Draco changed his shirt and his mind twenty times that morning. He had not seen his wife-which was not unusual-but he told a house-elf to let her know he would be gone-which was. Why had he done that? He supposed there was a certain amount of guilt about his leaving, but why? He was only going to speak to Potter, or let the git speak. He really had no idea why he was going at all. Perhaps to tell him what happened at King's Cross was never going to happen again. There! Absolutely. No question. He'd tell him. Unless that was what Potter wanted to tell him. As if he had to.

Draco paced across the lane from the Leaky Cauldron. Was Potter already there? It was a few minutes past ten. Fashionably late, he told himself. He took a deep breath and as Potter so eloquently put it, he strapped on a pair and pushed open the door.

Smoky, warm, and normal Leaky Cauldron-a place he seldom visited (he preferred to Apparate to Twilfit and Tattings to get into Diagon Alley. There was no more Borgin and Burkes. Potter and his Auror gang had seen to that. No great loss.), Draco entered and looked around. And there he was, sitting in a dim corner: messy, black hair, glasses (why didn't the prat ever get his eyes spelled?), and a strangely determined look on his face. He was clutching a pint of something but not drinking it. Wasn't ten a bit early in the morning to start all that?

Draco stepped forward and made a direct line to Potter's table, sliding into the seat before the man realized he was there. He made a point to eye the pint clutched in Potter's hand and smirked. "Liquid breakfast?"

Potter looked at the beer as if noticing it for the first time. He pushed it aside. It looked untouched. "Hi."

"Hullo," drawled Draco. He had been fine standing outside. A little anxious, but fine. But now, looking at Potter and his steady green gaze and his plump lips and the slight tinge of pink darkening his cheeks, Draco's mouth suddenly parched. Maybe beer wasn't such a bad idea.

"So. Thanks for coming." His eyes widened a bit and the pink of his cheeks flushed his entire face as he realized what he said. "I-I mean, you're here and that's good. I...I didn't think you'd be here."

"I said I would," said Draco sullenly. He crossed his arms over his chest and sat back against the settle. "So why am I here?" He was damned if he was going to say it first.

"Look, I've got a private room so we can talk undisturbed and...you know. So we're not overheard." He whispered the last, eyes darting about, suspecting Daily Prophet reporters to jump out of the woodwork-which they might.

But then Draco caught up to his words. "A private room?" he squeaked.

"Yeah. Come on." Potter rose and motioned hastily.

Draco sat frozen to the spot. Potter looked back at him with annoyance. "Malfoy! Get a move on."

"I am not going to a private room with you!" he hissed.

"Why not?"

"What do you mean 'why not?' You bloody well know 'why not'."

Potter glared at him for a full minute it seemed until his face opened into an expression of mortification. He began to stammer. "I...I w-wasn't suggesting anything-I mean, I j-just...we're...it doesn't mean...Oh hell, Malfoy. I just want to talk. We're adults. I won't try anything." He seemed most embarrassed about that last bit. It made Draco feel better.

But Draco harrumphed as if put out to the nth degree. "All right!" he said at last and rose from his seat to follow.

For some reason, everything had a new portent to it. Watching Potter's backside as he followed him up the stairs was something new. Ordinarily, he might glance at a bloke in Muggle trousers but only incidentally. It never meant anything. Not that it meant anything now. It was just there. In his face. No! He didn't mean that.

He was sweating by the time he joined Potter in front of a door. Potter looked both ways down the narrow and crooked corridor. No one was about and he unlocked the door. Draco followed reluctantly...and ran into Potter.

Potter was stammering again. "Th-this was supposed to be a conference room." It clearly was not. It was a regular room in the Leaky Cauldron; a four-poster bed, a table, and two chairs. He turned wide eyes toward Draco. "I didn't know. Let's get another room."

Draco quickly spun and shut the door. "No! Let's just get this over with. Say what you're going to say and we can leave."

Potter fidgeted. On a seventeen-year-old, it was normal. On a thirty-six-year-old, it just seemed sad. "Well...all right. Do you want to sit?"

