Dear Mr. Malfoy, we regret to inform you that your application for the Unspeakables has been denied. If you would like to try again in a year…

Draco balled the letter up in a fist and threw it against the wall of the dining room. Then he sat down and stared at the plate in front of him. The food still didn't look appetizing, especially the toast, which was burnt again. Hemmy, the one house-elf the Ministry had allowed him to keep, never had learned how to fix meals properly.

"What's the use?" Draco asked aloud. "It's not as though anyone wants to give me a job, or acceptance, or even the time of day when I walk past them in bloody Diagon Alley."

His words fell into silence. Even if they hadn't, Draco thought, at best only Hemmy could have answered them. His father was spending the foreseeable future in Azkaban. His mother had gone on what Draco thought was a short tour of the Continent "for her health," but every letter she sent him lengthened the journey by another week or month or year. That left Draco alone in this echoing tomb of a house.

Draco stared around. If anyone had ever told him that he could be depressed about living in Malfoy Manor, he would have laughed at them. But grandeur meant nothing without people to see it, admire it, and eventually accept it thoughtlessly as part of their heritage.

He shifted restlessly, then bit into the kippers that Hemmy had managed to prepare semi-correctly and scowled at the wall. His mother kept suggesting in her letters that he marry. Draco had tried to explain that no pure-blood girl would ally herself with someone who didn't have any money or standing, but his mother inevitably made the suggestion again a few letters later. Draco didn't know if she didn't understand or was simply willing herself to forget what his life back in England was probably like.

He licked his fingers defiantly, because he was alone in the house, and of course that was the moment that Hemmy chose to walk in with a large brown owl perched on his fist. Hemmy gave him a slow, disapproving look; he was a house-elf of impeccable manners, with even his ear-hair combed. Draco flushed, but folded his arms instead of making the apologies that he knew Hemmy wanted him to make. So he had an audience. That audience didn't matter.

"Yes, what is it, Hemmy?" Draco asked grandly, because you had to keep up some standards, even though it was just with a house-elf and even though he could see perfectly well the way it was.

"This be an owl from Gringotts, Master Malfoy," Hemmy said, and held out his hand with a little shake. The owl took off and landed in the middle of Draco's table, staring at him with intense golden eyes. Draco stared back, ignoring the huffy sigh that Hemmy gave. "It be having a letter."

"Yes, I can see that, Hemmy," Draco said, reaching out. The owl continued to stare so hard that he wasn't entirely sure it would let him have the letter, but when his hand came near enough that his knuckles nearly touched its breast feathers, the bird turned its head to the side and released the letter with a contemptuous little jerk.

Draco checked the seal. Yes, it was from Gringotts, and as far as he could tell from a quick examination and a few charms, no one had tampered with it. Feeling a bit of curiosity on what they would tell him—the last "change" to his vault had involved the Ministry removing nearly all the Galleons for war reparations—he opened the envelope.

The parchment inside was thick and creamy, covered with silver ink an elegant hand, much nicer than the last one they had sent him. Draco sensed Hemmy hovering closer, but didn't shoo him away as he unfolded it.

Dear Master Draco Malfoy,

We are pleased to report an infusion of Galleons into your vault this morning from the vault of one Harry Potter.

There was more, something about the amount of Galleons given over and the fact that Potter had ordered it done yesterday, but Draco's eyes were too wide to read anymore. He dropped the letter to his lap and swallowed. Then he shook his head and raced through the rest of the paragraphs.

Yes, his vault's volume was now nearly the same as it had been before his father had lost the money, although not as full as it had been before the second war with the Dark Lord. Draco could accept that. He could more than accept that. This much money was enough that he wouldn't have to get a job, that he could live alone if he wanted, that he could buy new robes and flaunt them, that he could become a political force again if he wanted to…

And then he pulled his thoughts up tight. Giving such a gift had to have drained Potter's own fortune considerably. Why would he do it? Why would he want Draco to be able to take the place in society he so desired?

There had to be some catch.

"Parchment and ink and sharpened quill, Hemmy," Draco snapped, dropping the Gringotts letter next to him and glaring at it. He would make sure that he echoed some of the phrases in it when he was writing back to Potter, to make it clear that he knew what Potter had done if not why he had done it.

