Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of The Years Before Love. Thanks for reading.

Chapter Three—Finding Together

"So much of this is so interesting." Harry rolls on his bed until his head comes to rest against Draco's hair. Draco has been sprawled on his back on Harry's bed for the last half-hour, holding a huge book above him. Apparently his arms don't get tired. "But it's obscure."

"Mm."

"Someone needs to make it clearer. I think lots of people would be interested in Defense theory if it wasn't so hard to understand."

"Mmmm."

"I think I'll move out and go on the road with Teddy. Maybe become part of a traveling circus and see what kind of people will pay to gape at my scar."

"Try and I'll follow you and tell them there's nothing worth paying to see there."

Harry laughs softly and lets his head fall back so that he's looking up at Draco's book more than his own. "Just wanted to see if you were paying attention."

"I always am." Draco puts out an arm without looking at him and curls it around Harry's waist. Harry sighs and turns his head a little. This is the way it's been since Christmas, this quiet casualness and accepted silence between them. "But right now, I want to read this book, and not your face."

Harry closes his eyes. Outside the window, faint snow, sometimes wavering into rain, drifts down. The garden is entirely buried now, and when Harry takes Teddy out in the morning, he often cries to go back inside in a few minutes despite the Warming Charms.

Far away, in Scotland, Hogwarts students are taking notes in Charms class, or learning how to Transfigure shoes into rats, or running in and out of the Great Hall with their House ties whipping behind them.

Harry doesn't envy them.

"Writing magical theory textbooks interests you?" Andromeda takes a thoughtful bite of the cheese sandwich she makes for lunch each day. Well, cheese is something of a misnomer, Harry supposes. There are also slices of tomato on there, and ham, and a huge variety of green vegetables Harry can't even name. The sandwich always totters like it's going to fall over if Andromeda leaves it alone for a minute. "Well. That's something I wouldn't have said would catch your attention. But it's a perfectly respectable thing for a Black to do."

Harry opens his mouth indignantly, and then realizes she's making fun of him. It still takes him a minute, sometimes, to catch on to that. He leans over and hands little Teddy a small piece of cheese to cover his embarrassment. Teddy gums it enthusiastically and gets half of it on his face.

"I think I might enjoy it. All these things I want to learn, and maybe other people want to learn, but how can they when the books are so horribly-written? Not to mention rare and heavy and hard to hold and mostly in other people's libraries."

"Do be careful about some of the laws the Ministry's passed," Andromeda says mildly, not looking at him. "There are books in the library at Grimmauld Place that would be considered Dark, and some magical theory that's Dark Arts."

Harry snorts. "I know that. And believe me, I'll make sure of it. I'll ask Hermione if I really can't figure it out. She'll be delighted to help."

"I think she would," Andromeda murmurs, and leans over to offer Teddy some more food and clean him up at the same time. "Especially if you then write some books about magical creatures."

"Maybe about something like the theory behind werewolf transformation. I'll leave the actual laws and campaigning to her."

Andromeda says nothing, but for a second—a second when Harry thinks she thinks he's not looking—her gaze lingers on Teddy.

Harry leans forwards and catches her hand. "Except if someone close to me needs help and protection. There's nothing I wouldn't do for people like that."

Andromeda takes his hand and squeezes it for a second. Then she says, "And those people include my nephew, don't they?"

"They do."

"I'm glad."

This isn't the way he ever imagined his first conversation about a girlfriend or boyfriend going, Harry thinks. He thought there might be a highly awkward conversation with Molly and Arthur about Ginny, or maybe—back when Sirius was alive—he vaguely imagined getting Sirius's name cleared and then introducing a future girlfriend to him. But never more than that.

Instead, there is a surprising lack of advice, and a slight burble as Andromeda drinks her tea, and a louder one as Teddy smacks his lips, and patterns of frost on the windows. It's all right. It's more than all right, in fact, Harry thinks in contentment, and fetches a piece of lettuce for Teddy to watch the faces he makes. He doesn't approve of vegetables unless they're orange or yellow, and sometimes not even then.

This is wonderful.

"Watch, Harry. You have to watch."

Harry smiles and stands to follow Draco out into the garden. Andromeda and Narcissa are deep in gossip that Harry suspects is thirty years old, all about people they knew at Hogwarts. They don't even look up as Harry trails Draco out onto the hard grass. There's no more snow now, hasn't been for a few weeks, but the ground and the sky look equally grey and forbidding, with the trees only adding a note of brown.

