Title: Miracle of Rare Device
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Content Notes: Hogwarts "eighth year," angst, humor
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4800
Summary: Potter is laying some kind of careful trap for him after the war, and Draco knows it. The problem is that he seems to be doing it with kindness and gifts—and subtlety. It's so not like Potter that it's wearing on Draco's last nerve.
Author's Notes: One of my "From Samhain to the Solstice" fics for this year, born of the idea that Draco might well distrust Harry trying to be nice to him after the war. The title is from Samuel Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan."

Miracle of Rare Device

Draco stared at the slender package on his bed in the Slytherin dorm. There was no way that it should have been there. No one from another House could get into Slytherin, and no Slytherin in Hogwarts right now felt kindly enough towards him to give him something like this.

Especially not anyone in his year.

Draco drew his replacement wand—ebony and dragon heartstring; it always bucked and warmed oddly in his hands—and cast all sorts of detection spells on the apparent present. They revealed nothing. And even the paper that gleamed green with silver accents in a way that said it was probably expensive and had been specially chosen was ordinary wrapping paper.

That only made Draco more suspicious. He wondered if he would open the gift and find the armbone of some distant ancestor, or another grisly prank maligning his heritage. Ever since the war, it seemed everyone did that.

But of course he did open the gift. He was trying to cling to the person he had been, as the best way forwards, minus—certain aspects—and a Malfoy wasn't one to throw away presents like this without at least looking at them.

In the paper was his hawthorn wand. Draco's hand shook as he reached forwards and picked it up.

The wand sang to him at once, a curve of sound that rose from it as light and went up his arm as warmth. Draco found himself smiling incredulously, gripping the wand so hard that he thought the imprint of the wood would carve itself into his hand. The dragon heartstring wand gave a single sullen buzz, and the warmth departed from it. Draco was certain he wouldn't be able to use it again.

He didn't care. He had his wand back.

And then the smile dropped off Draco's face, because the person who had last had his wand, and the only one who could have returned it to him…

Was Potter.

"Just like old times, isn't it, with you staring at Potter at the Gryffindor table?"

Draco started and jerked his head around so that he was looking at Blaise. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said, as haughtily as possible when his hand was jerking at his side and he hadn't eaten more than three bites of porridge because he was looking so intently at Potter.

"You glaring and plotting something," Blaise said flatly, turning a page of the book propped against his own porridge bowl. All the students of their year were doing their NEWTS in June, whether they'd been at Hogwarts last year or not, and Blaise took it seriously. "Just tell me that it's not going to end up with dressing as Dementors this time."

"How can I do that?" Draco snapped. "Vince is dead."

Blaise paused, then inclined his head the way he only did when he knew he'd made a faux pas—so not very often. "My pardons, Draco. Just don't get into anything with Potter, all right? I don't think there's enough money in the world to shield you from negative publicity if you do that."

"I know," Draco said softly as he turned back to Potter. He honestly didn't want to harm him this time. He wasn't even on the Slytherin Quidditch team anymore, which meant he had no reason to be near the pitch when Potter flew. He just wanted to—

Figure him out. Who went around giving wands they'd won the allegiance of back to their original masters? It would be a miracle if people did that.

And how had Potter convinced the wand to come back to him anyway? Draco thought suddenly. He was beyond glad it had, but most of the time, a conquered wand would prefer to stay with its new master.

Draco sneaked another glance at Potter, and this time, found the Savior of the World looking straight at him. There was a slight smile on his face. Potter toasted Draco with a goblet of water before he went back to his friends.

Draco promptly shoved his own goblet away and regarded it with horror. Was that a signal that Potter had poisoned it?

No, wait, he wasn't good enough with Potions to do any such thing, Draco thought, calming down slightly. He still remembered the remedial Potions tutoring Potter had had to go through in their fifth year. It was weird to think that he would have improved that much in the two years since, even if he had done better in Professor Slughorn's class.

But that left Draco having to divine what Potter's little gesture meant without considering the motive that made the most sense. He hunched his shoulders.

"Draco, what's wrong?"

At least Blaise had surfaced enough from his book to notice something was, Draco thought, obscurely gratified. "Potter toasted me," he muttered. "But I was just thinking that he isn't good enough at Potions to poison me. So what is it?"

Blaise sighed, and there was an odd, flat sound. Draco looked at him in time to see him slapping his hand over his face. "Draco," Blaise said into his fingers. "Has it occurred to you that he's just trying to get to know you?"