"Yes, Master Malfoy, sir!" Hemmy said, his chest puffing out before he vanished.

Draco would have given the owl some of the burnt toast before, but he fed it one of the bangers now, shaking his head in wonder. If Potter thought it so easy to buy a Malfoy, he was about to learn better. Draco would take the money, yes, but since it had given him back his independence, he would use it that way.

Regardless of Potter's original intentions.

"Malfoy, could I speak to you?"

Draco's heart first felt replaced by a lump of ice, and then as if it would try to beat its way out from inside his chest. Draco didn't allow that to discourage him from turning around and giving Potter as haughty a stare as he could imagine. "If you think you have something to say to me that will not waste my time," he announced, so that everyone in Diagon Alley, including those turning around to hear, would comprehend all the words. "And for the record, I do not consider schoolboy insults to belong in that category."

You knew this was coming, he told his stupid heart. You're the one who wants to run away from him. My mind and my body want to stay right here.

Potter, who was leaning against the building behind him, gave Draco a friendly smile. Draco's mind screeched to a halt over that, until he reminded himself that Potter had doubtless learned such techniques from the Aurors. He would give friendly smiles to suspects to make them convict themselves with their words. Draco was wiser than that. He would do no such thing. He stood stolidly in place instead, and watched Potter's eyes. The moment they flickered, he would know that he was being set up.

But none of Potter's Auror mates appeared from behind the nearest shops, and their audience might as well have been on Saturn for all the attention Potter paid to it. "I wanted to see how you were doing," he said.

Draco examined the words for traps, but at the same time, he knew it wouldn't matter if they weren't there. The Ministry could still haul him in on any pretext it wanted, and the Daily Prophet would still put this meeting on their front page tomorrow morning, with a headline that proclaimed Draco was "up to something." And Draco was. If reestablishing his reputation and social standing was being up to something.

"I can walk through a street without being abused," Draco said, and he didn't care who knew that, either. The first thing he'd spent the money on was a new device that Ollivander was selling, a kind of torque that would channel power through your wand even when your wand was distant from you. Draco was well-protected now against the minor charms and hexes that were all most people knew. "That's better than I was."

Potter's eyes softened. "I know," he said. "At its height, it was worse than the abuse they poured on me during the Tri-Wizard Tournament. I'm glad you survived."

Draco laughed. "Of course you would take the chance to compare it to some worse abuse you suffered," he said.

"That's not actually what the structure of my sentence said," Potter murmured, his eyebrows meeting in the middle of his forehead but his easy smile remaining. "Please tell me if anyone threatens you." He turned his head and scanned the crowd in a leisurely way that nevertheless made several of them sway back.

"So that's it," Draco said, glad that he had solved the puzzle at last. "You're using me as a—as bait to draw criminals out!"

"Er," Potter said, and he was definitely looking sideways at Draco now, as if Draco and not Potter was the mental one. "That's not it. I don't have any plan to use you. And if I wanted to catch criminals, well." He shrugged, and pulled on the scarlet Auror robe. "I could do that any time I wanted. But I can't see you any time I want."

His words had gone gentler than ever, and there was a gleam in his eyes that Draco struggled to understand. He should understand it. It was similar to ones he had seen before.

But whatever situations they were that he'd seen it in before, they were so different from this one that Draco couldn't recall them immediately. He shook his head. "If you hurt me in a place as public as this one, I think even your reputation would suffer."

Potter's face darkened, and Draco's heart sped up again. At last! Potter would do something stupid now, and Draco could get him arrested.

"Who's been telling you that I want to hurt you?" Potter demanded, in a growl that made all of Draco's hair try to stand on end. "I'll show them what pain means." He glared at several members of the audience, as if they could have approached and talked to Draco without Potter seeing them do it.

"The fuck are you on about," Draco said flatly, because it was time to end the subterfuge. Potter had never been good at subterfuge anyway, and it offended Draco that he would try to play at it. That was a game for Slytherins. "It's you who want to hurt me. I've always known it. Why else would you send me—what you did?" Even now, pride prevented him from mentioning what Potter had done. That would remain private between Potter, Draco, and the goblins of Gringotts until such time as Draco gained enough standing that he could no longer be embarrassed by the mere existence of the debt.

