Chapter Text
Draco all but shoves Harry through the doorway of the small log cabin, then pushes past him as Harry comes to a numb exhausted stop just inside. Harry is almost immediately blinded by his glasses fogging over.
It’s bitterly cold inside the cabin even with the door shut, though less so than outside; the fog on Harry’s glasses subsides quickly and Harry turns his head to locate Draco in the gloom. He’s over by a squat metal wood stove, down on his haunches, shoving split wood into its open belly.
“Boots off,” Draco throws back over his shoulder, looking briefly at Harry.
“It’s freezing in here,” Harry protests. He looks down at his feet, which are nearly invisible in the gloom gathered over the floor. They feel fine. Or rather, they don’t feel like much of anything at all. After hours of walking in his standard issue dragonhide Auror boots, Harry’s feet seem to have been transfigured into heavy stiff blocks of ice. But more importantly, they stopped bloody hurting a while back.
There’s a yellow-blue burst of flame – Malfoy’s got one of those long-tipped candle lighters and is holding its light in the middle of the wood he’s piled into the stove. There’s a twist of newspaper that catches almost instantly, flaring orange and throwing shadows onto the back of Malfoy’s pale hands. He must have pulled his thick mittens off at some point.
Harry looks to the floor and sees them, inverted in Draco’s haste to light the fire. Harry snorted at the mittens the first time he saw them: big puffy woollen things, not navy or grey or brown, but a bright childish blue, flecked with white polka dots. They were only about fifteen minutes into their journey before Harry was looking over at them with frank envy, comparing them with his own pitifully thin leather gloves that seemingly did nothing to keep his fingers from cramping with cold.
Harry’s hands, too, have long since stopped hurting. He only realises it now when he sees how nimbly Malfoy is managing the fire, and becomes aware that his hands are like claws, stiff and useless inside his gloves.
“Well, it’s your lookout if you don’t mind losing toes to frostbite, I suppose,” Malfoy says, not bothering to glance back at Harry again.
“Frostbite?” Harry repeats, a little stupidly. But it’s enough to spur him into motion, and he clomps over to one of the small armchairs in front of the fire, perches down on one of its arms, and tries to work his boot buckles with his numb rigid fingers. It’s hard going – he’s used to having the help of unfastening charms to manage the business, which is tricky enough without frozen hands – but finally Harry half-pulls, half-stomps his boots off, dropping snow all over the wooden plank floor as he does. His socks stay inside the boots, but it hardly matters because Harry still can’t feel his feet. They look eerily pale in the dim firelight, like fish bellies. They look like someone else’s feet, and feel like someone else’s feet, too.
And then suddenly Malfoy’s turned around, and he’s got his big warm – warm – fingers curling around Harry’s left foot, squeezing his icy skin. It should be heaven, that warmth, but instead the heat strips away Harry’s blissful numbness. His skin stings like Draco’s touch is a hot iron. He can’t quite hold back the hiss of pain, caught by surprise at the sensation.
“I know,” Draco says, instead of smirking. There’s a steadiness to his shoulders and to his hands as he kneels in front of Harry, head bowed, grey gaze fixed on Harry’s bare feet.
The initial sting starts to fade and breaks into painful spangling bursts as his nerves thaw out and start sending up alarms.
Draco releases Harry’s foot and switches to the other side.
“Fingers next,” he says, settling back on his heels and holding out his hands for Harry’s. Harry hastens to strip off his useless gloves, his fingers clumsy and thick-feeling.
The wood stove is properly throwing off heat now as the logs catch fire. Draco sandwiches Harry’s icy fingers between his palms and scrubs back and forth.
Harry’s prepared for the pain this time and is able to limit himself to a small unhappy exhalation before bracing up. Draco’s palms are callused and almost too hot on Harry’s chilled fingertips.
“Could I really lose my fingers and toes?” Harry asks, trying to sound calm over the idea. He hadn’t thought, somehow: they can’t cast spells here, including healing magic. It would attract the dragons to them.
Draco’s amused huff should be grating, but instead it’s reassuring. Draco wouldn’t laugh at Harry losing digits. Probably.
“No,” says Malfoy. “We only worry about it when they start turning black.”
“Yeah, that’s likely,” Harry says.
Draco’s arched eyebrow immediately makes Harry doubt that he’s only taking the piss.
“Black?” Harry repeats, breathless.
“You’re fine,” says Draco, letting go of Harry’s left hand and switching to his right. “You might not have been if it had taken us another hour or so to find this place.”
Draco’s scrubbing motion is gentler on this side, probably because the temperature gradient between Harry’s skin and Draco’s is far less dramatic now that the fire is starting to crackle more fiercely.
Harry’s caught off guard when he’s hit by a full-body shiver, and his teeth literally chatter in his head. “Why do I feel colder than ever?” he wonders aloud, confused.
“Because you have mild hypothermia,” says Malfoy. “You helpless idiot.”
He releases Harry’s hand and rises, going back to the wood stove and piling in another piece of wood before closing the door, then going over to his pack where he’d dropped it when they burst inside moments earlier.
He opens his pack and starts digging, while Harry slides down to sit in the armchair properly, drawing his cold bare feet up under him and tucking his hands into his armpits. He’s still in full winter togs, feet and hands aside, and the outside of his parka is shockingly cold yet.
Harry’s just doing an internal risk-benefit calculation on the idea of unzipping his coat to jam his hands into his armpits underneath when a jumper comes flying over at him from Draco’s position, followed by something waffle-knit and long, and then a balled-up pair of those hand-knitted wool socks Draco is always wearing.