Draco turns around with the practice wand with the Snitch handle in his hand. He waves it, and there's a large pop of light at the end when he says, "Lumos."

Harry smiles as he watches the light spread around the garden, glittering off ice and sullen bark and mud and stone. Draco's spinning in a circle, as enchanted as if he just turned on all the chandeliers in the Great Hall, and his smile is something out of stories.

"Watch," Draco demands again, and adds, "Aestas."

Harry blinks as he watches some of the mud melt around Draco's feet. It's the incantation for an incredibly powerful Warming Charm, one that's meant to mimic summer sun for plants and so on. "I didn't expect you to pick that one."

Draco shrugs. "I'm cold all the time." He indicates the gloves and cloak and thick boots he put on before they came outside. "I want something that can make me think it's summer. This weather sure doesn't."

"You are cold?" Harry takes a step forwards, and then another, until he's standing right next to Draco. "How strange. I didn't know that. And yet I think I can warm you up as well as any wand."

Draco goes still and speechless, staring up at him with parted lips. It still satisfies Harry, even though he's seen Draco do it several dozen times by now. It's as though Draco thinks every time Harry kisses him is actually a wonderful dream.

Harry kisses him again now, and chafes Draco's hands lightly until Draco drops the wand and flings his arms around Harry's neck. The heat of the charm migrates inside Harry, and soon Harry can feel sweat sliding down his back inside his own cloak.

It doesn't matter. Nothing can convince him to pull away from Draco. Harry wraps his arms around Draco's shoulder and waist and draws him closer, kissing him with all his might. Draco responds with a little moan, and the kiss only stops when they stagger back and end up slipping in the melted mud.

And Draco—with mud on his cloak and his hair bedraggled and dripping from under his hood—laughs. Harry watches him and thinks that Warming Charms have nothing on this.

"Mr. Potter, I want you to know something."

"Harry, please," Harry says, and smiles at Narcissa. Draco is already almost gone, eager to get home and cast the final enchantments he's chosen on the last of his practice wands. He wouldn't tell Harry what they were. Evidently he wants them to be a surprise.

"If I can call you by your first name, you ought to call me by mine," Harry adds, as Narcissa stands there, apparently musing, for a moment, one hand curled around the back of her chair.

"Harry, then." Narcissa's lips twitch as though she's secretly amused at something she thought of, but she goes on before Harry can ask her what's wrong. "I want to thank you."

"For what?" She's already said thanks for her Christmas gifts, and as far as Harry can tell, there's nothing else he's done specifically for her. He welcomes her into Andromeda's home, sure, but it was Andromeda who thought of that first.

"For making my Draco very happy."

Harry's astonished to find that he's blushing, which nothing else Draco has done has made him do. He clears his throat. "I'm—glad."

He can't find more words, but Narcissa evidently can. "I see the shine in his eyes when he uses those practice wands. He's reading new books, thanks to you. He doesn't often talk about you, but he smiles so much more than he did before we started coming here."

Harry looks at the floor. He wants to say that that isn't all him, that Draco is taking responsibility for his own happiness, but he can't bring himself to say it, in the end. He doesn't know how much of it is him and how much isn't.

And he doesn't feel as much need as he once did, to disclaim all the things he might have done to help someone else. He isn't facing someone who will judge him and find him wanting for lack of modesty, or rush to the newspapers with a scandalized tale of how Harry didn't conform to all her expectations.

This is Narcissa.

"When you feel you can," Narcissa says, speaking slowly, "we would welcome you to our home. I know Draco feels there are things he can only show you, or say, there."

Harry isn't ready to venture to Malfoy Manor yet. He still has nightmares, sometimes, of what Bellatrix did to Hermione. And the cellars, and how easy it might have been not to escape them. And the Snatchers, and the other people they Snatched who didn't get away.

But he also knows that right now is not forever, and doesn't have to be. He nods slowly to Narcissa. "Thank you."

"Mother! What—" Draco has thrust his head back into the kitchen, but he falls silent and looks back and forth between the two of them. There's a nervous tilt to his chin.

"I was only extending our invitation to Harry," Narcissa says, and holds out her hand. Harry shakes it, and sees the shine in her eyes in the moment before she picks up her cloak and leaves.

