’t know how close you came to having your bollocks ripped off. As a matter of fact, I’m not so sure I’ve decided not to go with that,” Draco muttered half-heartedly, feeling exhaustion setting in.



The blond pushed against his chest with both hands, wriggling off his lap.



“Help me up,” the expecting man ordered softly.



Harry scampered to his feet, bending forward to carefully assist him to his feet.



Draco didn’t move away from Harry, but moved closer until their chests were almost pressed together. Lifting a hand, he ran the smooth palm across the stubble covering the brunet’s strong jaw.



“You look like shite,” he commented. From his vantage point he could see the bags under those expressive green eyes.



“You look great,” Harry whispered, staring down at him.



Harry’s breathing grew deeper the closer Draco got to him. Leaning up slowly, the blond noticed his green eyes were slowly being hidden behind thick sable lashes. Time seemed to stand still, but came rushing back all to quickly. Harry’s eyelids stopped their slow descent and sprung open in astonishment.



The blond man moved back to allow the other man to bend forward clutching his stomach. Harry fought to catch his breath; the blond had planted a solid punch to his solar plexus.



Harry wondered how he recalled the name of the muscle, but swept it aside with a calming mantra of ‘I deserved that,’ unaware he was repeating it aloud.



“Of course you deserved it, Potter. That and much more.” Draco uttered the words matter-of-factly. “Come, I want to sleep.”



Draco swept out of the washroom not bothering to see if Harry was following. He spied Granger at the end of the hall peering at him.



“Granger!” the former Slytherin called out. “I want kippers, eggs, bacon, toast, and a glass of pumpkin juice for breakfast.” Not pausing while he made his order, he stepped into the bedroom and closed the door behind him.



She nodded in agreement although he was no longer in front of her. She watched as Harry appeared in the hall and started to make his way to the guest room. The young woman grabbed his arm before he could enter.



“Wasn’t I right?” she asked, looking at him intently.



Harry couldn’t meet her imploring brown eyes.



“Wouldn’t you have regretted it?” she asked, trying to make him understand her earlier insistence.



He smiled sadly. “Of course I would have, Hermione, but me being here is only going to make things worse.”



He gently extricated himself from her grip and disappeared behind the bedroom door. Hermione stayed in her place, memorising the knots in the wooden separation. Both of these men kept putting doors between them and herself.



She could only hope that they didn’t do it to each other. The former Head Girl’s sigh was unnaturally loud in the quiet corridor and for the first time in her young life, she felt like she could really go for a pint.





X x X x X x X x



Harry blinked to adjust his eyes to the dim lighting; he could just make out Draco’s form on the bed. He lowered himself onto the bed, cautiously toeing off his trainers and lying down on top of the covers.



He’d woken up that morning in the same hell that had greeted him for so long and was ending the day going to sleep next to the man he’d ran away from. He could hear Draco’s breathing slowed by sleep; he was even close enough to smell his cologne. He closed his eyes, lulled by the familiar noises of a life that seemed so long ago, and for the first time in months, he slept peacefully.



In the dark, grey eyes finally closed, surrendering to sleep once he was sure the other occupant of the bed had fallen asleep first.



X xxX xXxXx





There was an uncomfortable silence as they sat around the table for breakfast the next morning. Hermione looked tentatively from one face to another, trying to discern the situation. It was a good sign, she guessed, that both of them were still here, but they both seemed uncertain about how to act around each other.



Harry ate sparingly, picking at the food on his plate, more interested in staring at the blond man. Draco’s face was turning a little red from the brunet’s attention and Hermione wasn’t sure he was all too happy.



“What’s for breakfast?” Ron asked loudly as he joined them in the kitchen.



Noisily grabbing a plate from the cabinet, the redhead sat down next to Hermione and began helping himself.



“Oh, thank you, Mione. You’re the love of my life,” he whispered, fervently picking up a strip of bacon.



“Me or the bacon?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.



“You of course. You make the bacon,” Ron teased, smiling. “Morning, Harry.”



The brunet smiled in greeting. “Morning, Ron.”



“Look at that, Malfoy. Your plate’s almost as full as mine,” Ron commented in astonishment.



Draco’s expression grew strained but a moment later Ron added seriously, “Good. You’re too skinny. My mum always said that pregnant people need to eat with the baby in mind.”



“Your mum would know,” Draco said lacking vindictiveness.



“Yeah, she would,” Ron agreed easily.



“Draco, have you been to see Poppy?” Harry asked quietly.



“I did when I first found out, and thanks to your two Musketeers here, she saw me when I arrived here,” Draco replied.



“So what are you guys going to do, Harry?” Hermione asked, more comfortable now that her husband had broken the ice.



“We’re going back to the flat,” Draco answered for him.



“I need to pack up my things though,” Harry told the blond.



“You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying here with Weasley, and Granger and I will go get your stuff,” Draco replied.



“It’s okay, Draco. I can do it. I promised you I wouldn’t run,” Harry insisted, trying to convince him.



Draco grew wary at Harry’s almost desperate request. Just what did Harry not want him to see?



“I’m going to do it.” His voice left no room for argument. “Don’t let him out of your sight,” he told Ron sternly.



Draco finished the rest of his plate quickly but with poise. Getting up from the table, he hastened Hermione to finish.



She stood from the table, instructing Ron to gather their plates and wash the dishes and then focused on Harry.



“Where’s your Portkey? Or did you use the Floo to get to England?” Hermione questioned him, tapping her foot impatiently.



“I just Apparated,” Harry shrugged.



“That’s not possible. You can’t cross continents using Apparation alone,” she contradicted him.