“Er,” says Harry.
“Don’t change yet,” says Draco, “but when it gets a little warmer inside, you should swap clothes. Jeans in the Arctic, honestly.”
Harry frees one of his hands to sort through the pile of fabric on his knees. While the bones in his hand are still aching, the stinging has eased, and Harry notices he’s regained most of his usual dexterity now.
He’s got one of Draco’s ubiquitous jumpers — this one a heather green with fat cables, the wool soft and pilly under Harry’s fingers — and the waffle-knit thing proves to be two things: a sort of long-sleeved undershirt and long underwear, the legs of which are almost comically endlessly long as Harry tries to find the ankle cuffs.
Harry’s going to look like a kid wearing his dad’s pyjamas in these.
The socks are even softer than the jumper, though Draco’s — accidentally? deliberately? — matched the colours. The socks are a seagrass green, ribbed and thick and squashy under Harry’s fingers.
Draco’s moving around the cabin lighting lanterns now. Harry can almost hear the snow piling up on the roof above, against the walls around, like they’re in a hollow space inside a vast feather duvet.
Harry shifts guiltily, unrolling the socks and setting the other clothes aside, suddenly aware that he’s sat here like a cold lump shivering while Draco is doing all the work.
The socks feel exactly as heavenly as they look, though the heels wind up on the backs of Harry’s ankles when he pulls them up. He wiggles his toes in helpless silent delight, the wool seeming almost to radiate heat back into the long bones of his feet which seemed cruelly exposed to the cold only moments earlier.
“What can I do,” Harry says, rising a little unsteadily. He can’t even feel the temperature of the floorboards through the socks, he realises.
Draco flings another bundle of fabric his way, not pausing in his work. “Sit your arse down and curl up under that,” he says, the tip of his nose still pink from the wind. “You haven’t thawed out yet.”
Harry shakes out the fabric and recognizes a polar fleece blanket. He wants to protest, but he’s wracked by another shiver now that he’s unfolded his body and exposed it to the chill air, even through his parka.
He can’t quite see his breath in the cabin anymore, not this close to the wood stove, but Draco’s exhalations are still visible as puffs of vapour as he moves around the little space, showing that the heat of the stove hasn’t gotten far in penetrating the deep cold of the cabin yet.
“What about you,” Harry asks, curling up in his chair again, tucking the blanket around himself.
“I’m fine,” says Draco, opening a cupboard on the wall over the tiny sink. “The miracles of appropriate workwear.”
“Fuck off,” says Harry, huddling into his blanket, hunching his shoulders inward to try and hold onto his body heat. The wood stove is throwing off radiant heat but it seems to have all the effect of lighting a candle inside a massive chilly cave, even small as the cabin is.
“Damn,” says Draco quietly.
“What,” Harry says, whipping around to look at Draco, who’s flicking a light switch back and forth.
“No power,” he says. “To be expected, I guess. And of course no water, they’ll have shut it off for the season already or the pipes would burst.”
Harry’s so shocked that Draco knows about light switches and plumbing that he can’t formulate an answer.
“I think I saw a generator around the side,” Draco says. “Let’s hope they have lots of propane in it.”
“What do we need power for?” Harry asks, dumbfounded.
Draco points at a small electric heater, the baseboard kind, near the bed frame. Harry glances around and realises it’s one of several such heaters, all tucked up against the sides of the cabin. “It would be nice to have another heat source,” Malfoy says. “The hob is gas, at least.”
“I think we’d better stay inside right now,” Harry says, hoping it sounds reasonable and not like he’s deeply anxious about letting Draco go back out into the falling dusk and the driving snow and wind. He suddenly remembers a book from primary school, some dreadful pioneer tale where a woman froze between the house and the shed of a homestead when she went out to check on the family’s horses.
“I agree,” says Draco. “In the morning, we can dig a path to the generator if we need it.”
He starts pulling tins down from the cupboard, turning them to read the labels as he goes. “Soup, soup, soup,” he mutters. “Beans.”
“Beans,” Harry echoes with unplanned wistfulness.
Draco’s answering laugh is low and unlooked-for. “Beans it is, Potter.”
Harry’s shivers start to space out, decreasing in intensity, and then it seems like warmth is curling out from his core into his limbs, bringing a deep sense of sleepiness with it. He still feels vague pangs of guilt as he sits blinking heavily at the fire, hearing Draco’s clatter of saucepan and spoons behind him, but Harry feels as though he’s made of warm lead, and it’s harder to imagine being of any use now.
The cut of icy wind from the doorway rouses Harry from what must have been a light slumber. He snaps his gaze over to see Draco leaning out the door with a bowl in his hand, coming back almost immediately, the bowl piled high with white snow.
“Water,” says Draco, in answer to Harry’s questioning look. “We’ll need water.”
“It’s safe to drink?” Harry asks blearily, gathering his blanket in as the cold air from the opened door breezes by.
“Yes,” says Draco, simply, and Harry’s not inclined to argue when Draco’s seen them safe thus far, and Harry himself has been more of a burden than a help. “Dinner will be ready in a few minutes, I think you could probably change clothes now if you want.”
“Oh,” says Harry, and gingerly lets his blanket drop. Draco’s right — the stove has done good work in the last little while, and the cabin now feels like it’s properly an indoor space, if not exactly warm.