Draco didn't, but if it would get the ball rolling... He moved to one of the chairs and hastily took it. Potter eased down into the other one.

Draco stared at him. He wasn't about to help Potter one bit. Potter got the hint and shuffled a bit. "Well...obviously we're here to talk about...about...K-king's C-cross."

Draco said nothing. He clenched his jaw and curled his hands into fists under the table.

"So. Is there anything you'd like to say...about...it?" asked Potter.

Draco cleared his throat. "No," he said softly.

"Because I just wondered if you're...you know."

Eyes fixed on the raven-haired man, Draco suddenly blanched. "If I'm what?"

"You know. I mean...it's all right. I don't care. People are what they are."

"Are you calling me a woofter? I'm not!"

"Oh. Oh, I thought-"

"You thought wrong! What about you? Feeling a little poncy, Potter?"

"No! I'm not gay!"

"Well I'm not either!"

"Well...then...what the hell happened back there?"

Draco had been pondering that very thing for weeks. He placed his hands meticulously on the table and clasped them together, looking for all the world like a barrister consulting with a client. "I think," he said carefully, "that it was just balled up emotions. Anger we suppressed for years."

Potter scooted closer to the table, leaning in. "Yeah. Yeah, that sounds reasonable."

Draco was grasping at straws. "And...and stress from sending our children away to Hogwarts. They are a big part of our lives."

"Oh yes. That's certainly true."

"So...so it didn't mean anything because we were stressed and dredging up past emotions and inferiorities and everything else." Draco closed his eyes. Was Potter buying this? Was Draco?

Potter didn't say anything for a long time and Draco finally opened his eyes. The dark-haired man was looking off to the side. His bottom lip was twisted in his teeth, making it redder and wet. Draco could smell the sweat permeating off of him. The tang of it reminded him of his own scent when he was aroused-and then that thought suddenly started a stirring in his trousers. Oh god!

Draco rose and headed for the door. "So there isn't anything more to say, right?"

Potter followed. He stood right behind him. Draco's cock was straining against his trousers. Good thing he had a robe on over it. His fingers touched the door knob, but Potter dropped a hand gently on his shoulder. It stopped him cold.

"It's just that-" Potter began, but faltered. Draco knew it was a mistake. He was almost out the door. Almost free. But he turned, and Potter let go of his shoulder.

Potter was mere inches from him. Draco could feel his body heat, and this time, he did smell arousal wafting off of the other man. Potter was breathing unevenly and so was Draco. They were looking at each other, eyes tracking eyes and occasionally dropping to parted lips, panting uncertainly. It was a little thing to lean forward. Draco never knew why he did it. He hadn't known at King's Cross who had done it first, but this time, it was definitely him. He leaned in and his lips touched Potter's and fire erupted between them. Potter slammed Draco up against the door and took over the kiss, demanding more from Draco than he had wanted to give had his mind been working at all. Potter's mouth opened hungrily over Draco's, tongue thrusting forward like copulation, filling Draco's mouth with its warm wetness. Draco groaned at the intrusion, sucking on that twitching muscle, tasting Potter and reveling in the secret passion they were sharing, not really knowing why.

He felt Potter's hands clutching both sides of his head, turning it to kiss at a better angle, deepening it. Draco opened his mouth wide, giddy with the feel of a kiss more intimate than sex, a kiss like none other he'd ever experienced. His nose inhaled Potter's scent, that manly aroma of sweet sweat, the tang of testosterone, and perhaps soap that said "Harry Potter" in its simplicity. His own arms slid forward and wrapped around that body, a body he had wrapped around so many years ago when Potter was his Hero as well as the Wizarding World's, and it was the same. Only now that body was bigger, stronger, more filled out with time and training. Draco pulled it in tightly against him, absorbing the man's strength. He wanted the rest of the world to fall away, and in Harry's arms it was doing just that. He didn't have to think of anything; not of his wife in her other suite, not of work at the Ministry, not of his aging parents-not anything. Just those lips and that tongue and that groan eliciting from the other man as he kissed and kissed him.

