“Zee labor swift and ze potions strong,” Fleur says, sounding like she means it.
“The spirit rich with magic and song!” George finishes, and they all cheer and throw back their shots. Harry never does know any of these Wizarding toasts.
It all devolves after that, everyone scraping back their chairs to talk, to get more drinks, to hug Ron and Hermione again. Harry chats with Neville for a few minutes while Ginny’s at the bar, and then, when he goes to get a drink himself, gets stuck with Percy. It’s twenty minutes and most of a glass Firewhiskey before Penelope shows up and saves Harry from further discussion of the minutiae of Wizarding tax law reform, and on his way back to the tables with a fresh top-off he gets roped into judging an arm-wrestling contest between George and Angelina. By the time he, at last, makes it back, more people are starting to pour in, and a new round of cheering starts with every addition to their group, the enthusiasm almost as overwhelming as the noise. Harry’s usual booth, at least, is thankfully empty, and he slides over into the corner, takes a long sip of Firewhiskey, and sighs.
They’ve known for two weeks, and they didn’t tell him.
That’s not—Harry knows it’s not fair, that they’re not obligated. He found about Rose more or less exactly when they did, but that was only because he happened to be on a Firecall with Ron while Hermione was doing the charm to check in the bathroom. She burst out shrieking her delight and Ron and Harry, once they figured out what was going on, shrieked too—well, yelled, at least—before Ron and Hermione threw their arms around one another in a passionate embrace and Harry hastily retreated back into his own fire. It was an incredible thing, even if it did end in a brutal assault on Harry’s eyeballs. It’s one of the moments he always reaches for when he casts a Patronus.
And that should be enough. Harry shouldn’t and doesn’t expect any more from them; he takes too much of their time and energy already, and to need this from them, too…it wouldn’t be fair. He knows that it’s not. It’s just…for so many years it was the three of them against the world, and even after they paired off—hell, even after they had Rose—Harry could convince himself, sometimes, that it was still like that in all the ways that mattered. That Ron and Hermione and Harry were a team, and what Ron and Hermione got up to in their down time wouldn’t change that, no matter what.
But now Harry can see what he’s known somewhere deep for years, what’s left him feeling guilty a thousand nights at Ron and Hermione’s table: they’re the team, the two of them. Harry’s what they get up to in their down time.
Harry’s chest hurts, and he orders another drink. The bar is loud, music thumping, and Ron’s been promoted—he’ll slip away slow, and right in front of Harry’s eyes. They’ll talk when they see each other at the office, which is already less and less, and then Ron won’t want to hang around after work; he’ll have his kids, his two kids, and his wife to get home to. Hermione will make plans with Harry that she’ll break, because she’ll be overworked and exhausted and presiding over six cases in between navigating breastfeeding and the terrible twos, and Harry will understand. Harry will have no choice but to understand, because he would never begrudge either of them a moment of happiness, nor their children—any children, but especially theirs—the loving attentions of wonderful parents. He’ll still see them, go 'round for dinner maybe once a month or so, catch them at the Burrow or babysit when they need a hand, but it’ll never be the same. They’ll be wrapped up in the warmth of their family, where they should be, and Harry’ll be where he always is: standing just on the outside, without one.
His stupid fucking glass is empty. He glares at it, as though this will cause it to refill itself; Harry knows it won’t, but he doesn’t stop. He’s a bit drunk, the sort that requires continued imbibing to really solidify into a proper evening’s buzz, and when he looks away from his glass he’s going to have to confront the enormity of the task it will be to either flag down a waitress or get to the bar.
Maybe, Harry thinks, if he stares at the glass long enough, it will simulate the sensation of further drinking, and he won’t have to get up at all.
“Well,” drawls a familiar voice, “isn’t this exactly as sad as Blaise said it would be.”
Harry wrenches his head around to the left, unable to believe it without seeing it, but sure enough: there’s Draco, standing at the end of Harry’s booth with his arms crossed and Blaise Zabini at his shoulder. He’s got his hair pulled back tonight over a black jacket and a slate grey sweater, a pair of jeans in dark blue denim, and the expression of a man who has been tried beyond all limits of patience—though, admittedly, that is his expression at least a third of the time.