Or until it has to be used as evidence in a trial.

Potter moved so swiftly that Draco didn't see him do it. One moment he was over there against the building, and the next he was there, right next to Draco, letting his hand rest against Draco's cheek and pulling him close enough that their foreheads brushed. Draco stared at him, his eyes so wide that he knew Potter was going to make a sarcastic remark about them at any moment. Draco would strike when he did that, and damn whatever the Aurors could do about it.

"I like you," Potter whispered, voice gruff. "That's the truth of it, why I sent you my gift, and why I came to see you here, and—why I spent months working up the courage to approach you. At last I thought you might appreciate a gift more than anything else, so I gave it. But then I only got that strange letter back from you in return. Now I understand. You think that I'm trying to hurt you." His hands tightened on Draco's shoulders, and he gave a low chuckle. "Nothing could be further from the truth."

Draco had to close his eyes. His heartbeat made his head ache with how fast it was going, and his hands were sweltering with clammy sweat that he had to wipe off against his robes.

Now he understood. All the other plots he had imagined were nothing against the immense shadow of this one, the way that it loomed against the background and dominated the view of things around it.

Potter was planning to try and become Draco's lover. Once he was close to him, then he would arrange to—well, break Draco's heart somehow, if Draco was ever so foolish enough as to trust him. And Draco knew that people tended to trust lovers; they couldn't help it. He would trust Potter, or Potter would help him along to that with a little judicious use of the Imperius Curse, and then he would have his perfect revenge.

That had to be the truth. Because what he was saying was stupid. How could it have taken him so much courage to approach Draco, when he was all courage? And how could he have forgotten the insults that Draco had dropped on his head and the times that Draco had insulted his little Mudblood friend and the times that Draco had made fun of his dead parents and all the rest of it?

Draco knew that some things had changed. But not these things. Not that much.

He broke free of Potter with a twist of his shoulders, and Potter dropped his hands to his sides as he stood staring at Draco. He looked absolutely devastated, which Draco didn't understand. The words he had just spoken were false—

Oh, of course. He probably had friends watching somewhere out of sight, or he was playing to the Diagon Alley crowd. That way, he would convince them that his lies were the truth, and involve eyewitnesses and probably the Prophet in all of this nonsense. Draco straightened his back with a sneer. He couldn't do much compared to Potter's reach and influence, perhaps, but he would do what was permitted to him.

"You should reconsider, Potter," he said, and every word was a crystal, aimed to puncture and then smash flat Potter's idiocy and presumption. "What good would it do your reputation to have someone like me hanging off your neck? You couldn't go to the best parties anymore, or benefit your pet causes. Someone would always accuse me of whispering in your ear, poisoning your thoughts, corrupting your good intentions. You couldn't have the kind of life that a Gryffindor likes to have."

Yes, I can play that game, too, Draco thought, as he watched Potter's eyes widen and darken in feigned pain and confusion. I do wonder who taught you to be such a good actor, though. You're considerably better than you were.

"I'm not thinking about that," Potter said roughly. "I'm thinking of someone I can love, someone I can—be with." He flushed like a schoolboy at the last words, and stepped forwards, reaching out for Draco.

Draco retreated, sneering again. He knew Potter had friends and lovers in plenty thanks to the Daily Prophet. If he wanted to fool Draco, he should reconsider his "blushing schoolboy" shtick.

"Then you'll still need someone other than me," Draco said. "Someone who comes to you with her head full of love and rainbows and puppies and all that other Gryffindor shite—"

"Her?" Potter stared at him. The lashes around his huge green eyes were long and fine, Draco thought, and then damned himself for noticing that in the first place. "I should think you'd understand it's not her, at least, from the fact that I'm approaching you, even if you don't understand anything else."

Draco clenched his fists and teeth in response. "I knew it would come down to insults in the end," he told the members of the crowd who had stopped to gape at them. "It always does."