"No," Draco said blankly. He knew he could have thought for years, and that would never have come to him. "Why would he?"

"Because he's come up to me and asked me things like how I am and how people in the school who aren't Slytherins are treating me." Blaise shook his head and tucked the book away. "It makes sense that he would do the same for you. Didn't you two owe each other life-debts at some point?"

"But you were in a neutral position with him," Draco argued, ignoring Blaise's comment about life-debts for the moment. That was not the point. "You don't think he would do the same for a long-term rival?"

"I think that Potter has more important things to think about us than right now, but he's making the time for us anyway. So take advantage."

And Blaise just walked away, even though Draco hadn't said they were done with the conversation yet. Draco glowered at his back. Then he sneaked a glance at Potter.

Potter was smiling encouragingly at him.

Draco hastily went back to eating, and wondered how Potter had got so good at plotting in the last year.

"Is it working better for you than that ebony wand did? It looked like that thing was giving you an awful time."

Draco froze and darted his eyes around. Yes, they were in Potions, and yes, Potter was standing a respectable distance away from Draco's cauldron. Draco could see his hands. He would definitely notice if Potter lobbed something in. And there weren't really any explosive combinations of ingredients in the draught they were brewing today. But Draco could feel sweat starting up on his back anyway.

"What do you mean, Potter?" he inquired in a lofty tone that must have not been lofty enough, because Potter just made a scoffing sound and plopped himself down on the bench beside Draco. The bench where no one sat, because Draco was such a pariah. Draco could hear the indrawn breaths all over the classroom.

Potter either didn't, or didn't care a whit for his social standing. Then again, Draco thought enviously, he had it to lose. "Your hawthorn wand. I had to undergo a complicated ritual to clean it for you again. So is it working better?"

"You underwent a cleansing ritual?" Draco could hear the way his voice warbled, but he didn't care. He was thrilling with horror, and staring at Potter with his hand on his wand. Cleansing rituals involved submerging the wand and yourself in some element completely. So Potter would have had to swim through cold water, or bury himself in earth, or freefall through air, or—

"Fire, yes," Potter said, his eyebrows rising a little, as if standing in the middle of a wildfire the way he would have had to do wasn't interesting. "I just want to know if it does work."

"It works fine," Draco whispered, staring at him, unable to look away. "And what are you going to demand from me in return?"

"I'm not going to demand anything." Potter rolled his eyes. "I wanted to give it back to you."

"But why?"

"Because I wanted you to have it again. Besides, what would I do with three wands?"

"You had—this one, and your holly wand, and—"

Potter took out that holly wand Draco had been thinking about, and cast a charm that made the air all around them turn the color of snow. Draco knew it had to be a privacy charm from the way the magic crept around the edges of his awareness, but he'd never seen one like that before. He was still gaping at it when Potter said gently, "The Elder Wand. You're the only one I've told that to other than Ron and Hermione."

Emotion flared in Draco's chest, and he said, "Oh, yes. Besides them."

"What are you on about?"

"Nothing, Potter! Take down the privacy charm! Some of us still care about finishing our work on time!"

Looking bewildered, Potter did so, and Draco stomped his way out of the little isolated corner. He caught Blaise's eye and saw him looking at Draco pointedly. Draco waved an angry hand at him and kept walking.

He didn't know why it should matter that Potter had shared secrets like his owning the Elder Wand with Weasley and Granger. Of course he would. And of course Draco should be relieved that Potter wasn't plotting against him.

But all he could think about was Potter's flippant remark. What would I do with three wands?

Of course, what had prompted him to return Draco's wand to him was nothing more than that, nothing more than the thought that he might as well.

"You're the only one I've told about the fire ritual I underwent to cleanse your wand."

Draco jumped and turned around, glaring. The time he got outside the common room was precious to him, given that he always had to watch and worry about someone coming up to chide him because he was a Slytherin, or because he hadn't given enough at the Battle of Hogwarts. He had relaxed by the lake for long enough that he'd been sure no one else would come near him.

But there stood Potter, arms folded as stubbornly as if he always tracked Slytherins late at night. Draco let himself sigh loudly and roll his eyes. "All right, Potter. Whatever you say." He turned around again to stare into the water next to him.

"You are the only one." Potter came and sat down next to him. Draco stared at him, scandalized he had done that without waiting for an invitation, but his scandalized looks were ignored, too. Potter just did not know how to behave.

"It matters," Potter said, staring into the water and the starlight and not looking at Draco, "because we knew each other since first year."

