Harry had certain expectations for how his life would be following the defeat of Voldemort. He expected that he would get the girl with fabulous red hair and a crooked smile. He expected he would embark on a lucrative, successful career with the Magical Law Enforcement Department as an Auror. He expected he would be happy and healthy, even if he was still saddled with being Harry Potter, Savior of the Wizarding World.

It was rather typical of his life that he got none of these things.

“What do you mean?” Harry asked, his voice shaking with barely concealed anger and grief. “How can you… leave me?”

Ginny sighed, tucking twin locks of copper hair behind her ears. He noticed that she wore a pair of earrings she’d gotten from either Michael Corner or Dean Thomas, and he wondered if they were the key to his troubles. “Harry, you must have suspected this was coming.”

“I know things have been… a little off lately—"

“Off?” Ginny asked, laughing mirthlessly. “Harry, we are more than off, and I would hardly call it a recent change in what was once a fabulous relationship.” He flinched, stung, and wanted to pull away from her when she grabbed his wrist. “I’m sorry. That was unfair. It hasn’t been all bad, but… Harry, things haven’t been right for awhile now.”

Harry swallowed a lump in his throat that felt as though it had sharp edges. “Is it another man?”

Ginny dropped his arm as if it had suddenly burst into flame. Her brown eyes morphed from sympathetic to enraged in a moment, and he felt a bit ridiculous for loving her a little more for her spark even now. “Harry Potter, I ought to punch you in the throat for suggesting that. And so help me, if your next question is if it’s another woman—"

“I’m sorry. That was unfair,” he interrupted brusquely, turning the apology back on her stiffly. He still wasn’t entirely sure he believed her, for one very… large reason.

“It’s the weight.”

Ginny’s split-second hesitation was all the answer he needed.

He ripped away from her completely, stomping into the living room and trying to block out the sound of knick-knacks shaking along the walls. “I knew it. I should have known from the first.”

“Harry, it’s not just the weight,” Ginny called out, running after him with barely audible footsteps.

“But it’s part of it,” he confirmed bitterly.

Ginny covered her face with both hands, heaving a loud sigh. “I’m doing this horribly.” She looked up, tenting her fingers beneath her chin as if in prayer. He wondered if she was asking God for a fit boyfriend. “Harry, the weight is a symptom, not the problem.”

Harry groaned aloud. “Oh, God. You’ve been talking to Hermione.”

Ginny soldiered on, neither confirming nor denying. “It’s not that you’re a little thicker around the middle. It’s that you don’t care anymore.” She reached for him again, but he leaned away from her, leaving her arms hanging awkwardly in the air. “You had such a bright future. You were going to be an Auror. You were going to keep on saving the world. You were going to be wonderful, even more wonderful than I already thought you were.”

Her hands dropped to her sides as if pulled by unseen weights.

“What the hell happened to you, Harry?”

He didn’t have an answer for her, or at least not one that she would have liked or one that would have mended their broken bridges. So he turned away from her, and let what was left of their relationship die in silence. She stood by him for a few minutes longer, but there was only so much she could take. With a quiet but dignified sob, she turned on her heel and strode out of his apartment, a rucksack of her things banging against the doorframe on her way out.

-----

That night, Harry ate, which even he had to admit was probably not the healthiest response to being left by your girl because you’d put on some weight. He ate leftover Chinese, fried chicken, chocolate-flavored cereal, candied mango, strawberry ice cream, and every sweet and biscuit he could find in the house, and he washed it all down with every drop of liquor he could get his hands on. And all the while, he plunked himself in front of the television in an attempt to distract himself from the loss of his relationship.

Inevitably, he was continually reminded of Ginny. First it was every red-headed girl, then every red-head, and then every girl. The sound of wild laughter on a commercial reminded him of her laughter. A pair of sparkling brown eyes were set into a heart-shaped, pale freckled face instead of the one on the TV screen. Something someone on a television said sounded a little like a joke Ginny had once told. A movie about Budapest came on, and he remembered that Ginny had always wanted to go there.

When an ad for a pet shelter featuring a thousand dogs with baleful eyes came on, it made him think of how Ginny always fumbled desperately for the remote whenever it came on. It was around this time that Harry realized he was being ridiculous.

So he started to cry.

Things continued in this matter for the next three days. He ate, he got pissed, he watched television, he sulked, he cried, and he thought of Ginny. On the third day, at approximately three in the morning, he came across an infomercial for the next revolutionary work out machine.

And suddenly, everything became clear. The dull haze he’d been viewing his life through faded like the sun bursting through the clouds. He sat up a little straighter, put down his pasta, and voiced his epiphany to the empty flat that had once been home to a happy couple.

“I’ll get her back,” he proclaimed, glancing down at his protruding stomach, “and I know just how to do it.”

-----

And so began The Great Harry Potter Slim Down (Otherwise Known as the Absolutely Foolproof Plan to Get the Girlfriend Back).

Step one, or so Harry assumed, was clearing out his pantry of all varieties of junk food. However, since he had consumed most of it during his mourning period, this didn’t seem to be the greatest of concerns. Besides, although he could cook, it wasn’t something he particularly enjoyed doing – a result of being the Dursley’s live-in emaciated chef he supposed – so he tended to order out more often than not.

That accomplished (sort of), Harry assumed that the next move was to formulate some sort of exercise plan. He spent the next week watching every fitness infomercial he came across to see which program he liked best so that he could order it and work out in the privacy of his own home. In the end, he settled on something that had Boot Camp in the title. This, he figured, was perfect! Hermione had always told him that he needed more discipline in his life. Snape had too for that matter, but Harry preferred not to speculate over what the departed Potions Master would have to say about his bloated appearance.

Harry called the number and ordered it from the overly perky girl on the other end of the line, assuring her that yes, he would like to upgrade to overnight shipping so that he could start on his journey towards a healthy lifestyle that much sooner! He picked it up from the front office the next day and proudly opened the box to display the plethora of DVDs and extras that had come with the program – it even included a nutrition plan! Then he pulled out his old track pants and a ratty tee-shirt, both of which were a bit tightly stretched, put in the disc, and waited to be amazed.

“ARE YOU READY TO BE A LEAN, MEAN, FAT-BURNING MACHINE? READY TO TURN YOUR FLAB INTO BULK? READY TO BE THE AB-CRUNCHING, IRON-PUMPING MEGA-ULTRA MUSCLE MAN YOU WERE ALWAYS MEANT TO BE? THEN GET UP OFF THAT COUCH AND GET READY TO FEEL THE BURN!”

As it turned out, Harry did not do well with an ex-army drill sergeant screaming at him until the veins in his neck popped out.

And so, Harry returned to his research. After some consideration, Harry decided that what he really needed was positive reinforcement, and perhaps a program that seemed more like fun than work. So he then selected an ad done in bright colors and hosted by a happy blond girl who, while overly tanned, did not seem to be the sort to scream at his fat until it ran away, screaming in terror. So he once again dialed the number and ordered the DVDs from still another overly perky girl (he sincerely hoped it was not the same one), and waited for the program to arrive.

The next day, he once again popped in the first work out, taking the time to stretch a bit while the DVD informed him that he should not start any exercise program before consulting his doctor and to stop if he felt any discomfort. He was momentarily plagued by the distant memory of a day when he could touch his toes, and also see them. He quickly set that aside when the fitness expert’s bright, American accent sang through his speakers.

“HEY, EVERYONE! I HOPE YOU’RE READY TO GET OFF THE COUCH AND BREAK OUT INTO A REAL SWEAT TODAY! WE’RE GOING TO HAVE LOTS OF FUN AT OUR PARTY, AND I GUARANTEE YOU THAT THIS WILL BE THE MOST FUN YOU’VE EVER HAD WORKING OUT! FIRST WE’RE GOING TO WARM UP, AND THEN IT’LL BE TIME TO DANCE YOUR BUTT OFF!”

Harry immediately hit pause and snatched the case off the top of the television. Apparently, he had selected something that was a bit of a dance/kick-boxing/martial arts fusion without realizing it. It occurred to him in that moment that Hermione had also informed him on multiple occasions that he needed to learn to pay attention as well as discipline himself.

Harry heaved a sigh and moved to turn the program off. He paused when he saw the outfits the girl and her… backup exercisers were wearing. Apparently women in American work out videos saw no reason to wear anything more than sports bras when they exercised.

Harry hit play and sat back on the couch. Certainly a good wank would burn off some calories, right?

For the next month or so, Harry continued this pattern of infomercials and DVD buying. He purchased and set aside programs that told him he would be skinny in just six short weeks, programs that wanted him to lift more weight to burn more fat, and programs that seemed to think he had any interest at all in the spiritual practices of yoga. At the end of it, he had a living room full of unwatched videos, a maxed out credit card, and an extra five pounds on the scale. The only good thing he’d gotten out of it was a few decent orgasms thanks to gyrating scantily clad women and flexing muscular men.

And so it was that Harry Potter discovered that he was absolutely hopeless at losing weight.

Harry scowled at his reflection, trying to recognize the man who faced him in the mirror. He supposed one couldn’t mistake the untamable hair, the forest-colored eyes, and the lightning bolt scar, but other than that, he would not have known himself.