Potter swiped a hand through his hair, as if he was wondering why Draco was such a berk. Draco determined that he would find out the name of Potter's acting teacher, perhaps by writing to him under a pseudonym. If he or she had done wonders with such unpromising material as Potter to work with, Draco was sure that they could do something far more marvelous with him.

"I'm sorry," Potter said. "I'm not good at this. Courting someone I actually like, I mean, rather than someone who everyone expects me to be with." He took a deep breath, and seemed to pull courage in with the air, which only meant he was lying earlier. "But I'm willing to do whatever it takes to have you, Draco."

Draco shook his head furiously. "That means I would owe you another debt," he said. "And I'm not going to be with anyone like that."

"What debt do you owe me, other than the life-debts that we both incurred during the war?" Potter asked in what sounded like bewilderment. "And I'm willing to forgive those if you are. I never think about them."

Draco rolled his eyes. "They're among your greatest resources for getting what you want," he said. "And you expect me to believe that you never think about them?"

"I don't," Potter said. He looked utterly simple and utterly sincere, blast him. Draco opened his mouth to incant something that would have been a curse, and had to force himself to swallow and step back. Then Potter paused, and his face changed. "Or are you talking about the gift I sent you?"

Draco touched his hands together in sarcastic applause. "Sometimes you aren't as stupid as I think you are! Well done."

"A gift means that it's not something that you owe me a debt for," Potter said, shaking his head so that his hair flopped and giving Draco a hopeless grin. "Whether you date me or not, whether you want to be with me or not…it doesn't matter. It's yours."

Draco narrowed his eyes. "You say that, but you're the one who came up to me not long after you sent it to me and demanded that I go out with you." For the moment, he would pretend that this was all down to Potter's desire to date him, instead of the convoluted plan that he knew it was.

Potter blew air through his pursed lips. "Do you want me to go away and stop bothering you?" he asked. "Will that convince you?"

"Yes," Draco said, lifting up his chin. "That would be the best gift that you could give me at this point. People are starting to stare."

Potter nodded. "All right." And he turned his back and walked away.

Draco gaped at his back, then noticed the sidelong stares of the audience around them, and slammed his jaw shut hastily. He wouldn't let Potter make him look like a fool—at least, not more than Potter had already managed to do.

He went on shopping, but he was shaken. He found himself looking into windows and the mirrors in some of the shops, expecting to see Potter looming behind him with that same hopeless, witless grin.

Either way—whether Potter's confidence was real or a joke—it didn't make sense for him to just give up when Draco told him to.

The next morning, Draco realized that he hadn't "just given up."

"Master Malfoy! Master Malfoy!" He had never heard Hemmy's voice achieve that particular tone of "deeply distressed" before. Or shrilly distressed, perhaps, because his voice was high-pitched enough to puncture Draco's eardrums. Draco groaned, rolled the pillow away from his head—one of the first things he had bought was nicer pillows—and sat up.

Hemmy stood next to his bed, wringing his hands and staring at something in the middle of the room. Draco blinked and tried to focus on the thing. It looked like a shapeless heap of clothes at first, but then it twitched. Incredulous, he wondered if a Crup had managed to tear through clothes Hemmy had been drying and run through the wards into the house.

But when the creature straightened up completely, Draco realized it was another house-elf. A dirty one, with encrusted scabs on the inside of its ears and hands with ragged nails that moved continually over the clothes it held, but an elf.

"Who are you?" Draco asked, which he thought Hemmy should have done in the first place. The creature gave him an ingratiating smile. Hemmy looked as if he couldn't decide whether to faint from fear or faint from how dirty the thing was.

"Me is being Kreacher, master." The elf bubbled and bowed and continued washing the clothes in its hands, which, when it shook and straightened them out, Draco recognized as some of his new dress robes. He opened his mouth to yell, but the elf—Kreacher—shook them a second time, and all the dust flew them off at once. Draco closed his mouth. That was one trick Hemmy couldn't do.

"How did you get in here?" Draco asked weakly. He was sure that he would have felt something if his wards had parted to let Kreacher in—well, almost sure.

"Me is being your elf, the elf of the last heir of the Ancient and Noble House of Black!" Kreacher kept bowing so fast that Draco thought he wanted his ears to fall off. "Master Harry Potter is being sending me to yous because he has no need of me now!"