“Dra—Malfoy?” Harry says, catching himself just in time.
Draco rolls his eyes. Then, to Harry’s amazement, he slides into the other side of Harry’s booth and demands, “What are you drinking, Potter?”
“Er,” says Harry, blinking at him, “Firewhiskey?”
“Lovely,” Draco says, and turns a dazzling smile on Blaise. “Would you look at that? Potter and I are already sitting down and you seem to still be up. You should probably go get drinks; it would be the polite thing to do.”
“You understand that no one finds this little act as amusing as you do,” Blaise says, sounding amused. Harry’s not actually looking at him; he’s still too busy staring at Malfoy, trying to determine whether or not he’s some kind of hallucination, if maybe Harry needs to go to St. Mungo’s and demand a drugs kit.
“As luck would have it, I find it amusing enough for all of us,” Draco says. “One Firewhiskey for Potter—he takes it on the rocks, I believe—and another, neat, for me.”
“You can take the boy out of the Manor,” Blaise says, but then he laughs, adds, “Oh, fine, but you’re paying. Hi, Harry, by the way.”
It takes Harry a second to realize that Blaise has addressed him, and he turns to look, having somehow—despite sitting here listening to his and Malfoy’s exchange—almost forgotten he was there. “Oh. Er. Hi, Blaise.”
“I want you to know,” Blaise says, sounding like he’s holding back laughter, “it is genuinely always just such a pleasure,” and then he walks off into the crowd, smiling to himself about god knows what.
He’s not been gone five seconds when Draco pulls a flask out of his breast pocket. “He’ll be forty minutes if he comes back at all,” he explains, pouring a measure into Harry’s empty glass and then swiping it, tossing it all down. “And if he does return he’ll have drunk at least half of one of our drinks. Blaise is very dependable that way; bags on whichever glass he leaves alone, since I’m the one playing catch-up.”
“Do you always bring a flask to the bar?” Harry says, as Draco pours another measure into the glass. He snatches it before Draco can pick it up and takes a small sip, then holds onto it, just to be obnoxious.
“To this bar I do,” Draco says, narrowing his eyes, and takes a drink straight from the flask itself. “Like I want to elbow my way through a crowd of Gryffindors to buy an overpriced glass of Firewhiskey not even half as good as what I have at home; please.”
Harry startles a little at the word “Gryffindors,” reminded abruptly that this isn’t just the two of them waiting for an order at some restaurant, like usual. “Malfoy, what are you doing here?”
Draco waves a hand. “Oh, Longbottom invited me, that’s not important. The better question is: what are you doing here?”
Harry stares at him, and then at his glass, as if it will provide him some answers. When it does not, he looks back to Draco and says, “Er. These are my friends? It’s the Gryffindor piss-up? I’m here every month?”
Draco drops his head briefly and feelingly into his hands. “Not here in this bar, Potter,” he says, muffled against his palms, before he pulls them back again to gesture at the table between them. “Here, in this booth, in a dark corner, by yourself. Like a serial killer,” he adds helpfully. “Or perhaps a vengeful ghost, take your pick. Either way: what gives?”
Harry has thought, many times, about what he would say if anyone ever asked him this question. He’s been sure for months—no, years—that his answer was unimpeachable. But no one has, in point of fact, ever asked it before, so he’s never until right now gotten the opportunity to hear exactly how stupid, “It’s the most easily defensible position in the bar,” sounds coming out of his mouth.
“That,” Draco says, staring Harry dead in the eye, “is what a serial killer would say.”
Harry thinks maybe he’s supposed to laugh—he thinks he would, even, that it would be funny if he weren’t in such a foul mood. Instead he crosses his arms over his chest and, a little defensively, says, “I just—I don’t like crowds that much, okay? Or, you know. This kind of music, or the dancing, or having seventeen different conversations in the space of two minutes but never for any longer than two minutes or…all of it. I’d rather not, is all.”
