Title: Wyvern Brooms
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Content Notes: Ignores epilogue, slight angst, fluff
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Wordcount: 2300
Rating: PG
Summary: Years after saving the world, Harry is happy in his life, crafting custom brooms, and in his blossoming relationship with Draco.
Author's Notes: Another one of my July Celebration fics.

Wyvern Brooms

"How's my favorite broom-maker?"

"At least as well as my favorite customer." Harry smiled as Draco laid a handful of birch twigs on the counter. "Don't tell me. You've found yet another kind of wood that you want incorporated in your Starstreak's tail."

"I only want the best," Draco said, and draped himself over the counter so that his shirt would gape open a little and Harry could see his chest. Harry looked. He had to oblige his favorite customer. "And I always get it, too."

Harry dragged his eyes away from Draco's chest and grinned at him, then scooped up the birch twigs and inspected them carefully. When he paid close enough attention, he could separate out the ones that wouldn't work well with the broom model he was designing from the ones that would. He dumped two broken twigs and two that didn't feel right back on the counter and accepted the others. "You realize this puts off the day when your broom will be complete."

"Oh, no. Whatever will I do with extra trips to make here?"

Harry caught his breath at the promise in Draco's soft tone, and nodded to him. "Maybe one of your extra trips might include lunch."

"It could. For example, if someone else was willing to accompany me to the Golden Lamb down the street."

"Perhaps the someone has heard that the Golden Lamb is horrendously expensive on a shopkeeper's earnings."

"Perhaps another person has heard that and doesn't care, since he's paying."

Harry lost the pretense of seriousness and laughed. "All right. Let me just put these twigs with the others so they have the time to become accustomed to each other."

Draco stepped back with a satisfied expression, and Harry ducked into the back of his shop. He knew that some of his customers found it less than satisfying. It was almost wild back here, with live trees holding the shelves and racks and other storage that contained the materials for Harry's brooms. And then there was the large, stuffed wyvern looming in the back to watch over it all. Harry had found it in a Light equivalent of Borgin and Burke's and fallen in love with it.

Harry put the birch twigs with the ones of alder and rowan that he'd already selected or Draco had brought for him to make the Starstreak, and patted the wyvern on the head near one of the scaled eye-ridges. "Keep an eye out, Argus."

No response, of course. But it made Harry feel better to do it anyway. Smiling, he went to fetch his cloak and go have lunch with Draco.

It made him feel better to do lots of things that he wanted, lately.

"One more time."

Draco rolled his eyes, but he was smiling rather than pouting as he spread his arms. "With as many times as you've cast that spell already…"

"The fit has to be perfect if you want the perfect broom," Harry responded absently. His mind was already more focused on his wand, which he traced carefully in the air, outlining Draco's chest and legs and spread arms. Then he flung his wand out towards the huge blank piece of parchment on the nearby wall. "Formare!"

The parchment blazed, and then a purple silhouette of Draco came slowly into being on the paper. Harry sighed and nodded. Yes, that was both large enough for him to work with and detailed enough that he could correct the slight problems of balance and imperfect magic that had happened with his last attempt at modeling the Starstreak to Draco's size and balance.

"I don't know anyone who works as hard as you do," Draco murmured behind him.

Harry felt warm breath on the back of his neck, and grinned. "How many of your friends work in the first place?" he asked, and didn't move as he Summoned the length of hawthorn wood that he was modeling the broom handle out of. It was the same wood as Draco's wand, and notoriously difficult to shape. Harry didn't care.

"Point." Draco didn't move. "But, you know, I get worried when my favorite shopkeeper works so hard and I never know if he's really relaxing as much as he should be." His voice was almost a rumble now, and he slid his fingers around the corner of Harry's hip as if he wanted to see how much it curved.

"I take holidays," Harry said, and began to rotate the length of hawthorn in the air, glancing back and forth between it and the purple silhouette as he shaped it.

"Not as many as you could. Not ones that would permit someone to share them with you."

Harry waited until he was sure that he'd made as many modifications as he could to the length of hawthorn right now, and then sent it to hover in the air next to one of the trees before he turned around and faced Draco. "And you're offering to be this company?"

"Well. I could perhaps make the sacrifice, if I was persuaded that someone else needed it." Draco tilted his head down, his eyes wide and liquid and his expression the one of perfect innocence he'd never managed to use in Hogwarts.

Harry raised his eyebrows. "I'll have you know that spending time with me is not a sacrifice."

"Oh, I know that, Harry."

Harry held his gaze until the intensity was almost suffocating, and then nodded. "Well, maybe when this broom and a few other orders are done, then it might be time to take a good, week-long holiday. Maybe somewhere out of Britain, since I've never been. I could use a friend to tell me where to go."

Draco's lips parted a little. "You've never been out of Britain?"

Harry looked steadily, patiently, at him. Draco snapped his mouth shut and nodded. He had made a few efforts to talk about things in Harry's past that Harry didn't want to talk about, and had learned the hard way that it wasn't feasible.

"I do have some—suggestions."

Draco's voice was warm and his hand sliding around Harry's hip again. Harry squeezed the hand and dropped it. "Then think about it and come back and tell me when you're decided on a place. I need to work on this broom now."

"I didn't know that you would trust me to make decisions for you."

Draco's voice was mild and neutral. Harry tilted his head without looking away from the hawthorn broom in front of him. "You don't have to do it if you don't want to."

Draco abruptly crowded up behind him, and Harry turned around and basked in the warmth pouring from his body, from his eyes, from his low, purring voice. "On the contrary. It would be an honor."