Another debt, Draco thought, his hands clenching in the blankets. Another fucking chain on me.

Then he paused. It seemed odd that Potter would use a house-elf as a means to chain Draco, when he had a friend who was so mad about their freedom. So probably he either meant to use Kreacher as a spy, or he meant Draco to reject him and send him back, whereupon he would give an interview to the papers about how he had tried to be nice to the rotten and spoiled Draco Malfoy, but That Prat Malfoy had rejected him.

"I'm not giving him the chance to do that," Draco muttered. He smiled. And I know more about house-elves than he does.

"Master?" Kreacher was watching him with twitching ears. Hemmy seemed to have recovered, though he looked at Draco in a mute appeal to make him make the bad elf go away.

"Here is your first order, Kreacher," Draco said sweetly. "If Harry Potter asks you anything about me, then you're to lie to him, understand? Say that I'm moping around the house and not enjoying my new money and my new life. Say that I don't see anyone."

Kreacher looked bewildered, but bowed at once. "Yes, Master Malfoy!" he said.

"Can you make a decent breakfast, Kreacher?" Draco swung his legs out of his bed, feeling good now. He knew that house-elves, once their allegiance was transferred to a new master, had no choice but to obey the orders of that master. Potter might have thought he was gaining a spy, but as long as he had told Kreacher he really was a gift, then he had lost an ally. And it would be good to have something other than burned toast for once.

"I cans be doing that, Master Malfoy!" Kreacher bounced on his heels. "What would Master Malfoy be liking?"

Ignoring the way that Hemmy sniffled and looked at him with betrayed eyes, Draco gave an order for eggs, porridge, kippers, scones, and pumpkin juice. Yes, he could get used to this standard of living that Potter, wittingly or not, had given him.

"May I have this dance?"

Draco turned around with a smile that he knew was perfect, because he had spent time working on it until it was. He had danced with several women already that evening—it was at a private party the Greengrass family was giving to celebrate Daphne's engagement—and any of them could become his future wife, now that he had enough money to make a difference. It wouldn't do to offend any of them before he chose.

It was Potter who stood there, hand out. Draco felt his smile freeze, and then crack and fall off his face in small shards. He took a step away until he'd put his back to the table loaded with delicacies, including stuffed larks, the tongues of Crups, and other treats that he'd thought he would never taste again.

He became aware that people were glancing at him, and that made him grit his teeth and meet Potter's eyes as calmly as he could. "You don't dare cause a scene in public," he whispered harshly. "You'd be kicked out of here." Something else occurred to him, and he darted a glance over the glittering company, the formal robes and the lace and the chandeliers and the marble pedestals on which stood images that displayed Daphne's accomplishments over the years. No one had noticed them yet, but there were guards on the doors. "How did you get in here?"

"I'm not above using my name when there's something I really want," Potter said. "Like you, for instance."

Draco bit down on his lip until it hurt and a small drop of blood appeared there. While he lifted his napkin to dab at it, he never took his eyes away from Potter. "That's ridiculous," he said. "There's no way that you could want me that much."

Potter gave him an ambiguous smile and extended his hand towards the dance floor again. "I'm supposed to be here," he said. "You're going to be the one at the center of the scene if we don't do something soon."

And Draco knew that was true. More and more curious eyes were turning his way. Probably no one would have been as interested if he'd been more commonly in attendance at parties and dances since the war, but Draco had spread the idea that he'd only been "husbanding" his money and "keeping his head down." The last thing he wanted was for the tale of his being in Potter's debt to come out.

"Fine," he snapped, and took Potter's hand.

Potter guided him out on the floor, which was made-or at least looked to be made; Mrs. Greengrass was so skilled with illusions it was hard to be sure—of shining, tessellated blue tiles, each glowing with their own inner light. Draco's face was glowing, too, as he whirled into the first steps of the dance. Not only had he been dragged out here against his will by Potter, but Potter probably couldn't even dance, and would make him look ridiculous.