"The same thing is true of Pansy and Blaise and the others," Draco retorted, and turned back to the water. It was soothing. It was clear. When he was next to it, he didn't think of the way Vince had died.

"No. I mean—I know it was as a rival, but I did know you better than the others." Potter reached out and put a hand on Draco's wrist. Draco jumped and stared at him. Right now, he would have given anything for a Lumos Charm that would let him see Potter's face and get a glimpse of what the hell he was thinking, but Potter continued to look at him in the darkness.

"I didn't want you to suffer what you did," Potter said, quietly, earnestly. "You were a prat and I wished you would shut up and go away sometimes, but no one deserved what they went through in the war."

Draco lowered his eyes and sighed. "Yes, all right, Saint Potter has expressed his compassion. Can you go away now?"

"Why do you sound like you don't believe me?"

"Because no one deserved what they went through," Draco snapped, and pulled his hand free. "That's fine. That's everybody. I'm not special, Potter, whatever you want to tell yourself. You're treating me like just another charity case."

"Draco."

The name jolted through him, but Draco shook his head stubbornly and turned away. No, he wasn't going to be fooled by this, by old hopes and dreams of Harry Potter being his best friend, the way he used to think when Mother told him stories of the first war as a child. And he had been so thick that when Potter refused his hand on the train, he had thought he was keeping up some kind of special connection by annoying the piss out of him and being the only Slytherin he scowled at on a regular basis.

Draco had woken up from the dream. All he wanted was a quiet last year at Hogwarts, good NEWT marks, and to stop fooling himself. He wouldn't yield to this desire Potter must have to be appreciated even by the people he'd fought.

"Would it help if I called you Draco? You just walked away from me the other night when I tried it, so I wasn't sure."

Draco rolled his eyes behind closed lids, but otherwise ignored Potter. It was a rare sunny November day, and Draco had found a patch of light and warmth on the far side of the castle's curtain wall that hadn't been claimed yet. He had crossed his legs and folded his hands on his lap and was prepared to meditate in a way that might allow him to glimpse his Animagus form if he tried hard enough.

"Draco, really."

And Draco's enforced calm shattered like the illusion it was and he found himself surging to his feet and glaring at Potter. Potter stepped back with a blink of surprise, one hand rising as to shield his face. Draco rolled his own eyes until they hurt and then got up into his face.

"I don't owe you anything, Potter," Draco said, even though his tongue burned with the lie. The hawthorn wand resting in his pocket and the free air breathing on his face both spoke it. It was Potter's testimony that had kept Draco and his mother out of Azkaban and ensured that his father was only going to spend a year there. But Draco didn't care, not when Potter hadn't agreed on a fair exchange of debts and just went around doing things out of the unpredictable kindness of his bloody heart. Draco wanted this to be over with.

"I wasn't saying you did. I was saying that you were the one I was most invested in, even if it was as a rival, and that I'm glad you're free now. And I want things to be different."

"Things are different, Potter. The Dark Lord is dead, and so is Dumbledore. So is Professor Snape." The complicated feelings that had moved around in Draco when he heard of Snape's death still hadn't resolved. The Headmistress had said that anyone who wanted to could go to her office and talk with Snape's portrait, but Draco hadn't so far and he didn't think he'd get around to it either. "Why can't we just be schoolmates?"

"Because I think you're about the only one here who's handling it as badly as I am."

Draco shut his mouth and blinked. Potter was stepping towards him with the wind tossing his hair back in an unbearably heroic way and his hand extended. Draco stared at the hand and tried not to think of how much he would have given, even a few years ago, to see Potter reaching for him like that.

Then he ruthlessly thought of it, and used it to push away some of the hopes and dreams that were trying to assault him. He shook his head. "I don't know what you're talking about. You're not handling anything badly. You laugh and joke and I hear about the parties in the Gryffindor common room until two in the morning—"

"Parties I never attend. And I laugh and joke because it's one way to keep people from asking what's wrong over and over and over again." Potter took a deep breath. "They want me to be glad I won. And I am. But I also can't erase the people who died, or the fact that I died. And I keep seeing your face in my memories again and again."

"Why my face?"

