A/N: Well heyyy. This was supposed to be a oneshot, but being as I have a job and boyfriend and rent to pay, I got tired, and cut it into pieces haha. So now I'm making it into a novella of some sorts. It will get pretty explicit in the later parts. Fair warning.

"Serpent Ink." Harry muttered, glancing up at the huge painted sign in the window. It felt a little, foreboding, a little….familiar in a way. As familiar as he could get in Muggle London he supposed. He turned his emerald colored eyes back down to the paper he held between his hands. It was a small, brightly colored tribute tattoo piece, with the names 'Severus Snape' and 'Albus Dumbledore' in black swirling around the trunk of a freshly bloomed tree. Beneath the tree were the words: 'To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.'

This would be Harry's first tattoo. Ron, who thought it would make Harry seem less…"fluffy" as he called it, had insisted on him getting it.

Harry had come out shortly after the war, on his 19th birthday to be exact. In front of all the Weasley's including Victiore, who had been only a year old. Mrs. Weasley had cried, Mr. Weasley had left the room. George and Ron had high-fived, obviously winning some sort of bet on his sexuality. Hermione had beamed, so proud that he had finally expressed himself. Ginny had been livid.

Harry swallowed hard, pushing open the door of the small shop.

"Hey, what can I do for you?"

Harry looked up towards the voice, biting his lip. He watched as the blonde haired man rose from his seat, his arms completely covered in tattoos. His ice colored eyes piercing as he surveyed him.

"Well, uhm…" Harry stammered, the vague sense of familiarity growing stronger as the male moved up to shake his hand. "I uhm….I want this." Harry handed him the paper with his free hand.

The blonde took it and examined it, his eyes flickering over the names. "Wow, this is a pretty bad ass piece." He looked back up at him, shaking a fringe of hair from his eyes. "Where do you want it?" He said, moving further into the shop. The blonde sat down at a small desk, then motioned for Harry, who scurried towards him.

"Well, I was thinking…right here." He said, pointing to the fleshy part of his forearm. He sat down across from the blonde.

The artist bit his lip, his eyes raking over the bare flesh. "Well, I can do that." He reached inside the desk and pulled out a piece of paper. "I just need you to fill all this out while I get this ready to go."

Harry nodded and peered at the form.

Why did he feel like he knew this guy? Maybe…He didn't know. He had felt this way about a lot of people since the war had ended. There had been so many Death-Eaters he had seen with Glamor's on them, trying to conceal their identities. Maybe this guy looked like someone he had seen before.

The blonde returned several minutes later and picked up Harry's newly signed release forms. "Okay, well are you ready?" He asked, holding a flimsy, semitransparent copy of Harry's tattoo.

Harry nodded. "I hope so."

The blonde laughed. "Is this your first tattoo?" He asked as Harry sat down in the chair.

"Yeah, actually it is." Harry admitted.

"May I ask why such a gnarly one for your first?" He sat upon a little swivel stool and began pulling bottles of ink from a shelf near the wall.

"Well, my friend kind of…talked me into it."

"Why's that." The blonde said, reaching around and pulling a tattoo gun into his lap.

"Well, I'm gay and as he calls it I'm too 'fluffy' so if I get a tattoo, maybe I won't look like such a fairy." Harry shrugged. "That's his reasoning at least."

He laughed, his grey eyes sparkling for just a moment. "Your friend sounds like a git."

Harry too laughed, as the artist smoothed the transparency over his arm. "Yeah, he is. He always has been. But he's been my best mate since we entered school together at eleven."

"Yeah I know all about that. My best mates in school were some of the thickest crone's ever." He glanced at Harry. "But they died a few years ago in an accident." He swallowed and said. "So how does it look?"

Harry grimaced. He knew this guy! He had too. "I'm sorry to hear that, I lost a few of my close friends and relatives a while back as well. When all of those freak accidents were happening." He peered down at the outline of the tattoo that was fixing to be permanently imbibed into his skin. "It looks brilliant." He felt a wave of nerves splash over him. "I'm nervous." He admitted.

The blonde laughed, picking up his gun and dipping it into a tiny cup of black ink, the buzzing causing Harry to jump. "Don't be. It's not that bad. It just takes some getting used to. If you start to feel lightheaded or anything, just tell me to slow down or stop. Okay?"

Harry nodded and gripped the arm of the chair lightly with his free hand. "Okay." He muttered, watching as the gun dipped into his flesh, ink and blood springing forth.

"It's not so bad right?" The blonde teased, pulling the gun away and wiping some of the excess ink away.

Harry shook his head. "Nah, I've felt worse. Why do you have so many, if you don't mind me asking?"

The blonde, poked out his tongue, returning to work. "Well, I originally got one, to cover up another when I moved to downtown M-m…London. Then when i decided I wanted to become an artist, I just…got more." He didn't look at Harry, but concentrated on the fine bark lines of the tree.

"What was the one you got covered up? Was it some girls name or something?"

He laughed. "No actually, it was a snake that I had tattooed on my arm, right about where you're getting yours now. It was a stupid gang thing that I was roped into as a teenager."

Harry felt his jaw drop open a couple centimeters.

"It was a shitty time in my life, which I kind of just want to forget. I did something's I can never forgive myself for, you know?" He continued, leaning back and dipping the tip of the gun into the ink once more.

Harry nodded, now examining the man hard, looking for any more clues as to who he could be. He saw, peeking out from the V in his shirt, scrawled across his collarbone in large calligraphy, the words. "Toujours Pur"

"Always Pure…"He almost said aloud. Harry felt as though a ton of bricks had slammed right into his stomach. He waited until the blonde had lifted the gun before saying softly. "Malfoy?"