For the past few years, Harry had dismissed his weight gain as “water retention” or “nothing too important,” but facing this stranger in the mirror, he found he could no longer wallow in denial. He had no memory of when his face had grown so round, and when that roll of fat had appeared beneath his chin. He was as wide as he thought Goyle had been at his chubbiest, with a gut that could not be contained in any pair of pants he owned. His thighs rubbed together when he walked, and while his arms were not too bad, they no longer had the shapely tone of his youth. Worst of all of course was the fact that he was easily a C-cup with testicles.

There was no denying it anymore: Harry Potter was fat and single and there would be no changing that any time soon.

“Bugger it,” he snarled, turning off the bathroom light with fingers that resembled sausages. Then he stalked into the kitchen and, upon discovering he had nothing but a jar of applesauce and a rotting cantaloupe, ordered an extra large pizza with pepperoni, mushrooms, and extra cheese.

-----

Harry was glaring down at his five syrup-drenched pancakes, clutching his steaming cup of coffee (five sugars with cream) when the doorbell rang. He then turned his glower towards his front door. For ages he had looked forward to the sound and to the mail carrier who would be clutching the desired cardboard box in their arms. Now the sound was a sour reminder of his failure, and he was half-tempted to blow the transmitter up with a well-aimed Reductor Curse.

Ginny had always been so good at the Reductor Curse.

Harry moaned, though it was more or less eclipsed by the sound of the doorbell ringing for the second time. Then he slowly levered himself up from his chair, figuring that he may as well see who it was. Perhaps it would be Ron and Hermione back from their obnoxiously lengthy honeymoon at last. Or even Ginny come to take him back.

This possibility caused him to move far more quickly than he normally would have, which left him breathing a bit hard as he threw the door open without checking the peephole. His face fell a little when he saw long white-gold hair instead of shoulder-length crimson. Then his expression changed entirely when he recognized the probing grey eyes staring unblinking over his threshold.

“Luna?”

“Hello, Harry,” she greeted in her eternally dreamy voice. She scanned him up and down, tilting her head to the side. “Ginny was right. You have put on weight.” She looked at him as directly as she ever did and solemnly informed him, “You look terrible.”

Really, he should have been expecting that.

Slumping his shoulders in defeat, he waved her inside, striving to remember that Luna was one of his closest friends.

“You’re breathing awfully hard. Do you need to sit down?”

Even if she was too bloody direct to be believed.

“I’m fine,” he ground out through clenched teeth, striding back into the kitchen. “I was just eating breakfast, if you don’t mind. Coffee?”

“No thank you,” Luna sang out pleasantly, practically floating behind him. “I find that an overconsumption of caffeine has a tendency to attract wrackspurts, so I try to stay away from it. But it’s very nice of you to offer.”

“Ah. Right. Of course.”

Luna then planted herself across from him at the breakfast table, cupping her chin in her palm. She watched him for the better part of ten minutes as he shoveled pancakes and coffee into his mouth, and he swore that he never saw her blink once. He loved Luna like a little, marginally insane sister, but damn did she spook him sometimes.

It occurred to him at the end of the ten minutes that he ought to have made an attempt at conversation.

“So, err… what brings you here, Luna?”

“Ginny wanted me to check on you.”

It was really unfair that other people could say her name without feeling like curling up into a tiny – well, actually not tiny at all – ball on the floor and weeping until doomsday. Or at least until they had to go to the loo.

“Did she?” Harry grumbled, stabbing his spoon into the now empty coffee mug. “How nice of her to be worried about me. Since she’s the one who walked out.”

Luna’s eyes could not possibly soften any more without becoming cotton balls set in her skull, but the set of her mouth achieved the same effect. “She does care for you, Harry.”

“Then maybe she shouldn’t have left,” he snapped. It was difficult to be cross with Luna, but in the mood he was in, damn it, he’d manage it if he had to.

Luna shrugged in a way that seemed too elegant for her – it seemed like a borrowed gesture somehow. “I can’t speak to that since I wasn’t in the relationship. All I can say is that Ginny believes she was doing what was best for both her and for you.”

Harry blamed the following action on not being around people for a few weeks and thus forgetting that there were some things that you just did not do in front of people.

His head slumped forward until it hit the top of his table with a sickening thunk. And then he said with a truly pathetic whine, “How is this good for me? I’m miserable, I’m alone, and I’m fat. Emphasis on fat.”

Luna made what he sincerely hoped was a sympathetic noise and stroked his hair. “I am sorry, Harry.”

He banged his head again, causing the saucer to clatter against the dish. “She’s left me for some skinny bloke, hasn’t she?”

“Harry, don’t be ridiculous.”

“You’re right,” he agreed. “She doesn’t like them skinny. She found some muscular Quidditch player with great teeth.” He paused, considering this, and then let out something entirely too much like a wail for his liking. “Oh, God, she’s left me for Oliver Wood!”

Luna reached forward, hauled him up by the shoulders, and slapped him across the face.

Harry gaped, clutching his throbbing cheek.

“Wrackspurts,” she diagnosed in her high voice, nodding. “Definitely. They’re frightened off by the noise, you see.”

Harry wondered if she’d just been looking for an excuse to hit him, or if she really meant it. Not that she needed any justification, he realized.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’ve been acting like a real tit, haven’t I?”

“You have,” Luna agreed, patting his hand. “I understand. Break-ups are difficult.”

Although Harry quite agreed, he was sorely tempted to point out that as far as he knew, Luna had never been in a relationship. Ginny had often referred to her as a serial casual dater.

And there was Ginny in his head again.

“I am so pathetic,” he grumbled, pleased for the first time that it was Luna here with him rather than Ron or Hermione. They would have half-heartedly attempted to assure him that this was not true. Luna merely nodded shortly, conceding the point. Sometimes, Harry rather liked her honesty. “How do you put up with me?”

“You saved the world, so I feel obligated,” Luna said in a tone that may have been joking. He’d known her for years, and he still couldn’t tell when she was teasing him. “You’re my friend, Harry, and I want to help you.”

“Can you make Ginny come back?” Harry asked, feeling rather like a puppy who exposed his belly to an animal hater.

“Not without an Imperius Curse, which I don’t think you’d like very much.”

On second thought, bugger Luna’s honesty.

“Now then,” Luna said brightly, her silvery eyes sparkling in her round face. “I think it’s time to get to the other reason I stopped by.”

“Hm?”

“I notice that you’ve been attempting to lose weight,” she said, gesturing back to the living room full of work out programs.

He felt the back of his neck heat up. “Er, yeah. Sort of. I mean, it hasn’t been going very well…”

“I should think not,” Luna concurred. “Eating like that.”

Harry stared down at his empty, syrup-sticky plate in shame. “You sound like Minerva.”

“I’m sure she’d have a few things to say to you as well, but I don’t think you do well with negative reinforcement.”

He smiled at that, but only a little.

“I also think that you need more than a personal trainer in a little black box—"

“It’s called a television.”

“—telling you what to do.” She reached into the pocket of her denims and pulled out a brochure. At first glance, he thought that Slytherin house had taken to written propaganda as it was done entirely in black, silver, and green. But then he saw the reptilian symbol on the front was not a snake, but a dragon. Fitting considering the name of the establishment.

“The Dragon’s Den?” Harry asked incredulously.

“It does sound a bit like a brothel, I know,” Luna sighed. “I did try to talk him out of it.”

Harry nearly asked her what ‘him’ she referred to, when he saw the subtitle beneath the business name. “It’s a gym?”

“Better than that, it’s a gym tailored specifically to wizards,” Luna continued cheerfully. “The first of its kind as a matter of fact. Our community is not especially concerned with physical fitness.”

Harry wanted to argue that he couldn’t come up with very many overweight wizards off the top of his head, but Luna continued talking, undeterred.

“If you’re really serious about this, Harry, I wish you’d consider it. I think having someone there to help you and encourage you is really invaluable.”

Harry continued to glare down at the shiny slip of paper, watching as the dragon insignia uncurled itself and spouted blue fire, causing the page to shimmer between his hands. “How do you know so much about this, anyway?”

“Well, I work there, of course.”

Harry’s head jerked up, staring. “I thought you were studying to be a, what’s it… a naturalist?”

“Oh, I still am,” she assured him. “I’ve gone to studying part-time while I’m working at the gym. The owner asked me as a favor you see, after he heard about my yoga practice.”

Harry opened his mouth to ask about that, but it occurred to him that it might make him look like a bad friend that he didn’t already know. Then Ginny could accuse him of being a bad listener in addition to being overweight.

“I don’t know, Luna,” Harry admitted, pushing the brochure back to her, unopened. “I’m not… well, I don’t go out much, since….” He gestured meaningfully to his man-boobs.

“I promise you, we can be discreet,” Luna assured him. “You’re welcome to use your invisibility cloak to get in and out, and I can arrange for you to have private training. We’re used to dealing with some members of the wizarding community who prefer not to be seen much, so we’re well-equipped for that.”

Harry pursed his lips. He wouldn’t exactly say that Luna was fantastic at sales, but she was on the verge of convincing him. He was desperate to get Ginny back, and so far, he’d done a piss-poor job on his own. If she really could keep him out of the public eye, maybe it was worth a shot.

“Let me help you, Harry,” Luna implored gently. “Please.”

Harry really was a horrible soft-touch.

-----

The next day, as promised, Harry Apparated near to where the Dragon’s Den was located in Diagon Alley and promptly secreted himself beneath his invisibility cloak. It was much smaller than he remembered, but he preferred not to dwell on remembering that it had once concealed three (admittedly weedy) children not too long ago. Still, he soldiered on, dancing through the crowded streets as best as he could. He kept not compensating enough for his girth, but despite his heft, he was still fairly quick on his feet, so no one suspected that a living ghost was among them.