Draco goes with her, glancing back at the kitchen now and then. But something Narcissa says takes his attention, and he's smiling before they Floo away.

Harry leans back on the kitchen wall, and closes his eyes, and daydreams a bit.

"But that's wonderful."

Harry has to smile when he sees the way Hermione clasps her hands in front of her, as if she's praying. "Why? Because you always secretly wanted me to write books and you never told me?"

Hermione leans across the table to subject his shoulder to a pinch that Harry dodges. "No. I only wondered if you could find something that would make you happy, and you have. And it's something that you could research from the Black library, and stay at home with Teddy and Andromeda. I'm sure they're happy about that."

"I'm not sure Teddy would know enough to be happy about it. But I know Andromeda wants me there."

"She's a good mum."

Harry blinks. "I'm sure she was to Tonks. I know she's happy to have Teddy to take care of because she always wanted more children."

"I meant to you."

Harry blushes. Blushes. Sometimes he really wonders what's going through his own head. It's not something he puts there, he's certain of that. Well. Relatively.

Hermione smiles and leans back to look around Andromeda's kitchen. Andromeda has Teddy over at Malfoy Manor right now. Harry still doesn't want to go, but he thinks someday soon, he probably will. "And I hope you don't think we're blind or that Ron is the only person you can discuss the Malfoys with."

"Er," Harry says, blinking hard. "No. I just didn't think I had to discuss them with you. And blind to what?"

"You and Draco were flirting that day I dropped by for tea."

Harry isn't sure what's the bigger shock, that Hermione is calling Draco by his first name or that she can use a word like "flirting" without frowning hard enough to set the table on fire. But he never once considers hiding it. He nods. "Yes."

"Good. Then make sure Molly knows before next Christmas, so she can knit a jumper for him."

"Do you think she would?"

"I know why you haven't said anything to anyone but Ron," Hermione murmurs, reaching across the table to clasp his hand. "But I don't think you have anything to worry about. Molly hasn't just tried to hold on to everyone since Fred died. She's more forgiving. I haven't heard her have any more arguments with Arthur, not big ones. I think she just wants people to live and go on living."

Harry nods. "Then someday." He doesn't think he needs to hurry, any more than he does to visit Malfoy Manor. They'll be there, and he'll do something about them when the time comes.

That's one of the meanings of peace, he thinks, as Hermione hugs him and heads off for a meeting on the current state of house-elf rights. That he can do things slowly, softly, without worrying that they won't be there tomorrow.

Harry dips his quill in ink and makes a note on the margins of the book he's currently reading. It sprawls across the table in his room. Harry is determined to write a small book partially because these are all tomes, and they hurt his hands when he lifts them. He has no idea how Draco manages that trick of holding them above his face, he really doesn't.

Next to him, Teddy makes a gurgling noise in his cradle. Harry sticks out a foot and absently rocks it. Teddy isn't as bad now, in March, as he was at Christmas, when he couldn't take a disruption in the rocking at all, but then, he's full and sleepy now. Harry fed him most of a mashed apple and a lot of mashed potatoes for lunch. It's Andromeda's usual day to go to the shops and then to the café with Narcissa.

Everything traces itself in slow, pleasant circles. Harry writes in sunlight, which started returning a week ago. Teddy opens his mouth and shapes sounds now and then, his legs flopping around. He can crawl fairly well, but he doesn't mind staying still. Harry doesn't think he'll be in a great hurry to learn to walk, either. All in all, since he started sleeping through the night, he's become a laid-back baby.

A sharp fluting note from the garden startles Harry as he starts to write another comment. He leans around the book and looks out the window, wondering if Andromeda could have come back early, although he knows full well that she wouldn't make a noise like that anyway.

There's a black bird with a long tail standing near the rim of the sullen pond. Harry doesn't know what it is, but it seems to have a hint of blue near its head. It tilts that head back and makes the fluting noise again, then bursts into a sharp run of notes.

At the same moment—they've probably been there for days, but Harry hasn't noticed them—he sees green buds hazing one of the trees near the door.

The black bird sings, dips its beak once in the water of the pond, and takes off again. Harry watches it go, and looks back at the tree, and rocks the cradle with one foot, and smiles.

When Teddy wakes up, Harry takes him out in the garden and sits with him on the bench near the pond, watching as Teddy reaches for the grass and the water and the other birds that streak by. They're still sitting there when Andromeda gets home, and she joins them without hesitation. They sit there until sunset comes on.