"The way you looked when you were sitting with your parents in the Great Hall after the battle was over," Potter said, although he was answering a question Draco really hadn't asked. He was staring at Draco with a hand extended again, hovering, or maybe it had never stopped. "Like something knocked you to the ground and ran you over. That's the way I feel. Maybe some of the others, too, but they won't show it because they don't want to, and I want to show it but I can't, and I think—I think you're almost braver than I am, because you let people see it—"

"That's because I have no choice," Draco snapped, leaning forwards. "It doesn't matter what I think or feel, because I can't keep it concealed! And you think that I'm a good model for you?"

"Not a good model." Potter's arm had to be tired by now, but it still wasn't trembling. "A possible friend."

Draco sneered. He had heard less than complete conviction in Potter's voice on those last words, which meant he had found the crack in the bastard's defenses. "You don't really want me as a friend. You just want to be a do-gooder and claim some credit for reforming the Death Eaters, don't you?"

Enough silence passed that Draco was tempted to close his eyes and go back to meditating in the sunlight, but he knew he would never be able to return to the calmness he'd been achieving. Then Potter said, "You're right. I don't want you as a friend."

Draco blinked, not surprised by the admission so much as the fact that Potter had said it aloud. Then Potter leaned closer, and his hand shifted so that he was gripping Draco's arm instead, and he said, with a sigh like he was drowning, "I want you as something more than a friend. I know I like blokes now, and I like people who challenge me, and you—"

Draco found himself on his feet, backing away. Potter dropped his grip at once and stood with his hands held up, as if he could make himself harmless that way, as if he hadn't just completely upended Draco's life. "So I suppose that's a no. Sorry."

He turned and disappeared before Draco could stop running. Draco stared in silence at the space where he had been. Then he turned and began to hastily pack up the books and other things he had brought outside with him, running towards the Slytherin dungeons in the end with all his belongings clumsily floating behind him.

He found himself in his bed some time later, with no memory of even opening the door with the password or dashing through the common room, tucked into a ball with his arms wrapped around himself and his breath coming harshly.

How could Potter have seen straight into his heart and somehow identified Draco's most secret and shameful desire?

He had looked at Potter sometimes and felt as though someone had lit a fire in his chest that had nothing to do with House rivalry or differing beliefs or resentment that Potter hadn't shaken his hand on the train when they were eleven. He had wanted to touch him, hold him, possess him, in a way that none of his friends did, or the public.

Potter reserved his smiles for his friends, but Draco had known then, without being actually told, that it wasn't the only kind of smile Potter was capable of giving. He would have a different one, a private one, for the person he chose to lie beside him, and walk beside him, and fight at his side.

Then Potter had chosen Weasley's sister, and Draco had used that to conquer his futile hopes. It was easier by then. The war had begun, and it was absolutely clear that he and Potter were on opposite sides. It had been at least a year since Draco had thought seriously about joining Potter, or choosing Potter, or coaxing Potter to choose him.

Now Potter had lit the fire again.

How dare he? When Draco had finally made his peace with his own stupid desires?

Draco curled up harder, and ignored it when Blaise came into the room and tried to coax him to talk. He ignored the fact that he was missing dinner and some study time that he'd been planning on to write the Transfiguration essay that was due tomorrow.

What did the Transfiguration essay matter, anyway? McGonagall would look at him with that tightening of her lips that she used with all her Marked students, and it wouldn't be any more possible to be with Potter.

Somewhere in there, Draco drifted off into a restless sleep that he honestly hadn't expected to get.

Reality returned with a huge shock of cold water. Draco tore his way out of bed, wringing the sheets and shrieking at the top of his lungs. "Blaise!" He was the only one in the dorm other than Draco and Theodore, and the only one who would dare.

Blaise, who was standing in front of the huge gold-framed mirror that he'd brought from his home in first year, only raised an unimpressed eyebrow. "Yes?"

"Why did you do that?" Draco stared at his dripping bed. Long runnels of water were making their way down from the pillow to the floor.

"Because you've moped enough," Blaise said, with a small shrug, as if things like this happened every day and Draco ought to be used to them by now. He dragged a comb through his black hair and then regarded himself critically. "Are you coming with me to the Great Hall, or do I have to Stun you and drag you?"

"You don't know what's going on."

"No, I don't, which makes me void of sympathy," said Blaise cheerfully. "But if it has something to do with Potter, then you ought to get to the Great Hall."

Draco whipped his head around, which of course took away the ability to deny that it had something to do with Potter. "Why?" he asked sullenly, casting a Cleaning Charm that smoothed out the wrinkles in his robes and tidied up his hair. Blaise shuddered in fastidious horror next to him. Draco ignored that. "Is he going to announce that he's been chosen as the youngest Seeker for Ireland's team in history or something?"