Not so, he discovered, to his unpleasant and infinite surprise. Potter moved with a grace and command over his body that Draco had to envy. No, he probably hadn't learned the steps of the formal dances from birth, but he could listen to the music and find the patterns in that. The way, Draco thought, subjected to unwanted memories, that he had learned the patterns of a Quidditch game and being on a broom with no former practice.

"I don't want to make you unhappy."

Draco snapped back to himself and sneered at Potter. "Then leave me alone."

"I wish I could at least get you to listen to me, though," Potter continued wistfully, turning in a circle and extending his hand so that Draco spun out to the limit of their arms. Even that, a move that had sent more than one inexperienced dancer sprawling to the floor tonight, he did with strength and grace. Draco shook his head, not so much in refusal of Potter's attempt to talk to him as in wonder. "It just—I like you. Would it be so horrible to go on a date with me? Just to see what it's like? I promise that I have enough money and enough fame to get you into the restaurants that you're used to eating at."

Draco sucked in a harsh breath and forced himself to count to ten as he slowly released it. "You know that I'm looking for a wife," he said.

"Because you want to, or because that's what Malfoys do?" Potter challenged at once, his eyes shining.

"Both reasons," Draco said, when he'd allowed an appropriate freezing silence to pass and Potter looked a bit abashed. "But there's an even bigger reason to say no to you, Potter. I won't date, or marry, or just be with, anyone I owe debts to. It unbalances the relationship intolerably for me."

Potter drew Draco abruptly close to his body, and Draco caught his breath before he recognized it as a step in the dance. Potter had permission from the music as well as everyone watching in the room probably, to do that. Draco still wheeled stiffly around him, watching Potter's face and awaiting an answer to his last reply. If anything ought to deter Potter, it should be that, he thought. Potter would realize that Draco didn't want to be with him, he would realize that it wasn't fair—Gryffindors were great ones for justice and fairness—and he would choose someone else.

Potter glided through a few paces, staring hard into his eyes. Then he said, "It was a gift. The original money, and Kreacher. Gifts only."

"Given out of the goodness of your heart, were they?" Draco made sure his voice was thick enough to render the relatively simple words an insult. They came together in the center of a turn, parted, and then reeled back together again.

"I did hope they would make you look at me more favorably," Potter said simply. "To show you that I had enough of a fortune to court you and to show that I had no problem with house-elves who were treated kindly. But if you choose to keep them and not acknowledge me, then that's your choice. I can't take them back. I wouldn't."

Draco clenched his hands into fists. That showed Potter might have known what he was doing after all, sending Kreacher to Draco—

"Oi!" Potter shook his hand. "That's my fingers you're clutching, there."

Draco relaxed, humiliated that he had showed his emotions so clearly in front of Potter. "You must have better motives than just liking me to come after me," he said.

Potter stopped dancing and stood there in the middle of the pattern, staring into Draco's eyes. Draco shifted uneasily and tried to step aside, but Potter kept him still, hands on his shoulders. Draco bit the inside of his cheek in vexation. At least they were near the end of the dance, and so there was no one around to slam into them.

"Once, maybe," Potter said, and his eyes captured Draco's, shining as they were with determination and something both stronger and more frightening. "But after the war, I started to think. I'd given my life for these people, and that was a sacrifice. That was a debt, maybe, if you think about it that way. Ron thinks that the wizarding world owes me a lot more than it's paid me."

Draco shifted in place. He wanted to say that it did, but he also didn't want to agree with Weasley. And maybe he shouldn't offer an opinion. It wasn't as though he'd spent a lot of time thinking about it, involved as he was with his own personal affairs after the war.

"But I think of it as a gift," Potter said firmly. "No one's paid me be back, if they even can, and I would just as soon that no one try. That way, I'm not left feeling bitter over how much they owe me, and they're not uncomfortable over owing me. You don't owe someone for a gift. You just give it, and sometimes the other person likes it and sometimes he doesn't, and you go on and live your life."

"Very profound, Potter," Draco muttered, but his words didn't have the bite he wanted them to have, and from the triumphant glance Potter had cast him, he'd noticed.