“That was the quickest way to get here, so I just did it,” Harry replied quietly, but Draco heard him and he rolled his eyes to disguise the pleasure he felt at the comment.



“Ok. Well, we can’t Apparate to an unknown location and it wouldn’t be good for Draco either, so you need to tell us where it’s located so we can Floo to the nearest Wizarding village.”



“Call me when you have it all together,” Draco said as he walked back towards his temporary room.



Stepping back in to the kitchen, he added one more thing. “Actually, unless you want your friends to be sanctioned by the Ministry, you should go there to straighten this abduction mess out,” he suggested to Harry.



Hermione and Ron looked after him in surprise. In the midst of Harry and Draco reuniting, they’d forgotten all about the circumstances that had brought them back together. What was more shocking was the reminder from Draco that would help keep them out of trouble.



X x X x X x X x X x



It took the pair the better part of an hour to get to Harry’s neighbourhood. It was far from any Wizarding communities and in a seedy part of the city. After using two Floos and a thirty-five minute cab ride, they finally arrived at the door of Harry’s building. Draco stepped out cautiously, one hand on his wand, the other on the keys Harry had given him.





The building looked dilapidated: the red paint on the brick was peeling off and was worlds apart from what their flat looked like. They chose to take the stairs rather than risk getting stuck in the antique lift.



The long travel time had given Draco plenty of time to imagine what the contents of Harry’s flat would hold. Abandoned articles of the paramours that Harry denied having and other dreamed scenarios didn’t sit well with Draco’s stomach.



Draco’s expectations flew out the window when he turned the key and stepped into the room. Sparse was too vague a description for the place. It looked unlived in: there was no couch and no television. The living room was nothing more than a glorified entryway.



Hearing Granger following him, he went down the tiny hallway, passing a compact bathroom. He motioned to his old classmate to pass him one of the shrunken boxes that she’d brought along for packing.



“You do the washroom. I’ll do his room,” he instructed and kept moving to where Harry had slept for the last five months.



‘What in Salazar’s name was he thinking?!’



There was so much to take in that it was hard to focus on any one thing. Once Draco recuperated a bit, he went for the newspaper articles that covered all of the available wall space. Their positions had to have been level with Harry’s eyesight. Moving pictures and large titles underneath the Daily Prophet logo adorned the wall.



Draco set the box on the floor next to his feet, taking a closer look at Harry’s bizarre wallpaper.



It was like reliving the war through the parchments magically stuck to the wall. ‘A War Torn Wizarding World,’ ‘Muggles Killed in Crossfire,’ ‘Panic in the Streets!’ It was all there: the entire war captured by the Wizarding media. They were all in chronological order--a strange, painful timeline. Draco removed the articles as he went, dropping them into the box carelessly.



One article in particular caught his eye: ‘Student Discovered as Spy in Hogwarts!’ Draco remembered the uproar it had caused when Theodore Nott, the boy who had chosen to take up Draco’s position in the Death Eater ring, was unmasked.



That could have been him working for the Dark Lord, killing Dumbledore, hiding from the teams of Aurors in broken down houses, bowing down to the Dark Lord in order to survive only to end up an unrecognisable mess strung up on the front door of one of their hideouts. He turned away from the explicit picture of Theodore Nott’s body in disgust; his mother had known exactly what she was saving him from. Not that his choice had seemed much better at the time--he’d been a pariah and forced into a closely guarded cloister. Severus had fled from the castle and Harry Potter became the only thing between him and a student body who hungered for someone to blame for the Headmaster’s death.



“Finite. Accio articles.”



He gathered the summoned stack and dropped them haphazardly into the box. He briefly contemplated setting the depressing things on fire but decided against it. He gathered the threadbare Muggle clothing he found in Harry’s pitiful excuse for a closet and threw them onto a pile on the floor; those he was definitely burning. It seemed that in his time as a recluse, the Gryffindor idiot had lived like an impoverished vagabond.



There were no personal effects in the room, and soon Draco was ready to pack up the most important belongings the man had. He kneeled on the floor gingerly, arm stretched out under the bed making grasps at the trunk he knew had to be there.



“Oomph!”



He struggled a little drawing the trunk Harry had had since their school days into the open. He sat on the floor, pulling it open to view the belongings inside. Maybe whatever Harry did not want him to see was in here….



He sifted through the trunk, but all he found was the gifted Firebolt, knick knacks of all kinds, and mementos from fallen comrades in the war; all things he was familiar with. He spotted the album that the half-giant had lovingly pieced together for a young Harry. He leaned back against the trunk to more comfortably peruse its pages.



He wondered if their child would resemble Harry as much as he did James, or if he or she would be born resembling his own parents. He turned the pages quickly, having seen all the pictures before, but stopped cold at an unfamiliar addition. It was a picture of him. He flipped through the new pictures, eyes taking in the images of himself both with Harry and without all through their time together. That sentimental bastard had dared to include him with his family!



He blew out a breath, blinking his eyes to stop those hateful tears that fought to make their appearance.



The blond hurried to shove the perpetrator of these unwanted emotions back into the trunk and promptly shrunk it for travel.



Hermione cleared her throat from the doorway. “I’ll have to come back. He has some Pensieves and I don’t have a safe way to transport them.”



X x X x X x X x X x



“It’s Harry Potter!”



“Harry Potter?”



It was almost like the first time he entered the Leaky Cauldron all those years ago with Hagrid. The stares, the amazement from the elderly wizards and witches gathered around, the hushed whispers. Harry Potter had once again returned to the Wizarding World.