Harry stands and looks round for the first time since they first burst into the cabin. It’s a single room, maybe fifteen feet by twenty-five. One end of the rectangle has the small kitchen area where Draco’s been working, and the other has a bed. The woodstove and chair in which Harry’s sitting are between the two, flat in the middle of the cabin.
There are no doors other than the one leading back outside, and Harry remembers what Draco said about water when he spots a little porcelain sink against the wall by the bed. No loo, then; probably there’s a privy outside.
There’s nowhere to retreat in order to change clothes, in other words. Harry fidgets with the zip on his parka, hesitating.
He doesn’t know why he’s come over all bashful. It’s Malfoy, for Merlin’s sake. And besides, Harry spent his most gangly and awkward formative years getting his kit off in front of others, in the dorms and in Quidditch locker rooms, and he’s probably got less to be ashamed of now than he did as a scrawny lad back then, though Harry remains what Ron fondly calls ‘pocket-sized’. He’s at least built like an actual adult man nowadays, if still a bit of a skinny one.
With a quiet impatient sigh at himself, Harry unzips his parka and shucks it off, then whips his own jumper up and over his head before he can think too much about it. The t-shirt underneath comes with it, which is just as well, and now Harry’s got his bare chest out, he can properly judge that it’s still no more than fifteen degrees or so in the cabin. Harry’s nipples pebble and his skin pimples with gooseflesh. He scrabbles for Draco’s thermal undershirt and pulls it on as quickly as he can.
When Harry’s head emerges from the neck hole, he can’t stop himself from throwing a quick glance towards Draco; but Malfoy’s still got his back turned, busy at the little gas hob melting snow. Harry doesn’t know if Malfoy is being polite or just literally doesn’t give a shit about Harry getting undressed in front of him.
“Thanks for the clothes,” Harry says, pushing up the shirt cuffs until he can find his hands inside the long sleeves. The undershirt is too long through the body too, Draco having grown to just over six feet while Harry stopped at five foot seven, but even so it’s a tight fit. Malfoy’s got a lean long body. Harry is apparently a little broader through the shoulders.
Draco throws a quick look back over his shoulder before returning his attention to the hob. “Hm,” he says, somehow conveying irritation without words.
Harry rolls his eyes and picks up the jumper, yanking it on next. It hangs down over the tops of Harry’s thighs, which makes it feel less awkward when Harry unbuttons his cold jeans with damp icy cuffs, kicking them off gratefully. They felt unbearably uncomfortable in contrast to Harry’s warm dry layers on top, and it’s a relief to hop into Draco’s long underwear now, even though Harry feels about seven years old as he struggles to jam first one foot and then the other all the way down the long legs and out the ends.
Draco didn’t give Harry any trousers, Harry realises, looking down at himself. It makes sense – trousers have much less stretch than long underwear, and most likely Malfoy’s slim-cut trousers wouldn’t even fit Harry. Probably he meant for Harry to put the long underwear on under his jeans, but Harry can’t stomach the notion of putting the bloody things back on now he’s cosy and warm in the waffle knit. The jumper is long enough to cover Harry’s arse and groin, after all.
Harry looks down at himself and tries to decide if he looks indecent or just stupid.
Probably a bit of both, he admits, and then decides he doesn’t care. He slings his damp jeans over the back of the armchair so they can dry before the morning, then opens the wood stove up and pops another log in. At least they’ve a good supply of firewood inside: there’s a stack taller than Harry next to the stove.
“Dinner is served,” Draco says, all vowels and grandeur. For the space of a breath, Harry thinks Draco’s being serious, being a legitimate posh prat, but then he looks over and sees that Draco’s waving his hands regally over two steaming bowls of homely tinned beans.
Draco’s being funny.
Harry snorts in surprise and comes over. If Draco is shocked by Harry’s decision to forgo his trousers, he doesn’t show it. He just sits down opposite Harry and tucks in.
The beans are incredibly good in the way any hot food is good when you’re weary after a long day of physical toil. Harry cleans his bowl in short order, then sits back to observe that Draco somehow manages to eat tinned beans in a slow elegant way.
Harry wonders if there were rules at the Manor about chewing your food thoroughly, and reckons there probably were. Still, it seems excessive to be so deliberate about a mouthful of baked beans in tomato sauce. They’re practically pre-chewed, they’re so soft and mushy.
Harry loses interest when it becomes apparent that Draco has no intention of finishing anytime soon, and so he rises from the table and goes over to the hob. Draco’s melted a saucepan of snow, which Harry decants carefully into the banged-up old kettle sitting on another burner. He assumes this was Draco’s next move anyway, going off the two tin mugs sat out on the worktop, each with a tea bag waiting inside.
Harry leans towards the dim blue rectangle of the window over the sink as he waits for the kettle to boil. It’s an old window frame with mullions, and every little pane seems to be about half-obscured by drifts of snow already. Harry raps his knuckles on the frosty glass to knock the snow loose from one pane, but between the ice and the darkness, there’s not much to see. Snow, swirling. Bare-branched trees thick and conspiring together. The smallest cuts of sky peeping through their branches, starless with the snowstorm clouds blocking them in.
Harry looks back over his shoulder, suddenly realising Draco’s genteel clink of spoon and bowl has stopped.
Draco’s looking over his own shoulder at Harry, it turns out; or rather, he’s looking at Harry’s arse, which is sticking out under the hem of Draco’s jumper because of how Harry’s leaning over the sink.