"No. Just that he came to the common room door last night, and he and I had an interesting chat." Blaise winked at Draco. "I told him that you were sulking, and he said he wasn't surprised because he'd talked to you earlier and you didn't believe him when he said that he was interested in being with you. So he'll make a fool of himself this morning."

"Blaise. "

"Oh, all right, he didn't say he would make a fool of himself," Blaise conceded. His tone said he thought that would be the result anyway. "He said he would make an announcement about how he wants to date someone who's at the Slytherin table, and you could make a move or not." Blaise glanced over his shoulder and down the back of his robe at his arse. "Are you going to? Because I was thinking that I could make a move myself."

"If you dare," Draco said, and somehow there was a growl in his voice and he was pointing his hawthorn wand straight at Blaise.

"Ah, that's got you looking like more than a statue," said Blaise, and grinned. "Come on, then. Theodore's already at breakfast. You should probably get there before he decides to take up Potter's invitation."

"Theodore doesn't fancy Potter," Draco said, putting his wand back in his pocket and walking beside Blaise as they headed through the common room. He felt light, floating, detached, completely unlike himself. He ought to be furious, or humiliated that Blaise knew, or wincing from the prospect of future humiliation when he got to the Great Hall. Instead, he was just—floating.

Blaise shrugged with a brilliant smile. "What does fancying have to do with it? Theodore's always been ambitious about having a better future without having to work for it, you know that."

Draco said nothing. He watched from outside, or so it felt like, as he and Blaise walked to the Great Hall, and entered it, and went over to the Slytherin table. He looked up, and only felt as if he had been sucked back in behind his eyes as he stared at Potter.

Potter was rising to his feet now. His gaze was determined, and Draco thought about what he had said, how he had felt horrible since the war and was drawn away from the partying and the celebration towards the people who were celebrating it less.

He was going to make a fool of himself, or at least risk that if no one replied to his gesture towards the Slytherin table. Draco would be risking humiliation if he took up the gauntlet, too. He could just sit here and be nice and safe and gamble that Theodore or Blaise wouldn't stand up. They probably wouldn't. It was just a joke.

He could sit there and—

Be safe? Draco knew better than that. He had seen how violently his life could change when the war arrived, and he had gone from being angry about his father's imprisonment and convinced he would take revenge to a scared Death Eater overnight.

He might avoid this particular humiliation, but he could never avoid all of them for the rest of his life. And his parents would be most displeased by the idea that he had had the chance to reach out and grab happiness and pleasure and power—well, they would only see that last—with both hands, and hadn't because he was too afraid.

Courage might be a Gryffindor trait, but that didn't mean cowardice was a Slytherin one, no matter what Gryffindors said.

Potter opened his mouth and said, not loudly but loud enough to gain the attention of those who were always watching him, "Yesterday I made an offer to date a Slytherin who's sitting at the table now. Is he going to give me the time of day?"

There was an immediate furor in the Great Hall, and Draco didn't know whether it came more from the announcement of the House or the gender of Potter's potential date. He held Potter's gaze. He savored the last moment when he could have pretended to sneer or turn away in contempt.

Then he stood up.

The furor immediately gained strength and direction, and Draco winced back from some of the comments he could hear. Potter's pet Weasley and Granger were probably in there, but he didn't look around. He didn't care.

Potter's eyes were so wide and hopeful, and he had extended his hand again. This time, Draco crossed the distance between them to clasp it, instead of running away.

"What changed your mind?" Potter breathed as he cast a Silencing Bubble around them and the annoying chatter faded away.

"I decided that the costs of sitting back were greater than the costs of taking your hand," Draco said, and rubbed his fingers absently back and forth. It felt wonderful, for all that it was just a hand, a little clammy and a little callused. Draco was pleased by the sweat and the feeling that Harry hadn't been absolutely sure Draco would come to him.

"Well. Good." Harry paused for a moment, and then his smile came out from behind his hesitation like the sun from behind clouds, the private smile Draco had imagined so often. It was more beautiful than he'd ever been able to picture.

Draco didn't lean forwards and kiss Harry yet. It wasn't time for that. It might not be time for a month. But he did stand there, and feel the hawthorn wand in his pocket, and sense Harry's brilliant smile and Blaise's (annoyingly) smug gaze on his back, and he acknowledged that some of his thoughts from weeks ago had been wrong.

There were miracles in the world still. Draco thought he deserved one of them happening to him, at last.

The End.