Princes in Exile

Authors: Harry's chapters: literaryspell (known here as literarybeauty) Draco's chapters: keppiehed
Beta: softobsidian74 -- Thank you so much for your fun and helpful comments!
Author’s Note: This fic is co-written: every other chapter will be written by me. Chapters written in Harry's perspective are mine, chapters written in Draco's perspective are written by the lovely and talented keppiehed. All chapters will be posted here to this story, so you don't have to look around for it or anything. :D First few chapters are pg-13 but the story will eventually move into nc-17.

Enjoy and let us know what you think!

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Chapter One
Harry's fingers flexed around his holly wand even as his feet pounded on the pavement. Blood rushed to his heart, the panting of his breath lost amidst the cries from his Auror squad and the hexes fired at him.

Just another day on the job.

"Neville!" Harry shouted, but his partner had already ducked the curse and shot two back in quick succession.

Throwing a wild grin, Harry threw a hex with a wide arch of his wand. Time seemed to judder and fray as the hex twisted through the mire of red, green, and black spells to land with fury against the chest of the attempted murderer.

With a cheer, Neville approached the would-be killer, casting Incarcerous with a sneer that Snape himself would have been proud of. The rest of the team hung back, giving Harry and Neville the chance to secure the area.

"Brilliant work, Harry." Neville was breathless but obviously exhilarated. The man they'd chased through half of Diagon Alley gave them both baleful glares. He half-twisted a few times, probably trying to Disapparate, but the Auror-level binding spell was jinxed against Disapparition.

Not against spitting, though. Neville grimaced in distaste and spelled away the glob of saliva from his crimson robes.

"Not so bad yourself, Longbottom," Harry said. Heartbeat returning to normal, Harry couldn’t help but nod at a job well done. They'd been staking out the bloke for nearly a week before he'd finally left his flat. Neither Harry nor Neville had expected to have to chase the bastard, but they were more than trained for such circumstances.

"Wrapped up neat and tidy," remarked a familiar voice from behind them. Ron dismissed the rest of the squad and a series of pops marked their departure.

Harry turned, accepting Ron's pat on his back. "Couldn't have done it without you." Ron had been stuck on desk duty for ages. He and Harry weren’t able to work together—too many instances of being foolish and rushing in. Ron hadn’t been paired with another partner yet, and Harry had been teamed with Neville, who, even Harry could admit, did an amazing job of keeping him in check.

Still, he missed his old partner. He imagined he would have been hauling Ron off the perp rather than having him tied up in neat knots if things had been different. Ron was there for identity verification; once he'd confirmed the magical signature of the man who'd tried to kill his brother-in-law for cheating on his sister, he replaced the binding spell with a cuffing spell and Apparated them both to the Ministry for processing.

"Pint?" Neville suggested, still catching his breath. He had the flushed cheeks of an Auror whose day was done. Harry knew his were the same.

"Can't," he said, infusing regret into his voice.

Neville nodded, the epitome of understanding. He never pressed; not like Ron. That was probably the only good thing about no longer having Ron as his partner. The constant pressure to go out, to do things, wasn’t there anymore.

Feeling guilty for his negative thoughts against Ron who only had the best of intentions, Harry said, "Rain check?"

"Of course." Neville smiled. "You just let me know."

"I will," Harry said, saying the words and meaning the opposite.

*

Harry wasn’t naïve. He was a lot of things, things Ginny would probably love to list if she thought he'd listen, but he wasn’t naïve.

He'd known, going into Auror training, that it wouldn't be like Dumbledore's Army or the Order of the Phoenix. There would be paperwork and bitter coffee and rules to follow (and not break). Still, knowing all that didn’t change the fact that he'd expected more. Every day began to blur together much too quickly. He'd always assumed that sort of rush of time wouldn’t start until he was at least middle-aged. Being only halfway through his twenties should have meant every day was an adventure, or at least had the potential to be.

By the time he'd finished training, he'd realised he was being groomed for Minister. He'd been only nineteen years old. His horror at this discovery had led him to beg Kingsley Shacklebolt for mercy. Take the Minister position permanently, he'd pleaded, heart on his sleeve, bared for disappointment.

Because Harry would have done it. If he'd been needed, if he'd been better than the best choice, he would have taken that role as expected, conformed to that ideal yet again. He'd hate himself every day and probably pickle his liver in a matter of years, but he'd do it. Harry's duty to the wizarding world hadn’t ended with that final Expelliarmus. No, things had only begun.

Naïve.