Harry straightens up and tugs the jumper down, clearing his throat, face hot. He should have put the fucking jeans on, Malfoy is probably horrified to realize he didn’t.
The kettle whistles before Harry can decide whether to pretend he didn’t notice Draco’s gaze or to apologise for his arse being only inches from Draco’s face.
Hob off, boiling water poured, Harry’s never been more thankful for the ritual of tea. “I imagine we don’t have any milk,” he says, “but there might be sugar?”
“Black is fine for me,” says Draco, back to eating his beans more slowly than any adult human in the history of beans.
Harry is fine with black tea too, so he brings the mugs over to the table and sets them down. The cabin has grown steadily warmer, and now it’s probably hovering around the temperature of any indoor space in England in December: which is to say, just this side of uncomfortably cool.
But in Malfoy’s thermal underwear – and oh, Merlin, Harry’s wearing Malfoy’s thermal underwear – and jumper, Harry only really notices the clinging chill through the exposed bits of his skin: his knuckles and fingertips, his neck and cheeks and the tip of his nose. The steam and heat from his tea warms all of these bits admirably when he curls his hand round the tin mug and lifts it for a first sip.
It’s not good tea, but it’s absolutely good enough. Harry groans helplessly as the tea hits his belly. Malfoy makes a small motion with one elbow that somehow conveys his irritation with Harry’s noisiness, but Harry doesn’t care. He has tea, he’s warm, and he doesn’t care.
“Do you think the storm will have blown over by morning, then?” Harry asks, once Draco’s finally finished his bowl of beans. They weren’t meant to stay out here, of course; they were supposed to be back outside the Ridgebacks’ territory by now, safe in town, ready to strike out again and resume the search tomorrow.
Draco lifts one shoulder, narrow under the oatmeal cable knit of his jumper. “Hard to say,” he says. “It wasn’t in the forecast.”
“Right,” says Harry. He glances again at the window, where the snow Harry knocked loose earlier has piled up again. The window is more than half obscured already. “Will we be able to open the door in the morning?” he worries aloud.
“Doors open inwards, you git,” says Draco, but his tone is surprisingly mild. Almost kind.
“Right,” says Harry again, feeling stupid. He’s not used to being the weaker side of a partnership, but it seems like he’s been nothing more than a burden for Malfoy since they set off this morning in search of the dragon egg poachers.
“Also, there’s a shovel over there,” Draco adds, ticking his chin towards the door. “We can dig out in the morning as needed.”
Harry nods, glancing over his shoulder to see the weathered metal shovel leaning on the wall of the cabin. He twists a little further to take in the thing he noticed before but didn’t think about properly: the single bed, neatly made with a fluffy duvet. Its solitary pillow. Its narrow mattress, made for one.
Harry clears his throat and goes back to not thinking about it. He’s warm, he has tea, they’re safe for now. So long as they don’t use any magic, the Ridgebacks won’t be drawn to them, and they can wait out the storm here with food and heat and shelter.
“Draco, I wanted to say something,” Harry says, abruptly aware that they’re in this safety and warmth all thanks to Malfoy and his casual competence, the very competence Harry’s been doubting since the moment he arrived in Norway and discovered he was being paired up with none other than Draco Malfoy, that Draco Malfoy somehow has spent the last decade serving as an Auror on the NorMagPol service in the arse end of the Arctic. That Draco wears not crisp heavy formal workwear like Harry’s uniform robes, but chunky knit jumpers with the cuffs falling over the base of his hands, wildly vibrant knitted socks on his long lean feet, and beanie caps topped with pom-poms, like Draco is less an Auror and more a model out of a 1980s IKEA catalogue, Nordic and cosy and pale and tall.
(“I don’t know how he expects to be taken seriously, honestly,” Harry said through the Floo from his hotel room that first night, talking to Ron and Hermione – Hermione, round and breathless and impatient for Hugo’s imminent arrival, and Ron, dandling Rose on his knee, grounded in London because of Hermione’s expectant state. “I mean, I know NorMagPol have proper uniforms, I’ve seen them.”
“I imagine things are less formal when you’re the only Auror north of the sixtieth parallel,” Ron suggested, jouncing Rose. “I can’t picture it, though. You’d think he’d be buttoned up to his neck, Malfoy. He always loved rules, didn’t he.”
“He loved poncy clothes too,” Harry said, then was glad that the flames probably hid his reflexive blush when he wondered if it was weird that he remembered this about Draco Malfoy from back in their school days: Draco’s neatness, his pressed trousers, his combed hair. And why did Harry think of that instead of Draco’s sneers and slurs and nasty looks?
“I imagine he’s changed from when he was sixteen,” Hermione said, shifting in her chair, wincing, uncomfortable. “Do you think he’s depressed? Let himself go a bit?”
“No,” Harry answered, startled by the question. He hadn’t explained it properly, he realised, if that was the impression Hermione had gotten. “No, he doesn’t look…slovenly. He’s just – he looks good, I suppose, he –”
And then Rose launched into an almighty tantrum because Ron wouldn’t let her stick her hand into the Floo, and the call ended in a flurry of shouted apologies.)
“I wanted to say,” Harry repeats now, forcing himself to get the words out, “thank you. Thanks, really. I know I wasn’t much use today, and I wasn’t dressed properly for the weather, and if you hadn’t found this place, we – well. Thank you.”