It was a short enough trek, and soon he found himself at the gym. He never had managed to get the owner’s identity from Luna, but it was certainly a Slytherin judging from the color scheme alone. The building towered above the street by five looming stories, and while most buildings in the area favored the red brick look, the Dragon’s Den gleamed with the silver chrome more suited to the more metropolitan areas of London proper. The sign was black with bright green lettering, a curling dragon in part forming the two d’s in the name. It occasionally opened its mouth to breathe the somewhat familiar blue fire, and Harry could have sworn that it was glaring down at him with unconcealed disgust.

“You’re one to talk,” Harry muttered, wondering just how far he had fallen that he had taken to insulting signage.

He quickly turned down the alley where Luna had agreed to meet him, and he spotted her easily enough. Her hair stood out to him first in the murky shadows, but it became rather… difficult to ignore her outfit.

Witches and wizards of his generation were favoring Muggle clothing more and more following the war, and certainly any number of Purebloods had commented on just how revealing even a simple pair of women’s trousers were. Harry had never paid it much thought. Then again, he hadn’t seen Luna Lovegood in work out gear until then.

She may as well have stepped out of Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” video, and it was a testament to Dudley’s love of television that he was able to call up that reference. Her top was a shade of purple that defied his color lexicon. It was too light to be called eggplant, too blue for magenta, and in fact too neon to really be purple at all. And her pants – which thankfully were not quite the shiny leggings so common to the 80s – were undoubtedly turquoise and bore the unmistakable insignia of the Dragon’s Den. For some reason she thought that cherry red trainers and a lime green headband were the perfect complement to this ensemble.

But more important than all of that was the fact that he had never before realized just how fit Luna was. She was far more slender than he’d ever given her credit for, and with her bare arms exposed in the afternoon light, he could make out the rise and fall of impressive upper body muscles. He also noted that her stomach was the very definition of washboard, and he did not doubt for a moment that underneath the yoga trousers were a pair of fantastic legs.

He felt like something horrible and inhuman standing next to this paragon of beauty and physical fitness.

But Luna being Luna, she didn’t notice this even after he removed the cloak. She simply smiled like a ray of white sunshine and threw her arms around his neck. Having her body against his seemed to only further emphasis his size, so he did little more than pat her awkwardly on the bag, which was his usual reaction to anyone’s embrace these days.

“I am so glad you came!” Luna exclaimed. “I promise that we’ll have you feeling more like yourself in no time.”

Harry had to smile a little at that. Ginny had left him because he was unrecognizable to her. If losing weight would make her remember that he was still Harry and always would be Harry, any amount of discomfort would be worth it.

This supposition held for exactly three nanoseconds.

“Oh. My. God.”

Harry’s eyes flew open as he looked over Luna’s shoulder and saw who had spoken.

It couldn’t be. Surely no God was that cruel. Certainly Luna would have told him. Clearly that must have been some other snotty little rich Slytherin with a too-posh accent and a sneer evident in every nuanced syllable.

“It’s true. It’s really true.”

Then again, maybe a higher power had been rooting against Harry all along.

“Potter’s fat.”

Standing in the doorway of the Dragon’s Den was the pointy little blond bastard who had spent his every waking hour coming up with new and exciting ways to insult Harry during their school days. Of course, when faced with mad professors and basilisks and Dark Lords, there hadn’t been much any prepubescent could do by comparison. Still, Harry was about as thrilled to see Draco Malfoy brimming with schadenfreude as a dozen hungry Inferi.

Luna pulled away from Harry, and he could not help but feel further betrayed by this abandonment on top of this extremely relevant omission. Luna spun in a move that seemed far more like a pirouette and rested her hands against her small hips. “Draco, I told you to wait.”

“But this is just too delicious to put off!” Draco proclaimed, absolutely giddy. “I couldn’t really believe Luna when she told me, but here it is! Proof! Harry Potter – The-Boy-Who-Ate.”

“Kill me,” Harry grumbled, unsure of whom he asked.

Luna patted his shoulder in a way that was entirely too friendly for a traitor. “I suppose it was too much to hope for that you’d be civil.”

“I cannot believe you didn’t mention that he was the owner,” Harry spat, jerking away.

Draco seemed torn between gasping and cackling. “I know! I still can’t believe my little Loony Lovegood pulled off something close to deception!”

“She’s not yours,” Harry growled, feeling idiotic a moment later.

“Ah, but I am her boss,” Draco pointed out, his teeth glittering. “And you are fat.”

“Draco,” Luna murmured in a tone that bordered on a warning. Then she turned back to Harry, and though Luna’s expressions were often unreadable, he thought maybe she seemed sorry. “I didn’t like doing it, Harry, but I knew you’d never come if I mentioned him.”

“Is The-Boy-Who-Ate too on the nose?” Draco asked, drumming his fingers against his arm. “It does have a nice ring to it, but I wonder if I need something more subtle.”

“Whatever gave you that idea, Luna?” Harry deadpanned.

“Well, you do hate him rather a lot,” she said breezily.

Draco sighed the epic sigh of a man unjustly accused, which Harry wanted to punch him for so very much. “There she is, honest to a fault all over again. And I had so hoped you’d be a duplicitous little Ravenclaw for me.”

“Ravenclaws are far too clever to be mastered by any Slytherin, Draco Malfoy,” Luna countered, but a small grin took the bite out of her words.

“Christ, I’m in Bizarro World,” Harry muttered. “And I’m leaving now.”

“No!” both Luna and Draco shouted, though it was the latter who made him curious enough to stop.

Harry arched an eyebrow. “Why not?” he asked, directing the question to the pointer blond.

Draco rolled his eyes dramatically and stepped forward, though he was just a touch out of punching range. “Because I can help you, Moby Dick.”

“Moby Dick?”

“Yes, Potter. It’s a big fat white whale in a Muggle book. Don’t you read?”

“I caught the reference,” Harry ground out. “I just don’t see what possessed you to make it.”

“Do you not have mirrors in your world of simple carbohydrates, Harry Porker?”

“Draco,” Luna sang out. “You promised.”

To Harry’s shock and awe, this actually gave Draco pause. He watched as Draco took a moment to breathe, sort through his thoughts to find one that did not contain an insult (thinly veiled or otherwise), and clear his head. Harry would have gaped if he hadn’t been afraid of Draco making a crack about a cave on the side of a mountain.

“I can help you,” Draco repeated. “You’re clearly miserable.”

“Because I put on a few stone?”

Draco’s pale eyebrow twitched. “Leaving aside that disgusting understatement, there’s more to it than that. First of all, you’re not just super-sized; you’re unhealthy, and unhealthy people generally aren’t full to the brim with sparkles and rainbows. Second, you don’t have a job so you have nothing to occupy your days with as a distraction.”

That in particular stung, but Harry did his very best not to let it show.

“Third, you are lonely because your girlfriend just chucked you.”

Harry felt like throwing up everywhere. “How do you know that?”

“Some of us do read the society pages, Potter,” Draco informed him in the uncomfortably familiar drawl. “It was all over The Prophet and The Quibbler.” He glanced over at Luna. “Et tu, Lovegood?”

“News is news,” Luna informed him serenely. “Especially when it’s private matters that are no one else’s business.”

“True enough. And you were much nicer about it.” Draco leaned back towards Harry and continued. “So. You’re unhealthy, you’ve been dumped, and you don’t like your body, or else you would not be here. This leads me to conclude that if you do not return to your… oh, how did Romilda Vane put it… Herculean aesthetic, you will be a sad sack for the rest of your days, which will disappoint all the little children of the world when they sing your praises for generations to come. I can do that for you.” At the conclusion of this speech, Draco beamed at him like a particularly clever pupil awaiting praise from his favorite professor.

Harry found himself longing for a ruler to beat Draco with. He settled for saying, “No thanks,” and turning to go on his way.

“You know as well as I do that you can’t do it yourself, Potter,” Draco called out. “You couldn’t survive the first task without Weasley and the Giant tipping you off. What makes you think this is any different?”

Harry wondered if it was ignorance that kept Draco from mentioning Cedric and the egg or some semblance of tact.

“Besides, it’s my understanding that you live above ground, and you’re liable to cave your own floor in during an aerobics routine.”

Ignorance. Definitely ignorance.

“There are other gyms,” Harry insisted.

“Ah, but here is where you are wrong,” Draco shouted, thrusting his arm into the air in a pose that was both caricatured and clearly practiced. “For you see, I discovered something very vital to the success of my business and your success in this weight loss endeavor, Potter.”

He looked so damn proud of himself. Harry really, really wanted to kick his teeth in.

“Well, out with it,” Harry sighed.

Draco leaned close again – but still out of arm’s reach, damn it – and then said, in a stage whisper of course, “Wizards have a different metabolism!”

Harry had to admit, he’d rather been expecting the formula for the Elixir of Life. “That’s it?”

Draco straightened, his hair fluffing out like an angry peacock. “That’s it? Do you have any idea how important this is? How monumental the discovery despite its simplicity? It is genius, Potter! Genius!”

“Color me skeptical.”

“I color you jiggly.”

“Draco,” Luna called out again.

“Well, he’s being impossible!” Draco snapped.