Kingsley had heeded his pleas, and Harry didn’t think he'd ever stop being grateful.

Tipping more Firewhisky into his mug—not his teacup; fuck you, Ginny—Harry contemplated his paperwork. The write-ups following such a major bust were almost enough to convince Harry to let criminals go free. He'd be much more inclined to catch the bad guys if ten hours of deskwork didn’t immediately follow.

Once the Firewhisky bottle was little more than swirling dregs and the name of the person he'd help take down escaped him, Harry pushed the paperwork away with a sigh. When had life become so rote?

By habit, Harry withdrew his hawthorn wand to start some water boiling for tea. Better for everyday magic, Harry's second wand was impressive in its flexibility. His own wand, the holly and phoenix feather, was perfectly suited to putting paid to evildoers and halting nefarious schemes aplenty, but it was a little overzealous when it came to day-to-day spells.

After the war, if it could even be called such, had ended, Harry had found himself in possession of two wands. He'd had, of course, every intention of bringing Draco Malfoy's wand back to him. He'd gotten as far as the front door of the Manor, and that was a feat in itself, considering Harry'd vowed never to return.

Draco hadn’t been there. Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy had been missing as well.

With the wand burning a hole in his pocket, sometimes even literally (the wand was as spiteful and pernicious as its former owner), Harry had kept an eye on the Manor for a few days. He'd known, or thought he'd known, that the Malfoys would not just leave all their possessions behind.

When the news had reached the Ministry, still in its fledgling state of reestablishment, that the Malfoys had fled sentencing and punishment, there had been an uproar.

People wanted justice, the newspapers had claimed. People wanted closure, as was said in secret.

Harry just wanted to give the fucking wand back.

His first concern had been making sure Severus Snape got the accolades he deserved. And what a bittersweet pill to swallow that particular discovery had been. The extent of Dumbledore's machinations still sent a shiver down Harry's spine. He'd since vowed to never be so manipulative—not even for the greater good. Not that he thought he had it in him, of course, but it never hurt to make a vow one knew one could keep.

After Snape's posthumous Order of Merlin had been awarded—to Harry—and hung in the Ministry atrium, Harry had focused his attention on getting Draco and his mother exonerated and Lucius Malfoy's sentence lightened. Draco's refusal to identify him and Narcissa's lie about his supposed death had saved his life. As far as the testimony from the rest of the Death Eaters desperate to make a trade to evade Azkaban, no one had claimed to witness Draco or Narcissa cast an Unforgivable. With that knowledge, he'd been able to have the entire family's sentence lowered to a mere seven years' exile from the wizarding world.

Harry had no idea whether they even knew about what he'd done for them, let alone if they'd actually left the wizarding world. Knowing how spoilt Draco had been, he doubted the boy could have made it even a few months in the Muggle world. Still, no one reported them and Harry hadn’t found them. Not that he'd really searched… He'd simply had some time off every summer. He wasn’t one for sunny beaches, so he'd travelled a little.

Okay, he'd travelled a lot.

To no avail. Draco and his parents were missing, their seven years' almost up, and Harry still had a wand he didn’t want. At this point, however, he had no idea as to whether he could give it up. He'd fallen into using it while his own wand had been in another room or the time it'd gotten trapped in his trunk and wasn’t able to come when Summoned. That had been a long week.

With Draco's wand, almost as familiar as his own now, Harry fixed his tea—sans Firewhisky because he was a good lad—and glared at the paperwork until he fell asleep at his desk with the bitchy wand jammed under his cheekbone.

*

During his Hogwarts years, Harry had always thought that he, Ron, and Hermione had formed something of a triangle. Each corner offered different talents, different insights, different perspectives. He'd even gone so far as to think the line connecting his point and Ron's had been shorter than the lines connecting them to Hermione. It wasn’t her fault; she was a girl. Back then, that had been rather important. There was also the fact that Harry and Ron shared a dorm and had Quidditch in common, not to mention not being altogether brilliant or very good at studies at all, when it came down to it.

So he had to wonder when it had happened that the line between Hermione and Ron had shortened, and the ones between them and Harry had become so long that he was almost a part of another shape altogether. Someone's random rhombus or maybe just his own lonely dot.

That was depressing.

Across the booth from him at the Three Broomsticks, Ron and Hermione held hands under the table and shared smiles and drinks and looks full of concern. They were like bloody parents already, and they'd only just gotten engaged.

"What now?" he asked, wariness heavy in his voice.