Draco’s eyes are wide with surprise, but instead of simpering with pride at Harry’s gratitude, at Harry’s admission of Draco’s heroism, he gives a small shake of his head in answer. “It’s hardly your fault that the DMLE kitted you out like you were doing a job in Devonshire when they were sending you into the polar night,” he says. “I should have insisted on outfitting you better, it’s on me too. You didn’t know, did you.”
Harry’s equally taken aback by Draco’s admission. He blinks a few times as he processes. “You must think I’m an idiot, coming up here dressed like it’s Christmas at Hogwarts.”
Draco’s mouth quirks for a brief moment before it vanishes, like he’s suppressing the old impulse to mock, even though the smile wasn’t mean-spirited. “Regardless,” he says, neatly side-stepping the question of Harry’s idiocy, “I shouldn’t have let you leave like that. Did you even bring a change of clothes? Food?”
Harry shakes his head ruefully, reaching up to scrub a hand through his hair. “Idiot,” he says. “I know.”
“Hm,” says Draco, quaffing the last of his tea and then setting the mug down with a tinny sound. “Funny, how we fall into old patterns. I would have thought it a great joke to see you lose a hand to hypothermia when we were at school together.”
“To be fair,” Harry says, “it would more likely have been you going out into the wilderness and whinging about the hardship of it than me, back then. And I also would have thought that was hilarious.”
“You didn’t whinge,” Draco points out. “Today.”
“Oh, I absolutely whinged,” Harry insists. “Inside my head, anyway.”
“Doesn’t count,” Draco says. He pushes his chair back with a faint scrape of wood on wood. “Which pot shall we piss in, Potter? There’s not a lot to choose from.”
They settle on a larger soup pot with a lid, reckoning they won’t need to heat up large quantities of anything when they hope to be on the move tomorrow anyway. Malfoy sets the pot down in a corner of the cabin and goes first, pissing noisily into the battered pot with a sigh of relief. Harry turns away, a confused heat in his cheeks even though it’s not like he can see anything with Draco facing into the corner like that. It’s probably not even the first time Harry’s seen Draco have a slash. Surely they pissed together in a bathroom at Hogwarts sometime in six years?
“All yours,” says Malfoy, zipping up and turning around. He’s wearing proper trousers, of course: something dark and nylon, probably posh and high-tech and lined with fleece. He holds up his hands and grimaces. “Melted snow and washing up liquid, I suppose,” he sighs. “Oh, for a cleaning charm.”
While Draco’s busy at the sink, Harry takes his turn at the soup pot, trying not to think too much about what he’s doing, which is holding Draco’s jumper hem up out of the way and tugging Draco’s long underwear down, getting his cock out with Draco five feet away. Peeing into a pot of Draco’s pee. It all feels uncomfortably intimate.
“Aha,” says Malfoy while Harry’s trying to wash his hands with the leftover boiled snow-water and half-frozen washing up liquid.
“What,” says Harry, turning round to see. Draco’s at the other end of the cabin, on the far side of the central wood stove, and he’s tugging at something under the bed. Harry comes over to look for himself. It’s a trundle bed, which was hiding in the gloom under the bedskirt. It’s even shorter and narrower than the main bed, but it’s made up as well, with its own pillow and duvet. Whoever owns this cabin must have a child, or a niece or nephew, who comes into the woods with them sometimes to have an adventure.
Harry nods, trying to look pleased at Draco’s discovery, trying to ignore the weird lump of annoyance it’s raised in his stomach. Harry hardly wanted to spend a night crowded up against all Malfoy’s angles and points, awkward and unable to relax for fear of accidental touching. He’s glad of the trundle bed; he’s not that tall anyway, he’ll fit into it reasonably well.
“You can take the top bed,” says Draco. “I’ll get up to tend the fire in the night, it’ll be easier.”
“I can tend the fire,” says Harry. “I’m shorter, it’s fine, I should take the smaller bed.”
“You need to rest,” says Draco, cutting a look Harry’s way that reminds Harry of the keen eye of Madam Pomfrey. “I’ll take the trundle.”
Harry should be pleased by this too. The top bed is almost certainly more comfortable, with its thicker mattress and greater distance from the cold wooden floor. But again, Harry feels unreasonably annoyed. He doesn’t like Draco playing the hero, he decides; though that’s not exactly it, either, the explanation feels sufficient to Harry at the moment.
“Might as well go to bed now,” says Draco, glancing at his watch. “It’s only nine but I’m exhausted, you must be tired too. We’ll be warmer sleeping anyway.”
“Yeah, okay,” says Harry, and fiddles with the hem of Draco’s jumper.
“Oh, leave it on,” Draco says hastily, and for a moment Harry thinks Draco’s objecting to having to see Harry’s arse and cock through the clinging long underwear, but of course Draco means – “It’ll be warmer that way.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Harry says confusedly, though he’s never in his life slept in socks and long underwear and a long-sleeved thermal shirt and a jumper. Not even in seventh year. Not even in that bloody cold tent.
“Wait,” says Draco, “I saw a hot water bottle.”
“I can do that,” says Harry, and he can hear how stroppy he sounds, but feels unable to temper his voice. “You get into bed first, we can trade it back and forth.”
Malfoy shrugs. “Fine,” he says, and turns back his duvet.
Harry goes over to the kitchenette and checks the kettle. It’s nearly empty, so he tugs his parka on quickly and takes the snow bowl over to the front door, braces himself, and opens it. The snow flies in, stinging and icy, and Harry gasps as he leans out and scoops up a fresh bowl of snow before slamming the door shut again. He looks over at Malfoy, who’s got his duvet up to his chin like a maiden trying to protect her virtue. “The wind feels like burning,” Harry says, sniffing. “My bogeys froze.”