“Who’s being impossible?’ Harry questioned, truly perplexed.

Luna stepped between them smoothly before things could get any more violent. “Harry, what Draco is endeavoring to say is that in order to lose weight at the same rate as Muggles, wizards and witches have to cast spells during a work out. Just doing the exercise won’t be enough.”

Harry thought of the hundreds of DVDs in his living room. “Wait… what?”

“Wizards burn calories by casting spells,” Luna said, staring at him with her somewhat bulbous eyes. “Our bodies have to have the metabolism in order to handle it or else we’d just waste away.”

“Remember Slughorn?” Draco asked suddenly, peeping around Luna’s shoulder.

“I remember you got tossed out of his Christmas party,” Harry snapped, marveling at how easily Draco Malfoy’s presence rendered him an eternal twelve-year-old.

“He also resembled a walrus, don’t you think?” Draco asked, ignoring the slight.

Harry narrowed his eyes. “Yeah…. So? Umbridge looked like a toad.”

“And we had a centaur for a Divination teacher, if we can please move along,” Draco continued in a rush. “My point is that Slughorn was a Potions Master. Potions Masters are rather notorious for being overweight. Why you ask? Because working with potions requires very little actual magic! It’s all about the ingredients and the right preparation, but there’s little to no spell work actually involved!

“It’s like developing muscles. If you don’t work the muscle, it atrophies. So if you don’t use magic, your metabolism plummets to the basement.” Draco folded his arms akimbo, looking predictably smug. “And the tabloids all say that you don’t use much magic anymore, Potter.”

Harry couldn’t stop himself from flinching. This was a sensitive topic – one he refused to discuss more often than not, even with people like Ron, Hermione, and Ginny. If he had to pick the last person on Earth he’d want to open up to about this, Draco Malfoy would at least be in the top two.

Luckily, for whatever reason, Draco didn’t see a reason to press the issue. “I also feel I should mention that you undoubtedly exacerbate the problem by eating like a wild beast.”

“Wait a minute,” Harry sighed, rubbing his temples. “This doesn’t… Snape was a Potions Master, and he was like a weed.”

Draco looked so disappointed in him that Harry nearly felt ashamed as a reflex. “Yes, Potter, but he was also an accomplished Occulumens and had to shield his mind at all times. Do try to keep up.”

“Oh,” Harry mumbled, feeling stupid and hating it and hating Draco for making him feel stupid. “So then… if I just cast more spells, will that work?”

Not that he looked forward to that much either, but surely it would be better than spending his days with Draco Malfoy.

“If you do it incorrectly or too quickly, you’ll make yourself sick or hurt yourself,” Luna counseled. “Not to mention, you’d be burning up fat without putting on muscle. That’s why it’s best to do a combination of the two.”

Harry shifted uncomfortably. “Well, then, I’ll just go to another—"

“First of its kind, Potter,” Draco crowed proudly. “Because I am a genius.”

Harry had spent so much of his life trapped between a rock and a hard place. This was hardly as important – it was just his love life and happiness on the line as opposed to the fate of the world. Still, he was no more enthused about it now than he had been when Voldemort was alive, and it just figured that it would be Draco Malfoy putting him in this position.

“Why do you even care?” Harry asked, his shoulders slumping forward.

“I don’t,” Draco assured him.

Harry was not entirely sure how to feel about this. “Oh.”

“Here’s the way I see it, Potter,” Draco said, puffing out what Harry now realized was a considerably more chiseled chest than he’d had in school. “You want to get thin and get the girl back, and you want to do it without having people gawk and laugh at you and call you The Bloated One. I can do that for you.”

Harry could smell the caveat like a rotten fish hidden in a tailpipe. “And in return…”

Draco smiled like a shark about to bite. “All you have to do is tell people who helped you. I’m not asking for any print ads or official endorsements. Just good old word of mouth about how the Boy-Who-Lived got slim.”

If Draco had asked for anything official, Harry could have said no in good conscience. He could have walked away and forgotten all about this incident. He could have even tried out Draco’s tried and true method, consequences and magic be damned.

But all Draco wanted was for him to talk, and well, that wasn’t difficult. Besides, if it actually worked, he wouldn’t be all that averse to saying who had helped him. Even if it was the son of a Death Eater.

“So what do you say, Potter?” Draco asked. For a moment, Harry thought he was going to offer his hand to shake, but then he remembered the train ride when they were eleven. Harry knew better than to expect such a gesture from Draco ever again.

Harry also knew that Draco was a slimy git through and through who had gotten even Luna Lovegood to tell lies for him. He had been two-faced and gutless in a time of war. He had made Harry miserable in all the little ways Voldemort would have considered insignificant.

And damn it if he wasn’t Harry’s only hope.

“I’ll do it.”

Draco smiled at him, wide and brilliant and maybe a little beautiful, but all Harry saw were the dollar signs flashing in his eyes.

-----

The next hour was spent listening to Draco yammer on about his wonderful gym facilities and his marvelous fitness plans and his lovely white teeth and everything else that was spectacular about the gym and himself. It was only because Luna was walking arm-in-arm with him that Harry did not grab the nearest dumbbell and bludgeon Draco to death with it.

Luna moved a bit closer to him, whispering so that Draco didn’t hear her. Harry rather suspected that Draco just liked listening to himself talk and that an audience was optional, but he kept this to himself for the time being. “Are you very angry with me?”

Harry frowned. “You did lie to me.”

“I really thought you’d be able to tell,” Luna breathed in her soprano bell tones. “I was terrible at it. I kept bringing him up when I didn’t have to.”

Now that Harry thought about it, she had at that, and he’d very nearly asked after the owner several times. He had a feeling if he’d asked her directly, she would have told him.

“I was only trying to help you,” Luna confessed, giving his weak arm another squeeze. “I know how sad you are, Harry.”

He shut his eyes and valiantly ignored the way his throat tightened. “Luna—"

“You’ve been sad for a long time,” Luna continued. “Even before Ginny.”

God, why did she have to bring this up? Why did she have to talk about his feelings? Couldn’t she see that opening up hurt him more than shoving his thoughts away until they were dead?

“I just wanted to help,” she murmured. “I know Draco can be an awful person sometimes, but he’s good at what he does, Harry. He can help you. He won’t be nice about it, and you’ll be miserable most of the time. But in the end, maybe it’ll be worth it.”

“Well, at least now you’re being honest,” he muttered.

Still, much as he downplayed it, he did appreciate it in this instance. In his mind’s eye, he pictured himself as he had once been – a tanned body toned by Quidditch and fighting daily for his life. He saw Ginny as she was now, slight but curvy with a smile that seemed only for him. He saw himself smiling and tried to remember the last time he’d done that in real life and meant it.

He glanced down at Luna and tried for her, but it didn’t come close to working. Judging by the hint of melancholy in her eyes, she knew it.

“I’m not upset with you, Luna,” Harry assured her. “I know you meant well, and who knows? Maybe it will all work out for the best.”

Luna beamed up at him, and for just a moment, Harry felt a little lighter.

Of course Draco had to ruin it by sticking his face into it like the nosey ferret he was.

“Please don’t flirt with the yoga instructor. She is for display only,” Draco quipped. “Now then, here we are at the weight room. As you can see—"

“Bloody Merlin on a pogo stick,” Harry swore, leaping backwards. “Goyle?”

It wasn’t that Harry was surprised to see Goyle at Draco’s gym. It was so utterly Slytherin for them to stick together even now, and the building certainly looked as though it was liable to attract that lot. Harry wasn’t even put off by the fact that Goyle was obviously working for Draco, judging by his name tag. It was simply the fact that Gregory Goyle had turned into a behemoth of a man with more muscles than could possibly be healthy, and that he seemed to be under the impression that a spandex unitard was proper attire for any situation.

There was not a memory charm strong enough to erase the horror of that memory.

“Oh, it’s Potter,” Goyle rumbled. Harry had been so wrong to think that Draco would call him a mountain because of his weight when Goyle was like a living, breathing Everest. “Luna said you might be by. Hello, Potter.”

It may have been the polite thing to respond to the man, but Harry felt sure he would have been unable to say anything but, ‘That’s some unfortunate spandex you’ve got there.’

“Potter, do try to stop staring at Greg’s crotch.”

“S’all right, Draco. I’m used to it.”

“Still, it’s very rude.”

“I am rather impressive in that area, boss.”

“There is that, yes.”

“God, my eyes,” Harry whimpered, unable to stop himself.

“Scratch them out after the tour,” Draco said merrily. “Now, as I was saying…”

When Harry considered that the outline of Greg’s manly assets would forever haunt his nightmares, Harry wondered if perhaps he’d been a bit premature in forgiving Luna for getting him into this.

-----

Later that night, Harry returned to his flat completely depressed. Not that this was different from the usual state of affairs, but now he was moping about Draco Malfoy, and that was so very much worse than his usual brooding.

Draco and Luna together had come up with quite the nutrition and exercise plan. The measurements and weigh-in had been so utterly humiliating that he longed for a well-aimed lightning strike, but things definitely could have gone worse. Luna was kind without being overly sweet, and Harry knew Draco had bit his tongue two times out of three, which was something. It still didn’t mean he had to think on the experience fondly.

They’d decided he needed to lose something like five stone to be back in his healthy weight range. He hadn’t realized things were in such dire straits. Luna had been rattling off facts about his cholesterol, blood pressure, and other health issues, and while she conceded things were not quite as deadly as she made them sound, they would be if he continued on the same path.