But Harry's hands didn't stay clutching Draco's head. One was moving down his body, touching his chest. Draco arched into it, wanting to feel those large, square hands touch him, especially that wand hand, the one that wielded such power. But that hand did not stay, smoothing over his pectorals over his clothing. It traveled downward until it grasped his hip. He pushed Draco back slightly, and Draco whimpered into his mouth as they continued to kiss. But then Draco discovered he had only pushed him back enough to push his robe out of the way and unbuckle his belt.

He'll never do it with one hand, he thought, and lowered his own hands to help. They broke their kiss and looked down as Draco fumbled getting his trousers open. Harry did the same to his own. His chest was heaving as he glanced up every now and then at Draco's face. Soon they had their trousers opened and Draco saw that Potter was just as aroused as he was. They pushed their underpants aside and pulled out their dicks. Twin erections but neither cock looked remotely like the other. Draco's was slim, long, and pink and his bollocks normally hung lower. Now they were a tight, flushed package nudging his cock to its upright position.

Harry's cock was thick and meaty with a reddened sac that seemed painfully enlarged. Its tangle of black pubic hair curled around it as if giving it a safe nest to huddle in.

After studying each other's cocks, Harry wasted no time and reached forward to close his hand over Draco's. Draco gasped and pressed his lips together to suppress the moan that wanted desperately to spill out. Harry touched and explored the feel of the foreign erection, thumb pushing firmly down the shaft before rubbing up again and teasing the ridge of Draco's cockhead.

This was not to be borne! Draco reached with slender fingers and closed them around that monstrous cock of Potter's. It was very warm to the touch and soft at the same time and he pulled on it. Harry threw his head back and gasped an unintelligible sound. And then they began to slowly pull and squeeze each other's cocks. Draco dropped his other hand so he could hold that large sac and roll those testicles gently in his palm. He was rewarded with a gasped, "God! Draco!"

He had never heard his given name on Harry Potter's tongue before. Hmm. Tongue. He leaned in again and took possession of Harry's mouth. The kiss was sloppier this time since their hands were occupied elsewhere and they were so incredibly close to coming that their mouths became desperate, sucking and nipping, twirling tongues into crevices that served as something else in their minds.

Draco felt it. That knot of extreme pleasure spiraled outward from his groin like a sun exploding. He felt his balls contract, felt his penis surge in Harry's hand, and he unloaded more than he had ever released before. It simply pumped and pumped from him. He cried out a choking gasp, tears welling in his eyes. He pulled hard and fast on Harry's dick in his excitement, bringing the other man to completion. Harry came with a staccato shout, shooting hard onto Draco's belly in one long, sticky stream. They let each other go at the same time and pressed their gloppy bodies together, soaring in the updraft of a warm afterglow, sensitive cocks plastered together.

But as Draco slowly returned to his senses, the moment was no longer golden. A creeping embarrassment overtook him and he pushed Potter back. He couldn't meet his eye and fumbled for his wand trapped in his crumpled robes. He grabbed it, encanted Scourgify, and dropped his wand hand to his side.

Potter stepped back, a stunned look on his face. His wet dick was still hanging limply from his pushed down underpants. Draco was tucking himself back in and straightening his clothes when Potter finally awoke enough to do the same, bright red spots growing on each cheek.

"I'm...I'm sorry," said Potter, a perplexed look on face competing with the glow of his blush.

"Why are you apologizing?" Draco felt mortified. What, in Merlin's name, were they doing!

"I dunno. I just thought I should."

"Always the gentleman," he muttered.

"Draco-"

"Look, we've got to forget this. Forget this ever happened."

"Yeah." He pushed his fingers messily through his hair.

Draco never looked up at Harry, but instead down at the man's shoes. Harry still wore trainers like a kid. But Draco couldn't find it in him to be disgusted by it. It was rather endearing, really.

He grabbed the door knob and twisted it. "I'm going." He said nothing more. He was on the stair when he decided to just Apparate home.

When he snapped into existence in his bedroom suite at Malfoy Manor he stood swaying for a moment, trying to absorb what had just happened. It didn't make any sense. He couldn't do it again. No.

But it had been-without a doubt-the best sex he had ever had.