"Then make it," Harry whispered, standing on his toes so that his breath fell on Draco's lips. His pupils dilated. "And come back and tell me when you've made it." He leaned a little more towards Draco, decreasing the distance between them even more, and then stepped out of the way with a wink.

Draco pivoted to face him, his eyes wide and his lips still parted a little. "Tease," he growled, in a way that made delicious shivers vibrate down Harry's spine.

"That's me," Harry said, and smiled at him until he left, walking as if he'd been hit over the head by the finished broom. Harry laughed and went back to considering the twigs he would make the tail out of, and whether thestral or hippogriff sinew would be better for it.

"Your Patronus said that the broom was finished." Draco was yawning as he stepped into the shop and crossed over to Harry under Argus's watchful eyes.

"Yes. Did I get you out of bed? Why were you sleeping in the middle of the afternoon?"

Draco paused in the way he was stretching. "Harry," he muttered, sounding fond, "it's one in the morning."

Harry turned and blinked up at the clock hanging on the wall. "Oh," he muttered, and he knew he was flushing as sure as he knew that Draco was grinning. "I thought it was one in the afternoon."

"You've been working here for twelve hours without sensing the time passing?" Draco leaned on the nearest tree. "Well, let's see the broom, then. I can't wait to see how it flies."

"If you want to go back to bed—"

"If I had, then I would have sent my Patronus back." Draco's gaze was steady and bright. "Come on, Harry, let's see it."

A little uncertainly, Harry nodded, and turned to pull the Starstreak out from behind the tree he was standing in front of. The hawthorn broom gleamed, a warm brown with a paler shading near the tip, and warm with magic to the touch. The twigs had come out especially well, Harry thought with a flash of pride. They had an overall silvery color, and the hippogriff sinew he had chosen to bind them wove invisibly in and out among them. The shooting star motif that marked the broom as a new creation was untinted; Harry had chosen to carve it into the side of the broom and leave it at that.

Draco stopped breathing behind him. Harry turned around with a grin and held out the Starstreak towards him.

Draco ran his hands lovingly over the broom. As Harry had thought it would, the broom hummed beneath his touch, reacting to his magic. Other people would be able to ride it, but only at Draco's invitation, and it would never work for anyone as well as it did him.

"You didn't put any Anti-Theft Charms on it," Draco murmured.

Harry smiled at him, impressed that Draco could recognize the presence or absence of such magic with a simple touch. "There wouldn't be a point. The broom itself will buck anyone off unless you give them verbal permission to borrow it."

"Or unless they ride on it with me?"

"Yes, that's—"

Draco reached out and caught Harry's hand, tugging hard without moving him from where he stood. His smile was bright enough that Harry swallowed. "Then come with me, and let me show you how much my night-flying skills have improved."

"I didn't really know what they were like in the first place," Harry muttered under his breath, but he followed Draco out into the soft starry darkness outside his shop. Only one other light was still burning in Diagon Alley, behind the closed shutters of Madam Malkin's. There was a distant smear of radiance from the lights in Muggle London, though.

Draco let go of the Starstreak; it hovered obediently in mid-air, in response. He grinned at Harry and swung his leg over it. "Come here," he said, holding out his hand.

Harry hopped up easily, but found Draco mounting behind him, instead of in front, the way he had automatically thought Draco would. He turned around, blinking, and Draco bent down and kissed him so hard that Harry's mouth hurt a little. He licked his lips and gazed at Draco in wonder.

"Thank you for making the broom," Draco said softly. "And for coming with me tonight. And for being my friend."

Before Harry could reply, Draco curved his arm around his waist, and they rose straight upwards. The Starstreak had as much power rising while it was horizontal to the ground as Harry's Firebolt had had had when it was vertical.

Harry laughed aloud. The sound echoed strangely around them, in a darkness where only the wind and an occasional bat flew past them. He felt Draco smile against the nape of his neck and pull Harry in a little closer so that Harry's back was against his chest.

"I wanted to ask this before," Draco murmured to him, expertly steering the broom with his legs as they soared. "But it felt like rushing, especially while you were still working on the broom. Will you go on a date with me?"

"Yes."

Draco let out a whoop, and the Starstreak tilted up a little like someone aiming a wand at an enemy and began to live up to its name.

Harry steadied himself slightly with one hand on the broom shaft, but only one. His other was curled firmly across the arm that Draco had splayed across his chest. His fingers found Draco's a second later, and clenched tightly.

He trusted Draco to keep him safe, to keep him steady.

The broom glided across the sleeping roofs of Diagon Alley and the small residential area surrounding it, across the deeper slash of darkness that was Knockturn Alley, and then out across Muggle London. Harry looked down on the dazzling swirl of lights beneath him. Draco's arms tightened on him for a second.

"I thought at one point that you would go back to the Muggle world after you defeated Voldemort," Draco told him softly. "With the mindless adulation they gave you, and how disappointed people were that you apprenticed at Quality Quidditch Supplies."

Harry shook his head and turned briefly to watch the great black shape of a distant aircraft. "No. My life is in the wizarding world, no matter how awful it's been to me sometimes. And my friends. And now, my partner." He squeezed Draco's hand again.

Draco smiled and leaned over Harry's shoulder to kiss him again. Harry tilted his head back so that their tongues could gently touch, and the height they'd achieved was as nothing compared to the one the kiss lifted him to.

The broom carried them on, soaring forwards into the darkness and the light.

The End.