Harry considered health a nice fringe benefit of getting Ginny back, but he didn’t dare say that aloud and risk sounding stupid.

After a long day of dealing with Malfoy, all Harry wanted to do was lay back and forget the world. However, Harry Potter never got what he wanted. In the dark shadows of his apartment, Harry had an epiphany.

If one looked at Draco from the neck down, things took on a whole different significance. The Draco Malfoy of yesteryear had always seemed malnourished, particularly in the later years of the war when the threat of death loomed like an ever present house ghoul. That skeletal boy seemed to have vanished completely into the very pinnacle of health.

Draco Malfoy had something like what Harry envisioned as the perfect male body. A broad set of shoulders floating above a manly chest. Heavily muscled thighs and chiseled calves. A waist that seemed to beg to have legs wrapped around it. And an arse that could probably crack walnuts.

When Harry hadn’t been paying attention, Draco Malfoy had turned into a sex god.

And when Draco hadn’t been paying attention, Harry Potter had turned into a whale.

“Bugger.”

-----

Harry had prayed to the God he didn’t believe in that Luna would be overseeing his inaugural work out at the inaptly named Dragon’s Den. He’d even decided to throw in, charitably he thought, that Goyle would be okay too. He didn’t seem like the talkative type, but a reticent linebacker was infinitely preferable to a chattering Malfoy.

In Harry’s opinion, it was further proof of any god’s inexistence that Draco Malfoy met him at the side door, his trademark smirk painted on with a flourish.

“Hello there, Butterball,” he said cheerfully, slapping Harry’s rather sad looking shoulder. “Ready to—"

“So help me,” Harry ground out, “if you pull out any cutesy metaphor – or any metaphor for that matter – I will kill you where you stand.”

Draco stared at him as if he had sprouted a giraffe’s head out of his neck, which more or less made Harry feel like a malnourished eleven-year-old orphan all over again. “I was going to say work out. God, Potter, have you lost whatever brain cells you had since I last saw you three years ago? I thought they’d at least last you until your mid-twenties.”

“Never mind,” Harry grumbled. “Let’s get on with it.”

With that, Draco led the two of them back through the serpentine (and it figured they would be) halls of the gym. Harry stayed underneath his invisibility cloak until Draco gave him the okay. The end of their journey was apparently a rather large room, filled with all manner of menacing looking cardio equipment. The strangest thing about the whole layout for Harry was how disappointingly Muggle all of the machines were. They measured heart rate and calorie burn, but it was all mechanics. It was surreal to view this paragon of Muggle innovation before leaning tower that was Gringotts.

As if reading his mind, Draco said, “I’ve been tinkering with adding some sort of sensors to pick up on magical readouts, but I haven’t quite worked out the kinks yet. The last experiment… well, let’s just say it turned me off of poultry for awhile.”

The look on Draco’s face clearly suggested that he both expected and desired Harry to question him on this matter further.

“So, which torture device are you whipping out first?”

Draco clucked his tongue, and Harry swore that even that was thinner than his own. “Where is that positive can-do Gryffindor attitude, Potter? Did you—“

“Eat it? No. Too spicy.”

Draco’s lips twitched, as though he might have been amused. “Treadmill.”

Harry couldn’t stifle his disappointment. He’d been hoping for something a little more exciting, like a rock wall, and said as much.

“Baby steps, my Fat-Bottomed Gryffindor. Baby steps,” Draco cautioned, pushing him in the direction of the machine. “Besides, you’ll need your hands free to cast. Later, I’m sure we can incorporate wandless magic, but it’s always best to start small and work one’s way up.”

“Right,” Harry murmured. “Wandless.”

“Now then,” Draco chirped, swinging something bright and shining in the air. Harry realized with dawning horror that it was a whistle. “It works best if you walk at a brisk pace for two minutes and then jog for a minute. During the jog, you’ll need to cast one spell every ten seconds. Minor charms will do. No Imperioing me into doing the hula, thanks ever so much.”

Harry blinked. Very slowly. “I don’t want to know what happens at Slytherin parties, do I?”

Draco’s only response was the shrill screech of the whistle.

For the next ten minutes, Harry did just as Draco said, alternating between aerobic and anaroebic drills. During the later, he cast, just as Draco suggested, the bare simplest of charms – Levitation, Lumos, and just one Cheering Charm aimed at his trainer that earned him an extra set of drills for the end of the work out.

After ten minutes, Harry was convinced Draco was finally going to succeed at murdering him.

“Fuck, Draco,” Harry wheezed. “How long… can you… hold… a school grudge for?”

“I am truly sad for you that you think this is all an elaborate plot to bring about your untimely demise,” Draco sighed. “As if anyone even cares anymore.”

Harry inhaled as deeply as his lungs would allow. “Can’t… breathe…”

Draco scoffed. “You’re a filthy liar, but I’ll let you rest anyway. This is entirely too difficult to watch.” He reached over and paused the machine’s momentum, allowing Harry to coast to stop.

Harry stood on the now still treadmill hunched over the hand-bars. He clutched his wand in his hand, but he was so sweaty that there was a good chance it would slip out of his fingers. He caught a glimpse of himself in the floor to ceiling mirrors on one side of the room. He rather resembled the color of burnt lobster.

“He really does look awful, Mister Malfoy,” the mirror squeaked.

Draco turned to scowl at it, so that it almost seemed like Draco was dissatisfied with his reflection.

Fucking ridiculous as that was.

“And for the record,” Harry gasped, fumbling for his water bottle as though his life depended on it. “People do… care. I get… at least… three death threats a week.”

Draco suddenly looked very uncomfortable. “There may have been one in February on lavender stationary that I was responsible for.”

Harry narrowed his eyes, trying to remember. When he did, he couldn’t help but be appalled. “You said you wanted to turn my kidney into a handbag! And you misspelled kidney!”

“Tequila is a cruel mistress, Potter,” Draco said somberly. He sniffed the air in disgust and then summoned a towel from around the corner, tossing it at Harry’s head. “Do dry yourself. You are drowning in your own perspiration, and it offends me.”

Odious as Malfoy was, Harry couldn’t refuse the favor and began to towel off. “And I suppose Malfoys don’t sweat?”

“As a matter of fact, no. We simply emit a radiant glow.”

Harry could have thrown the towel at Draco’s face for that remark. He considered it a mark of his maturity that he did not.

“So how did you get into this gig anyway?” Harry asked.

Draco arched an eyebrow sharply. Christ, did he even work out that muscle? “Whatever do you mean?”

Harry shrugged. “Just doesn’t seem like your thing is all.”

“Ah,” Malfoy said in a tone that Harry knew meant trouble and possibly more drills. “And you would know of course. Since we’re such bosom friends and all.”

“Leaving aside the fact that you just said bosom—“

“Well, you must admit, yours is rather present.”

“I only meant that this seems an awful lot like menial labor,” Harry concluded in exasperation. “And I assumed that was against your family code or something.”

Draco shook his head, cradling his precious whistle to his chest. “I so weep for you and those who know nothing of Purebloods, Potter. We do not have family codes. The proper behavior is simply understood.”

There were any number of cruel things Harry could say in response. Draco had left it wide open. All it would take was an allusion to Lucius Malfoy’s more sullied wartime tactics, and Harry would have felt like a winner.

Hermione would have been the first to remind him that the pissing contest between him and Malfoy had more or less ended when they were teenagers. She also would have soundly informed him that if he only felt worthy when he was putting other people down, he wasn’t really worth much of anything at all.

It was amazing how Hermione’s advice could take charge of situations when she was a continent away.

And really, all altruistic ideals aside, Harry was just too tired to start a real argument. It would have taken far more lung capacity than it was really worth, and it may very well have left him without any help on his not exactly noble quest. Draco was an annoying git and probably still a horrible person, but if Luna could tolerate him, maybe that said something for his character.

Besides, even if he was a racist little coward, he was trying to be helpful. Even if it was mostly for his own gain.

“Back to work, Potter,” Draco announced, starting up the machine with a flick of his own wand. “And I expect double time on the jogging.”

“I hate you so very much.”

“Your loss.”

-----

For two weeks, Harry made fourteen trips down to Malfoy’s gym. He worked out for a minimum of 30 minutes at time, usually with Malfoy, though Goyle seemed more or less in charge of his weight regimen. And for two weeks, Harry made the long trip back home where he curled up on the couch and waited for the pain to go away. He assured himself that his style of whimpering was very manly and comforted himself with the fact that all the hard work was bound to pay off.

Except that it didn’t.

“One pound?” Harry cried out, staring at the numbers shining out of Luna’s wand in horror. “That’s it? That’s all I’ve lost?”

Luna shook her wand and slapped it lightly, as if it was a staticy radio. When the numbers did not waver, she merely waved them away with a serene wave of her hand. “It looks that way, Harry. But that’s one pound lighter than you were before.”

“That’s not good enough!” Harry and Draco chorused. Harry was nearly as horrified by their tandem as he had been by his weight.

“I don’t understand it,” Draco grumbled, pacing back and forth behind his desk. “The goal was five pounds. I didn’t expect you to actually reach it, but I was sure there would be more of a difference than that.”

Goyle shrugged, unperturbed. “Could be muscle.”

“Luna?”