* * *

Harry couldn't go back to work. He was too distracted. Besides, since he ran the department he could take all the time he wanted. Minister Shacklebolt had decreed that anyway. He certainly didn't feel like going home, and so he walked aimlessly through London, passing all manner of Muggle monuments, cathedrals, and buildings without giving them a passing thought.

Why had they done it? Again! It couldn't be stress this time, could it? Their kids were safely at school and there was really no reason to be angry with the other anymore. Besides, he hadn't been angry with Malfoy for ages. His truce with the Malfoys had started the moment Draco had refused to identify Harry to the Death Eaters. Even with a face bloated and disfigured from Hermione's hex, Draco bloody well knew it was Harry. But he had refused to indict him. It was the first time Harry realized-really understood-that Draco regretted what he was doing. He had known it in the back of his mind from what he had witnessed on the Astronomy Tower when Draco had lowered his wand. But in that moment in the Death Eater's clutches, it became crystal clear to him. And then when he was playing dead in front of Voldemort, Narcissa had kept his secret. The Malfoys weren't evil after all. He knew it from that day. They were misguided gits who thirsted for power, to be sure, but there was love. It was Harry who had spoken for them at the end of it all, and Lucius Malfoy had not had to go back to Azkaban. Harry remembered the look on his face once the trial was over. He had stared at Harry completely stunned. He had said nothing. No word of thanks, naturally, but many days later, he had sent a note full of the kind of circuitous wording that government agencies were good at, and Harry supposed that somewhere in that tangled prose was a thank you.

He had kept the note.

But Draco had continued to be an enigma. He had married a witch Harry had never heard of-some fifth cousin of Draco's from France, was the rumor-and settled into life at Malfoy Manor with the parents in one wing and he and his wife in another. Draco had gotten some minor Ministry position that kept the Malfoy name in politics but he never did much in it. Harry imagined that this was Lucius' forte and not Draco's. Lucius, of course, wasn't allowed to work at the Ministry anymore. That had been Harry's decree.

It was late afternoon before Harry decided to go home. He Apparated into the garden, and then walked into the house, first wiping his feet on the mat.

"Harry!" Ginny came up to him and kissed him on the lips. "What are you doing home so early?"

"Oh, I just decided to leave work early."

She slipped her arm in his and walked with him through the kitchen into the lounge. "Well, good. It's nice to have my husband home."

"It's good to be home," he said and meant it. He sat next to Ginny, his wife of sixteen years, and took a deep breath, taking in the scent of flowers that was Ginny through and through. "It's really good to be home," he sighed, laying his head on her shoulder. He didn't see the small, worried frown that played at her lips.

* * *

Harry resolved the next morning to never contact Draco again. It was just madness. Whatever it was between them, they obviously couldn't control and it was best to leave it alone.

It was Saturday, and Harry, Ginny, and Lily decided to have a picnic. They packed a generous lunch, shrunk it, and started walking down the lane into the nearby woods. The trail would lead over a rise and down into a valley. Soon they would follow a stream that would meander and lead them through more copses and meadows of fern.

Harry liked to think that his own parents used to take this path. Maybe they even took him when he was a baby once or twice. But with a twinge, he knew there was no one left alive to ask. He sometimes thought of the Resurrection Stone he had left moldering in the Dark Forest outside of Hogwarts. But he was never tempted to retrieve it. Dumbledore had been right about him. He harbored no secret ambitions for power. The only thing he had ever wanted was happiness and a family. He assumed they would be one and the same. But as thoughts of Draco crept into his day even as he swung Lily's hand in his, he began to wonder about that assumption.

They had walked a long time, Lily pointing out various animals they encountered. She was sad that there were no more butterflies, but Ginny pointed out that it was autumn and the caterpillars were busy in their cocoons, waiting to come out in the spring. "Sometimes you have to wait a long time for something special to happen," she said, smiling up at Harry. And Harry wondered.