"Watch. I want to show you what I can do."

Draco's voice is soft and intense. Harry is more than happy to sit down and watch him draw the last practice wand, the one Harry hasn't seen since Christmas. It probably took this long for Draco to decide what spells he wanted to put on it.

Of course, he has the option to order more toy wands if he wants to. Harry wonders if he has. He would have enough money to do that. Or Harry would buy more for him in a heartbeat.

But Draco hasn't said anything about it, and Harry is trying to learn not to leap to conclusions. He leans back, eyes carefully averted from the disapproving portraits that seem to occupy every wall of Malfoy Manor, even in this little sitting room Draco's brought him to, and watches.

Draco holds the wand in front of him. For a moment he stands with his lips moving, and then he closes his eyes and faces the far wall. Harry appreciates that that points his wand directly at one of the portraits, a haughty blond ancestral Malfoy who flees out of the frame the second Draco starts speaking.

"Expecto Patronum!"

The silver mist bursts out of Draco's wand and spends a moment spinning on an empty spot at the center of the spiral. Harry finds himself leaning forwards without knowing how it happened, his hands wrapped around each other, feeling the way he does when he silently urges Teddy on to walk and crawl.

The shape that the mist forms is faint, but Harry can still make it out. Draco's Patronus is a lion, who looks around and shakes its mane for a second before silently roaring. A second later, it's gone.

Draco looks at Harry with inexpressible pride, and Harry makes his lips move. "What's your happy memory?"

"Anything involving you." Draco stands with his head tilted down and his eyes so wide open he looks stunned.

Harry stands and crosses the floor to him in three strides. He kisses Draco hard enough that Draco gasps and says something about numb lips, but Harry doesn't care. And Draco drops the practice wand, but Harry doesn't care about that, either.

This isn't the garden two months ago and the Aestas Charm. This is Malfoy Manor, and the roaring lion has infected Harry with some of its own boldness. When he links both his hands with Draco's and pulls him towards the stairs that run up to the first floor, Draco moans and melts against him and makes Harry have to support him most of the way there.

That really makes the ancestral portraits flee.

And now it's the bedroom, which Harry knows is cavernous, with soaring ceilings and windows that look out over vast vistas of gardens and flowers and mountains that are mostly unreal. But he doesn't have time to look around and admire those things right now, or the pale blue color of the walls, or the soft lighting that mimics moonlight. He's too busy with Draco.

Draco is pale. Draco has scars. Draco has hair that tends to sprawl around him as he lies on the pillows, and lungs that pant as if he's actually scared of what Harry is going to do to him, and a mouth that opens for Harry's fingers and tongue and everything else that Harry asks of him, without even pausing.

Harry does notice the way Draco hushes and stares when he takes his own clothes off. He blinks, realizing suddenly that he has no idea of what Draco thinks of him. Is Harry too big, is he too ugly, is he just not what Draco expected?

But then Draco exhales with a sound like a sob and reaches for him, and Harry smiles. Whatever the pause was, he doesn't think it was a problem.

They tumble around the bed, kissing so long that Harry thinks he could come from that alone. But then Draco turns over and makes these insistent little motions with his hips that bring Harry even closer to coming, and it is for the best if they don't hesitate. Harry gathers up the lube Draco put on the bedroom table and dips his fingers in.

He rubs generous amounts over Draco's arse, and into his arse, and Draco stills and then bucks like he's got something caught in his throat. Harry rubs his stomach soothingly, and Draco turns his head and smiles at him and mouths, "Go on."

Harry nods and goes back to probing gently into Draco. It's worth it, the long, motionless minutes of doing that, to watch the look on Draco's face slump into bliss, and the way he hides his face against his arms, and the quiet moans that break out of him as he snuggles down deeper into the sheets and spreads his legs wider.

Finally, Draco pushes so hard against Harry that his arse cramps Harry's fingers, and Harry supposes that's his signal to stop being so gentle and taking so long. He wraps his arms around Draco's waist and slides forwards. His own cock has a little lube on it, but Harry couldn't touch himself for long because he thought he'd come.

It seems to be enough, though, from the way Draco hisses when Harry enters him. Harry knows it isn't a hiss of pain.