The lone female in the room cast again, and this time her numbers displayed his Body Mass Index and his fat versus lean muscle. There seemed to be very little difference between their initial findings. “Doesn’t look that way. Sorry, Greg.”

Goyle merely shrugged again, and then appeared to tune the rest of the conversation out. Apparently if it didn’t deal with bodybuilding, he saw no reason to be invested.

“This makes absolutely no sense,” Draco raged, slamming his fist against a chair that Harry felt resembled a throne by just a little too much. Actually, the whole set was so baroque in style that it verged on parody, particularly given the setting. “Though it occurs to me that if anyone would have inhuman metabolism, it would be you.”

Luna gave him a weak smile that seemed to suggest that at least that could be a compliment out of context.

“Damn it, Potter,” Draco snapped. “I don’t like this. I don’t like being in the dark. You’ve done the cardio, you’ve done the weights, you’ve followed the diet plan—"

“Er…”

Draco froze in such a way that Harry could almost believe he’d been stunned. Then he turned slowly, almost murderously, an odd gleam hovering in his eye. “You have been following the diet plan. Haven’t you, Potter?”

“Well,” Harry stammered, licking his lips. “You see, with what you said about uh… metabolic rates and calories and all that, I sort of thought that it wouldn’t matter if I maybe pushed the boundaries a little.”

Draco took a deep breath, as if he were drawing patience from an invisible, supernatural being. Harry shuddered with the realization that he resembled Snape to an alarming degree. “Potter, where do you live?”

Harry straightened up indignantly. “I am not going to tell you where I—"

He felt what could only be described as something tickling the back of his head.

“Thank you,” Draco growled before he disappeared into thin air.

Harry stood there, gaping at the empty space where Draco had once been in disbelief and confusion. But after the initial shock, it didn’t take Harry very long to put two and two together.

“Bloody Legilimens,” he snarled, Apparating after Draco.

Harry reappeared in his kitchen, and it was absolutely no surprise that Draco was already hard at work. Harry had no idea where he’d found a garbage bag so quickly, but Draco had now holed himself up in Harry’s pantry, liberally tossing things into the bag.

“Malfoy!” Harry shouted indignantly. “Those things cost money!”

“Bah!” Malfoy countered, thrusting a brightly colored box into the bag. “Bollocks, Potter. We both know it isn’t the money you care about. It’s the sugar.” He leaned out of the pantry holding out a blue plastic bag. “Tell me, Potter, in what way is candied mango part of the diet plan?”

“It’s fruit,” Harry snapped.

“No, it is candy. Hence the name. Candied mango.” And then he dropped the package into the garbage before disappearing back into the closet. “Now, let me see. What other violations do we have here? Oh, biscuits of course. We cannot wreck our diet without biscuits.”

Incredulous, Harry sputtered, “Our diet?”

“And raw sugar! Naturally. Potter, what did I tell you earlier? Splenda is your friend!”

“But there’s an aftertaste,” Harry murmured, wincing at his own whinging.

“Splenda is your friend!”

Harry had not been tempted to pout since he was four. At this moment, his lower lip was dangerously close to sticking out.

“And now to cereal… Oh, buggering fuck. Potter.” Draco emerged from the pantry once more, pink with frustration, a merry cartoon leprechaun clutched between his palms. “Lucky Charms? Really, Potter? Really?”

“…They’re magically delicious.”

“And now they are gone!” Draco proclaimed, banishing Lucky and his wonderful little marshmallow friends to the bottom of the rubbish bag.

Over the next hour, Draco scoured his flat top to bottom, seeking out every potentially harmful foodstuff he could lay hands on. Draco found sweets Harry hadn’t even realized he had, tucked away into corners and crannies for reasons Harry could not even begin to fathom. After burning the food, Draco went to Harry’s grocery. There, Malfoy helped him select a large number of healthy snacks and foods and then loudly informed the entire store that if anyone saw Harry Potter buying foods that were bad for him, they ought to transfigure his tongue into a cactus. To Harry’s horror, several of the patrons looked rather excited by this prospect.

It was a terrifying experience to say the least, but after the next two weeks, Harry was met with a pleasant surprise. He’d lost eight pounds.

Luna had hugged him in congratulations, Goyle had thumped him on the back, and when Draco thought Harry wasn’t looking, the owner of the gym indulged in one bright, dazzling smile.

-----

“So, explain to me the purpose of the exercise ball.”

“…It’s a ball. That you exercise with.”

“But how do you not fall off it?”

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake, Potter. You’re not doing handstands on it.”

“I know. Crunches – which I hate by the by.”

“You have made it painfully evident that you hate movement full stop, Potter, so forgive me if I cannot pull out my shocked face.”

“I only meant that I’ve tried to use these before – oh, there’s that shocked face – and I could never quite keep balanced. It always… rolled away from me.”

“…”

“Malfoy?”

“Sorry, I’m still reeling from the news that you ever could be coaxed to exercise without the benefit of my whistle or Greg’s thousand yard stare.”

“Well, to be honest, it was only the once.”

“And my surprise fades like a hero into the sunset.”

“Also, rum may or may not have been involved.”

“…Please tell me you at least mixed it with Diet Coke?”

“If by Diet Coke, you mean more rum, then yes.”

“So you are a drunk as well as a fat ass!”

“I’m missing the days when all you called me was Scarhead.”

“Then my work here is done.”

-----

Nearly six weeks into the work out, Ron and Hermione finally came home and immediately decided to take him out to dinner.

They’d gotten married three months before and immediately embarked on a honeymoon. However, since Hermione was Hermione, she could not content herself with merely lying on a beach or spending two weeks in bed. So she had planned a month-long trip around central Europe in which she would tour and observe other magical law enforcement departments and make various recommendations to the British Ministry.

And again, because Hermione was Hermione, she continued to extend the trip week upon week to see just one more thing, or to take advantage of a sudden invitation to Bulgaria, or any other number of academic hang-ups. Harry was beginning to assume the pair would be gone indefinitely until Ron finally put his foot down.

“I swear, if I toured one more bloody castle, I’d have gone completely barmy,” Ron confided, slamming his beer down just to make the point.

Hermione sighed, running her finger along the rim of her wine glass. “Honestly, Ronald, just because you can’t appreciate architecture—“

“I’ve told you they were nice, haven’t I?” Ron asked, his tone clear in that he and Hermione had discussed this no less than ten times before. “But everywhere I went, I was surrounded by all these gawking Muggles, yeah. Americans who hadn’t ever seen a castle before in their lives. So I’m thinking, ‘Yeah, this is nice, but it’s nothing like Hogwarts.’ And all the Muggles are just oohing and awing and tripping all over themselves staring at the ceiling. I can’t tell you how many times one of them trod on my feet. I nearly transfigured them into pillows once or twice.”

“Well, to be fair to the Muggles,” Harry joked, “your feet are rather large.”

Ron held one out from underneath their table. “Fine specimens they are. You’re just jealous you have tiny girly feet.”

“I do not have—“

“So, Harry,” Hermione interrupted, tiring of the argument before it began. “You need to tell us all about this weight loss endeavor with Malfoy! Your letters aren’t exactly illuminating on the subject.”

Harry shrugged. Hermione always made comments like that, and he never knew what he was supposed to do to improve. “It’s been all right, I suppose.”

“All right?” Ron asked, incredulous. “Malfoy telling you to do anything is all right with you?” He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Has he done something to you? Cause if he has, George has this new tart that will—"

“I’m not twelve anymore, Ron,” Harry interrupted. “I don’t have the energy to harbor a grudge.”

Hermione made a face as if she wanted to comment on that, but mercifully let it slide. “Well, I think it’s very mature of you to set your differences aside like this. Malfoy was a miserable little child—“

“And racist and obnoxious and with stupid hair,” Ron added, glaring when Hermione and Harry both snorted at the last.

“I only meant that he was… well, he wasn’t quite decent towards the end of the war, but he didn’t expose you to his parents. So that’s something,” Hermione concluded. “And I always did gather that he was beginning to regret some of the things he had done.”

Ron took a long swing of his lager. “Not calling you Mudblood, though.”

“Well, I’m not expecting miracles, Ron.”

“He’s still obnoxious,” Harry concluded, having given it some thought. “And he calls me names. Harry Porker. The Boy-Who-Ate.”

“Bastard,” Ron grumbled.

Harry smiled, appreciating the solidarity. “But he knows what he’s talking about. And it’s been working. I’m down over one stone.”

“That’s fantastic!” Hermione praised as Ron raised his glass. “Harry, I’m so proud of you.”

Corny as it was, Harry couldn’t help but enjoy that. “Still don’t know how he came up with this bit about the metabolism. I mean, he told me it was all to do with Slughorn, but I don’t see why he’d have taken notice to begin with. I’ve asked, but amazingly enough, Draco isn’t into sharing and caring.”

Hermione laughed, tipping her head back slightly. Harry didn’t miss Ron gazing appreciatively at her exposed throat. “Because you’re an open book.”

“Draco says I eat my feelings,” Harry said. “In place of punching people, as I apparently did in my youth.”

“And he was such a prince,” Ron remarked, leaning back as the waiter came by with their meal. Predictably, Ron had ordered something slathered in cheese with bacon and extra chips. Hermione had ordered a salad, but from the looks of it, there was more chicken in it then salad, along with plenty of extras Harry guessed were high calorie.

Harry looked down at his own meager plate of asparagus and grilled salmon and released a tiny sigh.