They ate in the afternoon, but the breeze was getting colder. Harry cast a warming charm on them as they made their trek home. Sometimes he held Ginny's hand, and sometimes not. He glanced at her from time to time, trying to remember those first heady days in sixth year when he couldn't stop thinking of her. That moment after the Quidditch match when he had stridden up to her and kissed her was truly one of the Great Moments in his life. He had been filled with overwhelming love. And he thought for the first time ever that things felt right. Even when he broke it off with her, it had never really stopped. He ached in his heart for her, and when she kissed him at Bill and Fleur's wedding, he knew he wanted her.

And after it was all over, and the funerals were behind them, and good memories of Fred could replace the stinging loss they all felt, he and Ginny began to date in earnest. Harry took her to restaurants and concerts and it hadn't been at all like that disastrous date with Cho Chang. They were truly friends and confidents, they never were at a loss for conversation, and she had always made him laugh. He had been unaccountably nervous the day he asked her to marry him, even though he knew the answer would be "yes". He was happy beyond measure. He was going to truly be a Weasley. That was the most wonderful thing of all. He was already deep into Auror training and living at Grimauld Place, which he sorely hated because of its dark past and reminders of Sirius' prison, but there was hope and happiness ahead. He started looking for a place in Godric's Hollow. He felt he belonged there. He left his parents old house alone, thinking it a violation of their peace to rebuild on it. But he found another ramshackle cottage not too far, and the townsfolk were overjoyed that Harry Potter was returning. Each time he returned to check on the progress of his refurbished house, someone from the town had done their own magic to it, adding a window box here, and a footpath there. He was uncommonly grateful.

They married, and, with both of them being virgins, their wedding night was one of mutual exploration and tenderness. He brought her home to Godric's Hollow, and they truly began their lives. A few years later, James was born and Harry thought his life was at its absolute peak. A son. A family. Life was good. He didn't worry over those niggling feelings in the back of his head. He never considered that sex with Ginny, even though it became something rote, was anything but what it was supposed to be. He loved her. He loved his son. And when Albus was born, he was overjoyed again. They were going to wait another two years to try for a third and Lily was brought to them. Ginny felt that three was a good number, and Harry agreed. Ginny began taking a contraceptive potion though it didn't seem to matter too much as they didn't have sex all that often anymore. Ginny was tired from raising the kids and Harry was tired from work and he didn't seem to have much of a sex drive. A few wank sessions in the shower did well enough for him. And when Ginny nuzzled him and hinted that she wanted it, Harry performed perfectly fine.

But there was not the passion that there had been. Of course not. After sixteen years of marriage with three kids and the Hero of the Wizarding World out chasing dark wizards, who had time for passion?

So when he encountered Draco at King's Cross, he hadn't been prepared for the exploding excitement between them. He had been shocked by its intensity and further shocked when it happened again at the Leaky Cauldron. He would have expected that it should at least be with another woman. But it had been with a man. And Draco Malfoy too boot!

Was Harry gay? Could he be? He had always been attracted to girls. Except for that one time with Charlie. Bisexual? It was possible, he guessed. How was he to find out? He could go to a Muggle library, he supposed. Monday would be a good day for that. He could take the day off again and do some research… But wait a minute. What difference did it make whether he was or not? He was married. To a woman. It didn't matter if he was bisexual. He certainly couldn't act on it. Ginny was his wife and he didn't intend to cheat on her. But had he already? Were those trysts with Draco-no. They were not trysts. They were...mmm...aberrations. Yes. Aberrations. Those aberrations with Malfoy. Did those count as cheating? They had both gotten off, the last time getting the other off. Harry slumped into his chair when they got home. He could dance around it with all the slickest prose worthy of Lucius Malfoy, but there was no denying that what he had done with Draco constituted cheating on his wife. And he felt terrible.

He could never tell her, of course. What would it serve? Relieve his guilt, yes, but it would make her feel miserable and inadequate. No point in doing that to her and she didn't deserve it. She was the innocent party here. Harry was the guilty one.

But even weeks afterward with Harry feeling just as badly now as he had then, he couldn't get thoughts of Draco Malfoy out of his mind. Ginny was sitting beside him one night. She was knitting while Harry was staring at the fire. She broke the silence by asking softly, "Harry, is there something wrong?"