The blonde turned an ugly shade of red. "How did you know?" He asked quietly.

"The tattoo on your collarbone. Do you still think that way?" Harry asked, as he returned to his work.

Malfoy shrugged. "As in do I think that Muggle borns should just run amok and do whatever they please? I dunno. I mean I don't think they should be locked up and sent away like during the war, but…" he sighed. "it's how I was raised okay, Potter, I've changed this much in this amount of time, cut me some slack alright?"

Harry watched him, utterly bemused at this situation. Draco Malfoy was tattooing him. In muggle London, without a fight.

"So you knew it was me when I came in? Why didn't you say anything?" Harry asked.

He shrugged again. "Because I knew if I did you would turn tail. I've wanted to see you. To thank you and stuff, you know for all the things you did for my family. I mean I don't know where I would be if you hadn't have done the things you did." Malfoy murmured, leaning back and wiping the finished outline of Harry's tattoo.

Harry looked down at the art, then back at the blonde, who was chewing on his lower lip. "You're welcome…I suppose." He laughed softly. "I mean, your mum did save my life. Besides, I knew deep down you hated what you were doing. You were so scared the day you had to try and identify me."

Malfoy nodded. "I wanted to get you away from them, my from my aunt, I wanted to just run. I was petrified, and it was all on me, you know?" He began to switch needles in his gun. "We went through too much bullocks as kids." He admitted.

Harry laughed. "Yeah, I'll give you that. So what made you want to become a tattoo artist?"

"It's a release, I mean, there's a lot of stress to deal with, memories and all that crap. It helps me get rid of all those feelings. Not to mention it pay's very well." He grinned and dipped his gun back into his ink. "Now, this is the shading, it might hurt more, because I'm kind of tugging." He proceeded to start shading in the trunk of the tree.

Harry hissed. "Ooh, yeah, that stings a little."

"So you're gay…?" Malfoy asked after a few moments of silence, save for the buzzing of the tattoo gun. "What about you and the Weaslette, I thought you were soul mates or what have you."

Harry squeezed the arm of the chair at a particularly sharp tug at his skin. "Well, I broke it off with her, when I had realized, and then I came out to everyone when I turned nineteen."

The blonde laughed. "Yeah? How did the Weasley's take that one?"

"Not well, I'm pretty sure Mrs. Weasley wanted to throw a book at me." He said smiling. "What about you? Are you still shacking up with Pansy or Astoria?"

Malfoy snorted. "Oh no, no. I don't….I haven't seen either of those girls in a while." He said, his cheeks pink.

"You have a new lady then? Is she a muggle?" Harry asked, interested in why the man's cheeks had turned rosy. What was he hiding?

"No, no new lady. And no, she isn't a muggle." Malfoy said, shading around the branches of the tree. He sighed and glanced up at him. "I don't….I don't fancy girls. I never have. All that was to help placate my father, but…now that he is dead I don't have to deal with all that. I can be myself."

Harry gasped, but played it off for pain. Malfoy was gay? How? He had been all over every girl in Hogwarts. "So, you have a bloke then." Harry teased.

Malfoy glanced at him. "No, no bloke. The guy's around here are so…..not good. They can't handle my tattoos and my last name, if they happen to be a wizard. I've pretty much given up on relationships at this point." He set about once again switching the needle of his tattoo gun. "We are on the home stretch now, just to get it all colored."

Harry felt his stomach swoop. Malfoy was gay and single…and he had changed. He bit his lip, feeling as though he should probably not say anything else, especially the request that was bubbling up inside him.

"What about you, Potter? Are you shagging any blokes in Ottery St. Catchpole?" Draco asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

"Nah, I don't live down there anymore. I live in a flat just off of Tottenham Court Road." He flexed his ankles around; his bottom was beginning to fall asleep. "And no, I'm not shagging any blokes."

Draco shook his head, smirking. "Oh, calm down, calm down, alright?" So you don't actually live that far from here?"

"Nope, just about six blocks. I've been eyeing this shop ever since I got the idea for the tattoo. Everyone said that you do great work, just none of them ever said who you were." He looked down at his arm, which was now smeared with green ink. "Now, I understand why the name of the shop is called, 'Serpent Ink.'"

"Well I'm glad that people think I do good work. I need all the business I can get." Draco continued to drag the needle over his skin. "And yeah, the name, well, you know I am a Slytherin." He said, grinning.

"Oh how well I know." Harry swallowed again, watching the blonde as he put the finishing touches on Harry's tattoo. "So, um….what do you do after you close up shop?" He asked timidly.

Draco smirked, setting his gun down and wiping Harry's now completed tattoo. "Well, I usually just go upstairs to my loft and listen to the radio. Or I go to this pub down the road. They don't have fire whisky but i get by with muggle beer I suppose." He reached around, pulling a drawer open and pulling out a bandage. "Why, you weren't interested in…taking me somewhere?" He grinned.

Harry blushed, looking down. "Well, maybe."

Draco laughed. "Oh Merlin, Potter were you this sissy before you came out?" He teased, smoothing the edges of the bandage.

"I'm not being a sissy!" Harry protested, sitting up and turning to face him.

Oh, his rear was asleep for sure; he could feel the tingly numbness creeping down his legs.

"So, do you want to go or not…" he asked sheepishly.

Draco smiled, while he began to clean up his station.

"Meet me back here in about three hours."

A/N: Well, what do you guys think? I'm going to try to have the next part posted tomorrow or next. Reviews are amazing.