“It must be minus twenty-five out there,” Draco says, shuddering. “Maybe minus thirty if you account for the windchill.”
“There’s a minus thirty?” Harry says, dumbfounded.
“Of course there is, you numpty,” says Draco, again in a surprisingly warm way.
Harry goes over to the hob again and scoops handfuls of snow into the pot Draco used earlier to melt the first batch. It’s powder dry, nothing like the sticky clumpy snow of Hogwarts winters, though it melts into that form within a moment on the hob. Once the water is liquid, Harry decants it carefully into the kettle and sets it to boil, reckoning he’d rather pour boiling water from a proper spout into the neck of a hot water bottle. He locates the hot water bottle under the sink – only the one, alas – and gets it ready, then fills it when the kettle whistles. It’s ages since he held one of these, but the rubber smell and the wobbly watery body of the bottle take Harry directly back to his childhood.
It was cold under the stairs in the winter.
“Here,” says Harry, bringing the bottle over to Malfoy, holding it out, not wanting it near him.
“Thanks,” says Malfoy, taking it, tucking it under his duvet and making a small blissful groan as he does. “Five minutes and then it’s all yours.”
“Sure,” says Harry. He circles the perimeter of the cabin and extinguishes the lanterns until only the wood stove remains as their source of light in the inky black night. Draco’s almost entirely invisible under his cloudy duvet now. Harry can faintly make out the burnished shine of his white-blond hair as it reflects back firelight, and the yet-whiter span of his brow beneath.
The bed creaks as Harry climbs into it. The sheets are clean and crisp, but they’re also cold to Harry’s touch. He shivers and pulls his knees up, lying on his side like a prawn with his arms round his shins.
“Here,” says Draco in a half-whisper, and then the edge of Harry’s duvet is lifting and Draco is sliding the most delicious warmth over Harry’s mattress and into his curled up body. “Put it on your feet,” he advises.
“Hm,” says Harry, kicking the hot water bottle down until he can rest the soles of his feet against it.
“If you have warm feet, you always feel like you can survive the cold,” Draco says softly, almost like he’s talking to himself.
There’s a silence while Harry shivers as quietly as he can, clutching his elbows. He tucks the cold tip of his nose, his mouth, inside the neck of Draco’s jumper and exhales so the heat of his breath warms the wool, spreads over his chin and jaw. Draco’s right about his feet, though. Once they’re warmed up, Harry can feel his whole body starting to unclench with relief.
“Have you been up here the whole ten years?” Harry asks into the darkness, reaching down to grab the hot water bottle and then plopping it down onto Draco’s trundle with little ceremony.
“Most of them,” Draco says. “I started off in Oslo. Then a year in Tromsø, and then they asked me if I was interested in being more remote, and I said yes. That was 2002, so I’ve been here nearly five years, and up north for six.”
“You like it up here?” Harry asks, already missing the hot water bottle but not shivering anymore. “It’s so dark.”
“I like it up here,” Draco says. “I like the dark, actually.” There’s a rustling of covers, and Draco’s shoulders twist so he can look up at Harry behind him. “No cheap jokes about my affinity for the Dark Arts, please.”
Harry snorts. Draco’s eyes are just glinting places in a dark visage at this angle. Harry abruptly wishes he could see Draco’s mouth, see if he’s smiling. It sounds like he might be smiling. “What do you like about it,” Harry says, forcing himself to look over at the wood stove. “Other than the dark?”
“It’s quiet,” says Draco. “The people don’t bullshit you, they say what they mean all the time.”
Harry huffs a quiet laugh. “That sounds very un-Slytherin of you. Don’t you lot like it when people don’t mean what they say?”
There’s a pause in which Harry’s sorry that he said this, that he dredged up the old stupid house stereotypes when they were just starting to have a normal civil conversation for the first time, possibly ever.
But Draco answers, eventually, and he doesn’t sound annoyed. Rather, his voice is a little tired, a little resigned. “I think I’ve lost my taste for all that,” he says.
Harry, who long ago discovered that so-called Gryffindor nerve is a combination of luck and bull-headedness, rather agrees. “War will do that to you,” he says softly, then changes the subject back to safer ground. “What else do you like about living up here?”
Draco seems to accept Harry’s pivot with alacrity. He scarcely hesitates before answering, his tone clear and calm. “Well, it’s beautiful, the ocean and the fjords. And the northern lights. On the coast it doesn’t get as cold, you know, but I like to hike in the polar night. I have – I have a dog.”
“You have a dog?” Harry repeats, stunned, looking back at the dark shape that is Malfoy. “Wait, will someone feed him and let him out while we’re stuck here?”
Draco laughs, and it’s a low soft sound. “Yes, Harry,” he says, “someone will feed him and let him out.”
“Oh,” says Harry, because of course Draco has someone. Nobody moves to the Arctic Circle and stays to be alone with their dog, do they? Draco probably lives with someone tall and icy-blond like him, someone athletic and plain-spoken who likes the darkness and the cold and the beauty.
“I have a dog, too,” Harry offers, trying to cover up his weird surprise.
They haven’t spoken about any of this before. It never even occurred to Harry to ask if Draco had a dog. Or had… someone.
“And is someone feeding him?” Draco asks, amused and low. It’s not clear if he’s trying to find out if Harry has someone too; Harry can’t imagine why Draco would care. It might only be polite interest.