“See,” Ron said, shoveling some chops into his mouth. “Told you Draco was trying to kill him. Starving him no doubt.”

“It’s called sensible portions, Ron,” Hermione said, eyeing her own plate with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Harry. I oughtn’t to have suggested this. Now we’ve put you in an awkward position.”

“It’s fine,” Harry assured her, hoping he would be able to keep from drooling over their dinners. “It’s actually best if you eat five or six little meals instead of three big ones, so I can always have something when I get home. Like… a yogurt.”

Ron winced in sympathy.

“I like yogurt,” Hermione announced, blushing a moment later when she realized how stupid it sounded.

“It’s fine,” Harry repeated, spearing his asparagus. “And it is doing me good.”

“It’s nice to see you taking care of yourself again,” Hermione conceded.

“Hope Ginny thinks so,” Harry said, wishing a moment later that he hadn’t.

Hermione and Ron had obviously been carefully navigating around the subject of Ginny Weasley all evening, and now he’d gone and put his foot in it. He couldn’t say he regretted it though. He wanted to know what Ginny was doing. And more importantly, if she was seeing anyone.

Luckily, Ron didn’t have the heart to make Harry ask. “Gin’s doing all right. She went back home to Mum for all of two days before she ran out.”

“Molly was a little… well, upset about the break up.”

“Ah,” Harry said, admiring Hermione’s tact.

“Yeah, Mum’s been bugging Ginny about getting her married off to you since the war ended,” Ron noted. “I mean, at first she thought it was you, that you’d run off with some bloke—“

“Molly’s not entirely understanding of the bisexual thing,” Hermione added helpfully.

Harry sighed. “Didn’t think she would be.”

“She still loves you, mate, she just doesn’t get it,” Ron said, puffing out his chest. “Not as worldly and understanding as I am.”

“Huh,” Harry said. “So that wasn’t you who demanded to know if I’d ever touched you in your sleep when I came out?”

“Well, you did sort of spring it on me.”

Hermione huffed, “Yes, dear, but that doesn’t mean you have to be insensitive about it.”

“I realized what an arse I’d been the next day!”

“Oh, and your solution was brilliant. Ordering a male stripper. Honestly!”

“I was more or less all right with that,” Harry joked, grinning as Hermione’s face turned a light shade of purple.

“In any event,” Hermione ground out crisply. “She’s staying with Lavender right now. She’s grown close to the family what with Fenrir and…” she gestured to her face, indicating the ruin Fenrir had left Lavender in at the end of the battle. She now looked nothing like the girl Ron had been with so many years ago.

“Bill’s been great with her,” Ron added, unperturbed by their history. “Fleur’s tried to be as well, but… Lavender can’t really stand to look at her, you know?”

The three of them fell into a brief moment of silence that often populated their conversations. Pondering the dead and the lost, the maimed and the ruined. It was the most they could do now – to acknowledge their inability to save some of their nearest and dearest.

“But Harry,” Hermione said, first to break the quiet as she almost always did. “You do know that Ginny didn’t leave you because of the… well, the weight. She’s not going to get back together with you just because you’re getting healthier. Although I’m sure she’s very happy to hear it, I don’t want you to think that Ginny is that shallow.”

Harry nodded and said all the right things, but he knew Hermione was lying. Of course she didn’t want Harry to think Ginny was shallow. They’d grown very close in recent years. And it wasn’t that Harry thought she was that shallow. It was just that Ginny knew she deserved a boyfriend of a certain caliber, and Harry hadn’t been meeting the standard. He’d been angry with her at first, but now he understood. Ginny was great and great-looking. It only stood to reason that a balance between them would need to be achieved. He’d been lax in his part of the bargain, and now he was making up for it as best as he knew how.

Hermione and Ron could say all they wanted. Ginny could call the weight a symptom all she wanted. But Harry knew that at the end of this endeavor, he would go to Ginny a new man, and she’d forget all about her ideas of them not being together.

He’d get Ginny back. They were supposed to be together. It was fate.

It must also to be fate’s cruel idea of a joke that Draco Malfoy was its instrument.

-----

“Two stone down!” Luna announced. As had become their custom, Luna could not contain herself to keep from embracing him at this news. Harry was now more or less expecting the reaction, and though he still was not fond of how slight Luna’s body felt between his arms, it was getting more and more tolerable. It was no longer so difficult, for example, to maneuver around his stomach.

“Aren’t you going to tell him he did a nice job, Draco?” Luna questioned. “”Oh, wait. That’s polite, and you’re not of course.”

Amazing how she managed to say it without sounding rude herself.

“You know me so well, Loony,” Draco said with what Harry would have mistaken for affection if it hadn’t been Draco.

“You’ve said as much often enough.”

“I like your penchant for directness. It takes all of the social niceties out of the conversation, and you know how I feel about those.”

Luna smiled at him, and Harry realized, not for the first time, that there was fondness in her eyes. But for the first time, he did think of the other little smiles they’d shared, the remarks that bordered on teasing, and that Luna had said she joined the gym as a favor. As if she owed Malfoy anything at all.

Harry was beginning to form some rather dark suspicions about the nature of Luna and Draco’s relationship.

“You coming, Potter?”

“Huh?” Harry asked, realizing that Draco was on his way out the door. “What?”

“Yes, of course, you were too busy staring at my yoga instructor to notice,” Draco said, and Harry was sure that there was more venom than was called for. “We’re going to work out now, Potter. If you want to lose those 3 stone I still expect you to shed.”

Harry gave a blush worthy of Ron. “Oh, I—“

“Yes, she’s very pretty, but I have my own charms,” Draco snarked, holding up that damn whistle again. “Come along. To the row machine we go!”

Harry groaned. He did so hate the row machine.

But on his way out the door, he couldn’t help but wonder….

-----


“Draco and I?” Luna asked. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

Draco had gotten it into his head that Harry needed to improve his flexibility, and so, for the first time, he sent Harry to have a private yoga lesson in favor of his cardio routine. Harry hoped that Luna wouldn’t make him do any handstands; it would make holding his wand overly difficult. It was already difficult enough to sit in this V-position.

Luna of course formed a perfect T with her legs and torso.

“Well,” Harry said, embarrassed to have gotten it wrong. “I just… you two seem like good friends, and…”

“So because we’re friends you assumed I was having sex with him?” Luna queried, looking uncertain.

Unlike Draco, Harry did not so much appreciate Luna’s bluntness. “I didn’t say that! I didn’t mean that!”

“Good,” she said, visibly relieved. “I was afraid you were calling me a whore, and then I would have been forced to retaliate.”

Harry did not want to know what a vengeful Luna was like. “He just seems fond of you is all.”

“Oh!” Luna said, bright and cheerful. “Do you think so? I must admit, I’ve never been a good judge. I suppose it comes from not having friends until I was fourteen.”

Harry gritted his teeth. “He doesn’t go out of his way. That’s how you know. He was always a bit rude to Cra—his friends, but he never tried very hard. He always tried with me.”

“I see,” Luna said. “It’s all right if you say his name to me you know. But you’re right, bringing him up to Draco isn’t a good idea. He tends to drink vodka like it’s water, and then Goyle has to carry him home. And he can be a bit insufferable intoxicated.”

“And he isn’t insufferable sober?”

“Oh, but I mean it literally.”

“Ah,” Harry said, not quite understanding but deciding it was better to just agree and move on.

Luna leaned to her side, extending her arm over her head and gripping her too. She indicated that Harry ought to do the same, but he only managed to grab at about mid-calf. “Besides, I’m not Draco’s type.”

Remembering Pansy Parkinson, Harry supposed he had to agree. Her pug face had invited quite a few apt comparisons.

“I have always wondered what it would be like to have a penis though.”

Harry jerked with such force from his shock that he pulled a muscle.

“Draco’s gay?!”

-----


“Well of course he is, Harry.” Hermione chastised when he informed the Granger-Weasleys via fire call that evening. “It was blatantly obvious in school.”

“Yeah,” Ron agreed. “I mean, he used to send notes with flying paper origami cranes. Not exactly manly, is it?”

“Don’t stereotype, Ron.”

“I am so happy that I find you sexy when you correct me.”

Ron and Hermione shared a secret little smile that filled Harry’s mind with images he did not want.

“But why didn’t anyone tell me?!” Harry shouted.

“I thought you knew and didn’t talk about it,” Hermione concluded. “Like you didn’t want to be lumped into the same category as him.”

“As if that would have mattered!”

“When it comes to you and Draco, Harry, I tend to err on the side of caution.”

Harry groaned. He really hated when she alluded to his sixth year. He’d conceded multiple times that he’d been utterly intolerable during his sixth year, and he thought it was very unfair of her to keep mentioning it like this. “But what about Pansy?”

“Where’ve you been, mate?” Ron asked, laughing. “She’s essentially the number one lesbian witch there is. She owns a gay bar and everything. Wasn’t she seeing Daphne Greengrass for a bit?”

“Don’t ask that as if you don’t know it for sure and as if you didn’t make a thousand jokes about what really went on in Slytherin Common Rooms,” Hermione commented.

“You mean those had basis in fact?” Harry yelped.

Ron sighed wistfully. “If they did, I almost wish I’d been sorted into a different house. Except Slytherins are evil and everything.”

“They are not evil, for the last time, Ronald.”

“Fine, but you’ve gotta admit, they’ve more than their share.”