"That's the way I'm pursuing you, too," Potter said. "Don't accept the gifts if you don't want them; don't date me if you don't want to. But don't feel that you're in my debt." He smiled suddenly, a smile so brilliant and astounding it hit Draco with the force of a body-blow. "And since we were both here and I saw you without a partner at the moment, I decided to take my chances."

He leaned nearer and lowered his voice, making Draco think for a moment that he would confess to some motive less savory than the squeaky-clean ones he'd brought up so far. "And a chance on this, too."

He kissed Draco on the cheek, a fleeting brush of lips that made Draco's face flame. Before he could say anything, Potter had smiled at him, mouthed, "Owl me," and then walked away across the tiles, his back straight.

Draco stood there staring after him, and then realized how stupid he must look, how affected, when he had wanted to look calmly considering and composed much of the evening, as someone should who hadn't chosen his bride yet.

He went to get another drink.

Other women asked him to dance that night, or he asked them, and Draco watched their eyes closely. He never again saw the combination of determination and the other emotion that had appeared in Potter's, but then again, it was a stupid thing to look for.

He didn't feel their lips on his exactly like Potter's lips against his cheek, either, but everyone kissed differently.

The next morning, eating a perfect breakfast that Kreacher had prepared in less than twenty minutes—and insulated from Hemmy's sulking by a wall between them—Draco sat there and thought.

He had to see the world in terms of debts, was his first thought. It was all very well for Potter to talk about how the world didn't owe him anything, or else could never pay him back, because he was the one in the position of creditor. He could send any gift he wanted. He could do anything he wanted, and the world would sit back and applaud. But Draco only fit within a very narrow group, and if he did anything too violent or too different, then he would be exiled from those limits. It could take him years to climb back into them. He knew that from stories his parents had told, although Draco had never met anyone like that himself. A Malfoy was expected to simply keep the constraints of his position in his mind as easily as he would breathe.

Potter could walk through them.

Draco shook his head and swallowed another mouthful of scrambled eggs (light and fluffy, like golden clouds). What did that matter to him? He hadn't been born to that kind of fabulous good luck, which in some ways was a better possession to have than all the money in the world. He couldn't join Potter there.

Unless you wanted to.

Because that was another thing his parents had taught him: that a Malfoy could do whatever he wanted. Draco wondered if they'd ever thought that belief might come into conflict with the requirement to stay within certain limits. Probably not. They wouldn't have thought that a Malfoy's desires would range outside that borders.

And mine don't, Draco reminded himself. He was curious about what had made Potter want him, choose him, but he didn't want Potter back.

He was curious enough to write an owl, though, and it was a masterpiece of logic. He laid out all their past history, and the ways that it made him an unfit partner for Potter. He pointed out that Potter's friends would be upset, and Draco's parents, and Draco's set, and the wizarding world as a whole. If Potter thought he got Howlers now—mostly from crazy people who thought Potter should have saved their loved ones during the war—it was nothing compared to what he would get after he and Draco started dating.

He said that he wasn't the handsomest or the richest man around. He said that he hadn't known Potter was bent.

He said it all with grace and skill, the way Potter had danced, and sealed it into an envelope to send with his new owl, bought the morning after Potter had sent him the money.

Then he sent it off and tried not to feel like a debtor.

I'm sure that the younger Greengrass girl would make you a fine wife, Draco. If you lowered your standards a bit, from impossible beauty to possible beauty, you would see that her nose isn't such an unfortunate shape.

Draco rolled his eyes and pushed his mother's letter away. She was traveling the world, as always, and she simply couldn't understand. It wasn't the shape of Astoria Greengrass's nose that Draco objected to, or at least not alone.

It was the lack of fire in her eyes.

But he had written to Potter the other day and hadn't heard anything back, Draco reminded himself. He would be stupid to hold out for the sake of something that might never come to be, that was probably only a fleeting fancy on the Gryffindor's part. And besides, just because he had thought about Potter's words concerning debts and gifts didn't mean that he had settled the debate to his satisfaction.

His mother was too distant to understand, though. She didn't know that sometimes you wanted to wait and think about what you desired.