“Yes,” says Harry, a little too hastily when he realises he’s taken too long to answer. “Neville Longbottom keeps her with him at Hogwarts whenever I’m away. I think she likes it better than London, honestly. She probably wishes she was his dog.”
“You could have brought her along,” Draco says. “She and Brynjar could have had a romp together in the snow.”
“Brynjar,” Harry repeats, entertained. “What, not Thor?”
“Pft,” says Draco, as though Harry’s suggestion is ridiculous and plebeian. “What's yours called then?”
Harry clears his throat. “Snowy,” he says. “Teddy named her!” he protests over Malfoy’s roll of mocking laughter. “I couldn’t argue with a four year old.”
“Snowy,” Malfoy repeats, still laughing. “Potter, you absolute plonker.”
“Anyway, her name aside, Snowy would do worse up here than me,” Harry sighs, grinning in spite of himself, staring again at the dark shape that is Draco. He’s turned back towards the fire and away from Harry; it feels safe to stare. “She’s not very rugged. She’s a West Highland terrier. I think she’s seventeen pounds, soaking wet.”
“A Westie?” Draco chortles, never having stopped properly after the revelation of Snowy’s name.
“Not fair to have a big dog in the city,” Harry says, but he’s laughing too. “I took Teddy to a shelter when I went looking, and he fell in love with her. Why, what’s Barn – Bjornson? What’s he?”
“Brynjar is part husky and part mutt,” says Draco. “He’s one hundred percent mad, that’s certain.”
“Is he really aggressive, then?” Harry asks, picturing Draco with a macho wolf of a dog, all raised hackles and yellow eyes.
Draco laughs again, sounding even freer and more delighted now. He sounds like someone Harry’s never met. “He’s very smart and very neurotic and a complete coward. He thinks he’s in charge of me. Honestly, I think he might be in charge of me.”
Of me, Harry echoes to himself. Not of us. That doesn’t sound like – well. What does it matter?
“Snowy thinks she’s in charge of everyone and everything she sees,” Harry says, belatedly, and then the hot water bottle is back. Harry reaches for it before Draco withdraws his hand, and there’s a brief shocking moment where Harry’s running his fingers over Draco’s knuckles before he realises it, and then Draco’s rolling over again with an abrupt motion, burrowing into his pillow.
“Goodnight, Potter,” says Draco. “You can keep the bottle, I’m closer to the fire here anyway.”
“Goodnight,” Harry says a little confusedly, feeling as though he’s given offence through that inadvertent brush of fingers. Draco’s back is firmly aimed at Harry now, like a wall, like a white cold wall of snow under the puff of duvet. “Thanks.”
***
Harry sleeps fitfully, waking occasionally to hear Draco tending the fire. At one point, Harry is so warm that he shoves the water bottle away to the cold far side of the mattress that borders the cabin wall, and then sleepily shucks off socks and jumper too. He’s sweaty and overheated, which feels a bit miraculous given the outside temperature and how Harry started off the night.
Finally comfortable, Harry drops into a deeper sleep.
He wakes again in a darkness that feels oppressive and complete. The cabin has gone icy cold at some point. Harry rolls over and peers around, trying to see anything at all in the pitch black. The wood stove fire must have gone out. Draco –
“Draco!” Harry half-shouts, his voice croaky with cold and sleepiness. “Draco!”
“What?” says Draco, sharp and alert, nearby. He’s still on the trundle bed, then, just beside and below Harry’s own.
“The fire went out,” says Harry. “I can’t see anything, can you?” He’s trying not to panic, but his throat feels closed up. No wand, no magic, in a dark cold place. Harry reminds himself he’s not back in the cupboard, but his heart begins hammering in his chest anyway.
“What?” says Draco again, and now Harry can tell that Draco is only feigning alertness. Hermione has this quirk, too; when she wakes, she can sound entirely normal while still half in a dream, as though her need to appear perfectly prepared at all times extends even into her unconsciousness.
“The fire went out,” Harry repeats, more urgently, reaching down to try and find Draco. He encounters a sharp shoulder and squeezes it. “Draco. The fire.”
“Fuck,” says Draco, much more sleepily now, shrugging Harry’s hand off him, sitting up. “The fire went out,” he says, as though just realising it. “I must have fallen asleep.”
“Can you find the lighter?” Harry asks. “Merlin, if I could just cast a lumos.”
There’s a thumping sound and then Draco draws in a breath sharply, a hiss. “Fy faen,” he gasps. “Found the fucking wood stove, and it’s still fucking hot.”
“Are you okay?” Harry asks, feeling useless, but steadier now that Draco’s awake and speaking. The cabin suddenly feels occupied, and that somehow makes the darkness less threatening and faceless.
“Burned my hand,” says Draco. “Here’s the lighter.” There’s a click, and then the blessed flame fractures the unbroken black of Harry’s field of vision. In its light, Draco’s face is limned in thin orange lines. His hair is ruffled up like a startled bird’s feathers. His breath is visible in the glow of the lighter.
Harry clambers off his bed now he can make out the shape of Draco’s trundle, and then sucks in a startled breath when his bare feet touch the frosty planks of the floor. He forgot he took off the socks. But he ignores the cold and helps Draco pile wood into the stove by the wavering illumination of the lighter, which goes out twice as they work quickly, hands colliding in their hurry.