It’s more than he meant to say by a fairly wide margin. Harry blames the drink, even as he lifts his glass and takes another long pull.
“So your solution to this problem,” Draco says slowly, “is, what—to come anyway, and sit in a corner until you’re worse for drink and have an excuse to fuck off home?”
“More or less,” Harry admits. He knows it’s not great, but, well. It’s what he’s got.
“But that’s the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard,” Draco says, sounding horrified. “That’s stupider than the time I was nine and tried to fly my broomstick to Jupiter. That’s—Potter, that might be stupider than Bernice throwing love potions at Grindlewald.”
“I don’t know if it’s quite that stupid,” Harry says. “I mean, this works all right sometimes. It’s not like the love potion was ever going to, even if it did hit.”
“You can’t know that,” Draco says. “Perhaps Basilah Saeed was being ungenerous in her descriptions and Bernice did not resemble a toe! Perhaps Grindlewald preferred his women on the mature end of the spectrum!”
“Pretty sure Grindlewald preferred his men to his women,” Harry says, just as Draco’s taking a sip from the flask.
Draco chokes on his drink. He coughs, gasps, and splutters for a minute before finally, in scandalized tones, he says, “Gellert Grindlewald was not gay.”
“Pretty sure he was,” Harry says.
“And how would you know? Talked to a lot of his conquests, have you?
“Well, just the one,” Harry says, and makes a face. “I think, anyway. And I suppose he could’ve be bi, now that you mention it; I never really felt up to asking for specifics.”
“Why not?” Draco demands. “Who was it? I must know, Potter. For posterity; for history; for my own sanity, I must know.”
“Oh,” Harry says. He would never want to out anyone, especially on a guess, but—well —the man’s dead. Also, Harry’s feelings about him have, with adulthood, evolved into a complicated little snarl that he doesn’t like to touch, but that reeks distantly of anger most of the time. Also, he kind of doubts the old man would mind. “Erm. Well—it was Dumbledore, actually.”
“Albus Dumbledore was not gay!” Draco nearly shouts this, though it’s too loud in the bar for anyone but Harry to hear him. “Honestly, this is too much, you can’t possibly expect me to believe—wait, do you mean Aberforth?”
“No, I mean Albus.” Harry shudders. “But thanks for that mental image; I’ll treasure it.”
“Oh, because the image of Albus,” Draco says, and stops, blanches, before he continues, a little more subdued, “Okay, perhaps it’s best to skip the images entirely. But still—I mean —Dumbledore—” He shakes his head, eyes wide against the shock. “Not a single indication! Not an iota of disclosure! Not a hint, not an inkling, not a single nod in any of those benighted speeches to the near and queer amongst us! You’re just going to tell me this now, after the fact, and expect me to believe he was simply walking around Hogwarts, gay as a bird, that whole time?”
“I mean,” Harry says. Something about the phrase ‘the near and queer amongst us’ is sending up alarm bells in the back of Harry’s mind, but he’s drunk and at a bit of a remove from all that, so he doesn’t worry about it. “You can believe what you want. I never got total confirmation, anyway, he just…I don’t know. He told me about him and Grindlewald, when they were young, and it was kind of—I mean—pretty unmistakably. You know.” He makes another face, because even now the idea of Albus Dumbledore bumping uglies with anybody horrifies Harry a little.
“I cannot believe this,” Draco says. He both looks and sounds outraged. “I cannot— believe—I mean, there I was, in the throes of my adolescent sexuality crisis, without an adult on that whole campus to talk to—well, none but Madam Hooch, anyway, who doesn’t count, Potter, let me tell you. What a terrible conversation that was, I’m loathe to even think of it, it honestly very nearly drove me right back into the closet—and there was Dumbledore! Up in his ivory tower! Gay!” He throws himself into a slouch against the back of the booth, scowling and crossing his arms. “What kind of commitment is that to bettering the lives of the next generation, I ask you? That man was a blight on our education and I won’t hear a word of argument.”
“Wait,” Harry says, the alarm bells in his mind having increased from a distant ringing to a much more immediate cacophony. “Wait, hold on. Malfoy. Are you gay?”