An owl with brilliant black feathers slanted down towards him. Draco blinked and reached up, for one moment seeing the eagle-owl, Tyrannus, that he'd had throughout Hogwarts and whom the Death Eaters had killed. But it landed on his arm and glared at him with haughty yellow eyes, and he realized it wasn't a ghost come to accuse him. Shaking his head, he took the letter from it and turned his plate around. The owl ate fastidiously, picking through his eggs with its beak precisely aimed.

Potter's answer was written on heavy, thick, creamy paper of the kind that Draco hadn't thought he would know existed, never mind own and write on.

Dear Draco.

I sent you the gifts because I thought they would make you notice me. As for what impression I had of you? Someone distant from the world, so depressed that he wouldn't notice if I paraded naked through his house.

Draco frowned. He would have noticed that, he thought. Potter went too far in his attempts to reassure.

But it's not out of some demented desire to help you that I did this. I knew that you probably wouldn't look at me twice if you had the money back, and that was the way I wanted it. I wouldn't want to date someone who's so desperate that I look like his best chance for getting some self-respect back.

"I would never be that desperate," Draco told the letter. The owl lifted its head and twisted it towards him, as if to say that it didn't like Draco's tone.

I want you to stand up to me again. I want to see the challenge in your eyes. I reckon that I've seen some of that already, when you told me that you didn't want to owe me debts, but it's not the kind I want. I want someone who shares history with me, who has no reason to be in love with my money or my fame, who kept on going even under the burden of being exiled from society. You didn't ask for anyone's help. That makes you different from just about everyone I'd dealt with in the last few years except my closest friends. You kept on struggling, and you didn't go out in public, and the papers said that you were sulking. I know you weren't.

Draco nodded, regally pleased that Potter had put the right interpretation on the situation.

That was the only way you could salvage your pride. I like someone with pride of his own, a spirit of his own, a mind of his own.

I don't know. Maybe my impressions of you will turn out to be wrong. But, at the moment, pure and simple, I like you. And if I gave you the means to start choosing people again, including a wife, I at least wanted to ask you to look at me. I can't compel you. But I can ask.

Harry.

Draco sat there with his eyes closed for long moments, his fingers tapping the table. The owl had finished the eggs and started in on his bacon by the time he looked.

Were those reasons good enough? Perhaps not. Did Draco entirely believe Potter about them? Perhaps not. Gryffindor weren't good schemers, but he could have consulted with a Slytherin, and beyond that, the gifts were—extreme. If he didn't want Draco in his debt, he didn't have to give so much.

Draco picked up the letter and turned it around reflectively, as if the shadow of the words on the other side of the paper would reveal some greater truth to him. They didn't.

But this was the reality, the one that his mother didn't see and which had been taken away from his father.

Draco had the choice.

Despite the way Potter had come up to him at the dance the other night, Draco did believe him when he said that he wouldn't push it further if Draco chose against him. But Draco hadn't picked a wife yet, he hadn't shown anyone more favor than anyone else that night, and Potter still had the ability to hope.

He has the ability to hope that letting the Dark Lord kill him would really save the world. He has more than anyone I've ever known.

Draco leaned back in his chair and drummed his foot against the rungs, still thinking. He didn't think that the Malfoy rules covered this situation.

Kreacher appeared to take the remains of the breakfast away. The owl began to clean around its legs and under its feathers with its beak. Draco turned his head and watched the sunlight falling on the gardens, which were now better-tended than they had been before.

The world shimmered and trembled on the edge of changing like an image in a puddle of water. And Draco was the one who could choose to reach down and save that image from breaking, if he wanted.

This was the moment.

This was the choice.

Malfoys always did whatever they wanted, and if they broke the rules, well, the new rules formed where they were.

Draco smiled. He chose to believe that Potter was right, and the money and Kreacher were gifts, not debts.

He wrote on the back of Potter's letter his response. Let's try. Then he held out his hand, and the owl rose on silent wings, snatched the parchment in its beak, and wheeled away, out the window into the sun.

Draco sat back and watched the sun dance on the floor for a while, in between the times that he was writing a reply to his mother. She would be disappointed, but then again, she wasn't here, and Draco could afford the wards that would discourage Howlers now.

Not everyone had choices, but he did.

He'd try making new ones.

The End.