“There’s newspaper,” Draco says, casting the flame around to try and find it. “Never mind, I think there are enough coals here to – yes, there it goes.” Like an incendio, the faint embers in the bottom of the stove’s belly catch on the fresh dry wood, and a yellow flame licks up the blond grain of the split log. Harry exhales and sees the fog of his breath vanish into the heat coming off the little fire.
“What time is it?” Harry asks, rocking back onto his heels, hugging his knees, calming slowly now that they have light and the prospect of heat.
Draco looks at his watch. “Half five,” he says. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to let the fire go out.”
“S’okay,” says Harry, only a little thrown by hearing Malfoy apologise for anything at all. The firelight grows, but Draco remains a bit indistinct to Harry’s eyes, which makes Harry aware that he’s not wearing his glasses. They’re dangling off the headboard of Harry’s bed, still, probably.
“Fuck, it’s so cold,” Harry says, and is immediately seized by a hard inadvertent shiver.
“Get back in bed,” says Draco. “I can hear your teeth chattering, Potter.”
Harry doesn’t need telling twice. He steps over Draco’s trundle and burrows under his own duvet, which at least has some lingering body heat in it. He wriggles until he can find the discarded socks and yanks them on gratefully, then curls into a foetal position again as he’s wracked with a fresh wave of shivers.
“Shove over,” says Draco, and then abruptly he’s there, he’s under Harry’s duvet and on Harry’s mattress, a collection of pointy elbows and knees, of icy cold hands and feet, face to face with Harry. Draco’s shivering, too. “Body heat,” he says by way of explanation. “Best thing for this.”
“Yeah,” Harry says, though Draco doesn’t feel like a heat source, he feels like a heat sink. He’s cold against Harry, much colder than the sheets and the duvet, chilled by the time spent outside his bed building the fire up. “Of course,” Harry says, anyway.
“Turn over, will you?” Draco says in something like his old acid voice of irritation, and for a wild moment Harry thinks Draco means for Harry to roll onto his belly, that Draco is planning to lie on top of Harry, to cover him like a chilly human blanket, to sandwich Harry between the mattress and Draco’s body.
But then Harry’s brain chimes in and he realises that of course, Draco means for Harry to turn onto his other side, facing away from Draco, and so Harry does in a confused flail of limbs. No sooner has he settled down facing the frosty cabin wall when Draco’s everywhere.
Draco’s knees are poking into the bend of Harry’s own knees, and he’s worming one arm under Harry’s neck while the other arm wraps tight around Harry’s chest. The cold tip of Draco’s nose pushes into the short hairs at the nape of Harry’s neck, and his breath expels humid warmth against the skin there.
It seems a bit improbable that someone so much taller than Harry should be able to nest Harry up against him so neatly, Harry thinks. Surely there must be leftover bits of Draco’s arms and legs and torso that can’t comfortably press against Harry’s own arms and legs and torso.
But it doesn’t feel that way.
Draco’s chest and belly and groin are warm and pushed in close against Harry’s back and hips and arse, and Harry’s wearing nothing but Draco’s thermal underwear and his own pants. It’s rather a thin layering of cloth between them. Harry’s never been so incredibly aware of the shape of his arse, the way the long underwear is clinging to it as Draco’s hips press into him for warmth.
It feels, abruptly, a bit obscene to even have an arse: the peach of it, like a ripe lightly furred fruit in summer. And worse yet that Harry’s got this vulgar part of his body snugged up against Draco’s hips, so Draco can’t help but know that Harry has an arse. Draco can feel it: the round shape of it and the firmness, and the cleft in it, too.
It’s on Harry’s lips to apologise for the whole thing, nonsensically, but then Draco burrows in closer somehow – how is there more closeness to be gained? How? – and he absolutely yanks Harry into him like Harry is something portable.
And now, suddenly, Harry feels the surfeit of Draco, because Harry feels small in Draco’s arms, and Draco’s top thigh moves to drape over Harry’s, long and lean and endless. The sole of his socked foot presses into the top of Harry’s own, all heel and ball, his toes curling over the ends of Harry’s own toes, like a warm envelope made for Harry’s smaller foot.
Harry is wracked with another shiver.
He’s not sure it’s actually from the cold this time.
But Draco seems to think so, sliding one hand down Harry’s chest to scrub bracingly over Harry’s belly. He nocks his pointy chin over Harry’s shoulder, resting his cheek on Harry’s neck, and says, quietly, “You’ll warm up soon enough, just relax.”
Harry squeezes his eyes shut and exhales slowly through his nose. His breath sounds damningly unsteady to him, but Harry supposes Draco will think it’s another suppressed shiver.
Draco has no right to smell of anything but wool and beans and tea, and maybe of yesterday’s exertion, of sweat and salt, but instead he smells of something faintly herbal and spicy, a high note of woodsmoke overlaying it.
The fire crackles behind them, and Harry strives to relax as directed, which feels impossible with Draco on him and around him. There’s nothing but heat now between them, the earlier chill of Draco’s body vanished. Draco’s hand is warm where it curls sleepily on Harry’s belly, and Harry breathes in as slowly as he can.
“Better?” Draco asks after a while, and Harry nods while hoping that Draco isn’t about to suggest that they swap positions. Harry’s hard. Draco isn’t, or Harry would feel it. But: “Good,” Draco says. “Let’s get a little more sleep, hmm?”
Harry can’t possibly sleep like this, except he really is deliciously warm now, and the fire is gradually heating the room around them, and Draco’s heavy weight makes it hard for Harry to be restless as he would be otherwise, and then Harry’s drifting anyway.