It wasn’t enough to ward them off, especially Hermione. She was brave, that one. "Now, Harry, don't take that tone. We're only concerned about you! We love you and—"

"And we want you to be happy," Ron finished. He basked in Hermione's warm smile for a few gag-worthy moments before they turned their identical sympathetic faces toward him.

He didn’t like being disloyal but honestly. Just because he hadn’t settled down to put a rock on some bird's—or bloke's—finger didn’t mean he was damaged goods.

"I'm fine," he said through gritted teeth. He sent a strained smile Rosmerta's way, and like a charm, she was at his side—against his side, really, the cheeky wench—with another double Firewhisky.

Hermione lifted her empty butterbeer glass to signal that she wanted another, but Rosmerta slinked away, winking at Harry from behind the bar.

Fame. Wasn’t it supposed to corrupt him? Why did it seem that everyone was affected by it but him?

"You haven’t had a decent relationship in ages," Hermione reminded him after sending Ron to the bar for refills.

"Define decent," Harry retorted with a leer. He laughed at her blush, amused that she always went red whenever he spoke about his exploits.

"I meant… meaningful."

Harry shrugged. Not everyone was looking for that other half, that soul mate. Some people might not even believe such a phenomenon existed. Harry wasn’t entirely sold one way or another, thought Hermione and Ron made a decent argument for it. "I'm not ready for meaningful," he admitted.

"Merlin, Hermione, let the bloke sow his oats a bit before you have him making babies like he was a Weasley."

Harry turned to the familiar voice. Justin Finch-Fletchley. Things hadn’t ended well between them, but it might be nice to have someone on his side again—and he didn’t just mean on his side of the bed.

"Hey, Justin," Harry said, hating the almost shy tone of his voice. That was why he never pulled—he just wasn’t assertive enough.

"Hey, baby." Justin smiled, knowing Harry had come to hate the nickname. They'd only been together a few months, but it had been enough for Harry to discover exactly what he didn’t want in a relationship with another man. Pet names were high on the list.

"'Mione, Luna's here," Ron said, coming back to table. He eyed Justin, a warning in his face. Never really friends, animosity had grown between the two after Justin had broken it off with Harry; it didn't matter to Ron that Harry really hadn’t minded.

"Oh! I haven’t seen her in… Harry, will you be okay?"

"'Course," he said, shooing them away. "Tell Luna I say hullo."

Ron hesitated but followed Hermione after a moment, throwing Harry a look full of support and a very clear message to not go there again.

"Been a while," Justin remarked. He looked Harry over slowly, moves right from the Saucy Twink Handbook.

"How've you been? How's Micky?" Justin's cat was missed more than Justin. The cute little thing had attached itself to Harry from the first, and Harry regretted losing the purring ball of warmth at his feet much more than the purring warm weight of Justin.

"Good. Fat, now."

"Yeah? That was fast. I told you to get him indoor cat food."

Justin laughed. "Yes, you did."

For a moment it was easy. Justin was familiar. He was sexy. He knew how Harry liked his cock sucked, and anything was better than a lonely wank in his bed.

"Want to come over for some drinks? We can pick up some cat food on the way and tease Micky about his diet."

Harry was tempted. Justin's hand smoothed over his shoulder, the touch reminiscent of the fifteen minutes or so things had been perfect between them.

"Can't," he said finally, putting a more appropriate amount of space between them. "Have to work in the morning."

Justin pouted and Harry knew he'd made the right choice. There'd always been something fabricated, something forced about being with Justin.

"Another time, then?" Justin purred, making Harry even more nostalgic for Micky.

"You bet," Harry said. He didn’t plan on burning that bridge just yet. A man had needs, after all, and being the most famous wizard in the magical world made finding a boyfriend next to impossible. Why was it that only witches sent knickers in the mail?

He made his way over to Luna, Hermione, and Ron, who were standing near the bar. Luna's earrings were blinking blue and pink, and Harry let them guide him through the crowd.

"How are you?" he asked, pulling her into a hug. She smelled like raisins.

"Just fine," she said, her voice barely travelling over the raucous of the bar. "Just passing along the news."

Luna owned and wrote for the Quibbler and always had the best gossip. That the gossip was interspersed with random factoids about imaginary creatures or exposés on wizards long dead and gone was just another part of the charm.

"What's the scoop, Luna?" Harry asked brightly. He was in a good enough mood, despite having turned down a sure lay, to entertain notions of reincarnations and mystical happenings.

"Sources say," Luna began in her best serious tone, "that Draco Malfoy is back in England."