Then there's a long, delirious time when Draco keeps turning his head to look over his shoulder at Harry and arching his neck to kiss him, and Harry keeps kissing back, and there's the bed creaking around them—it's a huge bed, Harry spares a moment to think, they must be moving hard to do that to it—and there's the pillow slipping underneath Draco's elbow that brings him down with a whumpf, and there's Harry laughing so hard that he finds a new angle of pleasure, and there's the heat in his belly and the adoration in Draco's eyes and the emotion that closes Harry's throat.

He can't speak the words of love, so he tries to show them with his body. The fingers he traces slowly along Draco's shoulders, in contrast to his frantically working hips. The way he bends down and bites Draco's neck when he has to, when the moment of orgasm finally arrives. The way he holds Draco as Draco shudders beneath him and makes his own contribution to the mess all over the bed.

The way they lie there, tangled together, Draco with his head turned and his breathing gradually slowing down, and Harry combs his hair back off his forehead and kisses him again.

Draco smiles at him, sated and brilliant, and falls asleep at once. Harry curls up with him and spares a single, sleepy second to hope that all the potentially scandalized portraits are far away.

"This is the other thing I wanted to show you."

"I am a thing, then."

Harry halts, blinking. Draco led Harry through the Manor without speaking that morning, and opened the door of this little room with such a flourish that Harry expected to see at least some Dark artifacts heaped to the ceiling. But instead, there's only a portrait frame with Severus Snape sneering at him from inside it.

"I suppose the Ministry hasn't agreed to hang the portrait in the Headmaster's office in Hogwarts yet?" The last time Harry paid attention to that mess was in October. He also stopped reading the Daily Prophet about the same time. Andromeda, or, lately, Draco, will let him know if there's a story he should see.

"No, they haven't. But he did so much for our family, and at the request of our family…"

Draco trails off. Harry understands why he doesn't want to talk about the Unbreakable Vow and all the rest of it, and anyway, Harry thinks he knows that story all the way through. He pats Draco on the shoulder and walks forwards to stare at Snape face-to-face.

The background of the painting is dim, but Harry thinks he can make out at least one bookshelf, and maybe a table with a cauldron on it. He wonders for a second if that keeps Snape busy. Maybe he spends a lot of time with other portraits.

"Hello, Professor Snape."

"You invest that title with such scorn, Potter. You might as well not use it."

"Headmaster Snape, then."

Snape stares at him, and Harry realizes with a little jolt of joy that he seems to have been expecting Harry to react to him with vicious hatred. He doesn't realize Harry has moved on and changed a lot. Either Draco hasn't told him about becoming part of the renewed Black family—which Harry can see—or portraits just get stuck in the past and assume everyone else gets stuck there with them.

Harry manages a short nod and says, "I was wrong about you. Thank you for what you did during the war."

He doesn't say anything about forgiveness because Snape would throw it back in his face. He doesn't mention his mum because this portrait wouldn't remember giving him those memories, and he doesn't want an argument. He gives the shortest statement possible and leaves Snape gaping at him.

"So you'll get along with him all right?" Draco is glancing back and forth between the portrait and Harry nervously.

"I think so," says Harry. "There's nothing that says he has to spend time with me if he doesn't want to. I don't think he's confined to one frame, right?"

Draco shakes his head at the same time as Snape blurts out, "I didn't give you permission to feel comfortable with me, Potter!"

Harry grins at him. "All right."

"You are not to forgive me, either! Stop that grinning!"

Even Draco can hardly hide his smile. Harry decides to gratify the portrait's wish, though. He doesn't want to irritate him. "Come on, Draco. Let's go and let Headmaster Snape think about the whole thing."

"Stop being gracious!" Snape bellows as they walk out of the room.

They get a few steps down the corridor—and thus eliminate any chance that the portrait can watch them, Harry assumes—before Draco reaches out and catches Harry's shoulder, spinning him around. Harry blinks and grunts as his back hits the wall, and then Draco is hovering in front of him, looking at him blissfully.

"You fit in so well," he whispers. "You're so much of what I wanted." He pauses, then blushes. "I love you so much."

"I love you, too—"

Then Harry can't answer because his mouth is occupied with Draco's tongue, and Harry is busy wrapping his arms around Draco again and pulling him flush against him, and feeling Draco shiver.

There is sunlight coming through the windows, and a small breeze. Harry closes his eyes and rejoices in the kiss and the sensation of warmth around him, deserved and offered and won.

The End.