Harry snapped his head up. "Wrong? No!"

"Are you sure, love? Because you seem so far away these last few weeks. Is there something bothering you?"

Bothering him? Like the fact that he might be gay? Like the very idea of Draco Malfoy sent him into waves of arousal? Like the thought of kissing him wasn't on his mind day and night?

"No. There's nothing bothering me."

"You just seem so quiet lately. Your brow is furrowed. You come to bed late and get up early. It's almost like...." She put her knitting down. "Is it something I've done?"

Guilt washed over him like a tide. "Oh, no Ginny! You've done absolutely nothing. You've always been an incredible wife. You're my girl." And he took her in his arms. She sighed against his cheek, shuddering a bit. Was she crying? Oh, God. What had he done?

"I just feel outside somehow," she said in a small voice. "Like I'm not part of something."

"No, no, sweetheart. It's nothing at all. I'm just overworked, I think. Maybe we just need a holiday. Just the two of us."

She pulled back and there were tears in her eyes. Harry felt like the biggest heel. "Yes!" she said, brightening. "A holiday sounds perfect! We could leave Lily with Ron and Hermione. It will be like a second honeymoon. Oh, Harry! Could we go right away?"

"Yes, why not? We've just got to decide where we want to go."

"I can't wait!" She jumped up from the sofa and grabbed floo powder to firecall the Weasleys.

Harry smiled as he watched her. He really did love her. All he wanted to do was make her happy.

But as he watched her kneel before the fire excitedly talking with Hermione, his smile faded. He wondered if this trip would make him happy. He wondered if it was someone with blond hair and a sexy smirk that could make him happy.

* * *

Draco had debated for a fortnight about sending an owl. Once, he almost had, and then an owl arrived from Scorpius full of an outpouring of excitement of all the things he was learning and all the friends he was making. He had even taken his father's advice and made friends outside his house. Draco read with growing dread how Scorpius had made friends with that Potter boy, Albus. Did you know, wrote Scorpius innocently, that Albus Potter's middle name was Severus, for Severus Snape? He was all right for a Gryffindor. His father was famous, and didn't you always tell me to align myself with the powerful and well known?

Draco dropped the idea of owling Potter after that, but that had been weeks ago. He felt jittery all the time and couldn't stand to be in the same room with his wife, not that he ever really could. Arranged marriages were so tedious. He had gotten it up once and it was a good thing she had conceived because he hadn't relished doing it again. But he would have for the Malfoy heir. And Scorpius had been so much more than just an heir. He loved his son. Sometimes he thought he would be the only one he would ever love.

He glanced at the writing desk again. He had received no letters from Potter. It was the smart thing. He had half-expected to get an owl from him, though. And in the back of his mind, he had been disappointed. But it really was the brave thing to ignore what had happened. Draco knew he wasn't a particularly brave man and had been proud of himself for leaving it be. But now...

He couldn't deny the fact that he was terribly lonely. Scorpius had kept him going. He had practically raised him himself with the help of house-elves. His wife wasn't much help and wasn't very maternal. And he didn't want her help. Scorpius was his. But now that he was at Hogwarts the huge house felt unbearably empty. The hours he filled teaching his son spells and hexes were suddenly blank. Even the scant work he did at the Ministry couldn't fill the time. He half-hoped he'd run into Potter, but it wasn't likely. The Auror department was on an entirely different floor. He never saw Aurors at work. Never.

He hadn't known he could crave something so much. He didn't like to think about the fact that it was a man and Potter at that. But it had been so invigorating. He had felt so alive, like he had been missing something all these years. He almost considered going to one of those gay places, a pub or dance club, but he was positive he wasn't gay and the whole idea of having anonymous sex with a stranger was a distinct turn off. No, the only thing that got him going was thinking of Potter.

He stared at the writing desk for the umpteenth time. "Bugger it all!" He yanked the chair out and sat down hard. He snatched a piece of Malfoy parchment and grabbed a quill.


Potter,
     I think we should meet again. To talk. The Leaky Cauldron? Say two o'clock on Wednesday?
Malfoy



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"Breakdown"

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"Crossroads"

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