“Why does it concern you so much, Harry?” Hermione asked suddenly, her eyes dark and suspicious.

He ought to have known that was coming and prepared for it, but of course he hadn’t because he was terrible when it came to thinking ahead. It was a natural question of course. Draco’s sexuality had nothing to do with him. Harry certainly had never felt… harassed, as Molly would no doubt fret over. Draco kept all of that business out of their relationship.

Such as it was. Draco restricted their interactions to ordering Harry around and insulting him, which Harry supposed was a dream come true for the little ferret. And Harry had meant it when he said he didn’t mind. Harry could tell Draco was trying to reign himself in, although it was only for the cash cow that was Harry Potter. And like Hermione, Harry was not expecting miracles.

He had expected some form of conversation though. Perhaps not at first, but later, as they got used to each other again and all their changes. Harry had asked him things about his life several times. Sure, he avoided questions about his family and anything that might be connected with Crabbe or the war, but Harry didn’t see how Draco’s motivations for his job were so private that they couldn’t be shared. Of course, it was just possible that Draco wouldn’t have even shared a cab ride with Harry Potter. Harry had no idea how much resentment Draco was hiding under his present demeanor.

It bothered him, but it shouldn’t have, just like knowing Draco was gay should not have mattered. But it did and Hermione wanted to know why.

“Just don’t like not knowing things is all,” Harry murmured.

Ron snorted. “Turning into a Ravenclaw on us, Harry?”

“Maybe,” Harry said. “Sorry to bother you then.”

They said their goodbyes, leaving Harry in the dark loneliness of his apartment. There wasn’t much for him to do, other than shower and then make dinner later, such as it was. He supposed he could have watched a film, read a book, or practiced his magic.

But that night and for many nights after it, no matter how Harry tried to distract himself, his thoughts constantly drifted back to Draco Malfoy.

-----

Now that Harry had discovered that Draco would never be very forthcoming about anything that had led him towards opening the gym, Harry decided there was no point in asking. However, there were other people who worked at the gym, and perhaps a careful survey of them would reveal some tidbit.

Of course, no one else at the gym other than Luna and Goyle knew he was even there. And it was fairly clear from his interactions with Luna that she and Draco were not especially close. They liked each other well enough (though this alone continued to be a daily amazement to Harry), but it seemed neither one of them were the type to cry over a cup of coffee.

And that left Goyle.

“So,” Harry asked, carefully lifting up the bar of the bench press and settling it over his chest. “You and Draco have known each other awhile.”

“Your grip’s off,” Goyle instructed, readjusting it. “Yeah, I guess.”

It was Harry’s understanding that they’d been all but baptized together, and perhaps Purebloods had their own birth rituals he didn’t know about. But it occurred to Harry that Goyle wasn’t prone to over-talkativeness. “How many?’

“Much as you can do.”

Harry sighed. He hated that answer. He always overdid it unless someone told him to stop. Draco said he was under the impression that he still had the same body he’d had at Hogwarts.

“How’d you end up working for Draco?”

“He asked me to.”

“Ah… Has he ever asked you not to wear those pants?”

Goyle smirked. “I like the faces people make.”

Harry snorted, wondering if perhaps Goyle had been fit for Slytherin in more than name after all.

“And how did Draco get into it?”

Goyle shrugged. “Watch your form.”

Harry didn’t care about his form. He wanted answers, damn it. “You mean you have no idea?”

Goyle shrugged again.

Harry tried for the next ten reps to get something out of Goyle, but he was always answered with the same bloody gesture. Finally, Harry had to conclude that either Goyle didn’t know or he knew and didn’t want to tell Harry. No doubt on Draco’s instructions.

So it looked like he was back to the source after all.

-----

It wasn’t the most direct thing to do. One could even call it under-handed. Perhaps even downright sneaky, but Harry wasn’t all that interested in others’ judgments. He’d tried the Gryffindor way – asking directly – and Draco had really left him with no choice but to bring out the Slytherin in him to find out the secrets of Draco’s life.

Ginny would have told him to get over it, get a life, and possibly have distracted him in the most favorable of ways. But Ginny wasn’t there anymore, and Ron and Hermione had never once succeeded in getting Harry’s mind off Draco.

For a few days, Harry hung around the gym until Draco left, following him out the back door to see if he had any routines that could possibly be used to pump him for information in a more comfortable setting. And Harry soon discovered that it was normal if not customary for Draco to stop in at a pub in Diagon Alley on his way home Friday. Harry wondered if he complained to the bartender about a hopelessly fat, whiny wizard whose name he couldn’t mention. Harry wondered if Draco thought or talked about him at all outside of the Dragon’s Den.

The following Friday, Harry made sure to set himself up in the pub, secreting himself in a shadowy corner for several hours until Draco came in. Then he waited until Draco ordered his drink (a mango mojito of all things) before going over and plopping himself beside his personal trainer.

Draco gave him a withering sidelong glance. “My God, you stalked me, didn’t you?”

It hadn’t occurred to Harry that Draco would see so easily through his ruse, and so, he hadn’t bothered to come up with a good lie. Rather than spend the next three minutes stammering out an idiotic excuse, Harry came clean. “Only a little.”

Draco took a generous sip from his drink. “You are completely deranged. Just so you know.”

“Aren’t you even going to ask me why?”

“Well, considering that you’ve been poking about trying to find out about my personal life for months now, I think I can guess,” Draco said with a hint of a bite. “Subtle, you are not, Potter.”

“I’ve been accused of worse things,” Harry countered.

“I thought of a few dozen before you finished that sentence,” Draco said primly. “Are you drinking?”

Harry snorted. “And risk your wrath here, or worse, your wrath in the gym tomorrow? No thank you.”

Draco stared at Harry for a moment. “I must say, I’ve found your willpower impressive. Once I removed those offending foodstuffs from your kitchen – and underneath your couch, you pig – you’ve been quite good.”

“Have you been stalking me then?”

“The scale does not lie,” Draco informed him in a conspiratorial tone. “You also haven’t hit a plateau, though really that’s my brilliant training strategy and constantly switching up your activities. Muscle confusion, I call it.”

“Despotism, I call it,” Harry muttered.

Draco’s eyes practically sparkled with longing. “I always wanted to be a despot.”

“Please don’t,” Harry moaned. “I’ve fucked up enough Dark Lords for one lifetime, thanks.”

Draco put his hands on his hips, clearly miffed. “Such prejudice. Just assuming that I’m going to be evil and nasty.”

“You’re right,” Harry deadpanned. “Sorry, your racist tendencies must have led me astray.”

“Because I’ve made so many remarks in front of you recently,” Draco snapped.

Harry paused. It hadn’t really occurred to him, that no, Draco hadn’t said anything of the sort at all. But Harry dismissed it. “Doesn’t matter. Just good business practice is all. You’re still racist.”

Draco’s hair practically puffed out in irritation. “Well, only a little.”

Harry supposed he’d have to take what he could get. “All right, then.”

Draco downed the rest of his mojito and then called for another one. Harry was surprised not at all that his presence drove Draco to drink, even though he hadn’t actually done anything. “Potter, you’ve been close to tolerable these past few weeks. Your complaining has even decreased – though you say horrible things about my shiny little charm, and it wounds us both. Don’t ruin it all by acting like a bull in a china shop.”

“I just want to know how you got into the business,” Harry said, hammering on the issue full force. “I don’t see why you have to act like it’s such a big secret.”

“And how do you feel when people ask about you not becoming an Auror?”

Harry’s eyes darkened. “That’s different.”

“Oh, you know, do you?”

“It’s… well, it’s negative, isn’t it? And starting a business that at least seems lucrative seems like a positive to me.”

Draco scoffed quietly, pulling his new drink towards him. “You would think that, wouldn’t you?”

Harry suddenly wondered if perhaps it was a mistake to have pressed this as much as he had. He’d been under the impression that Draco was being purposefully elusive. It had never actually occurred to him that there was a reason for keeping this to himself other than “this will annoy Potter.” This was possibly the self-centeredness Draco had always been on about.

He was on the verge of considering apologizing when Draco said, “I suppose if I don’t tell you, you’ll just be on and on about it until I kill you, and then I won’t make money.” Another half of the mojito vanished. “But if I tell you this, just this one time, will you promise not to bring it up ever again?”

“Er, no?”

“Specifically in front of Loony,” Draco clarified, shuddering. “Bugger me if I can figure her out. Do you know she slapped me once to chase away the wrackspurts?”

“Oh, not just me then,” Harry said, a bit disappointed.

“Lunatic Luna,” Draco snarled, but with a slight smile. “I don’t know if she’ll want to talk about my feelings or just be awkward about it or what, but I’d prefer not to find out.”

Then Draco took a deep breath and told him.

“I wasn’t exactly proud of myself,” Draco began softly, his grey eyes staring off into the distance of years and ageing. “After the war. Or even during it. From Sixth Year on, I knew I’d probably made an awful mistake.” He paused. “Well, you saw what Dumbledore did before he died.”

It had not occurred to Harry that Draco would have known Harry had been there. “Snape told me?”

“Snape confirmed you had been there after I wondered why everyone seemed to know who had killed the headmaster.”

Oh, well that made sense. “Ah.”

“Bloody invisibility cloaks,” Draco muttered darkly. “In any event, you know as well as I that I considered it. Maybe I’d have done it if Bellatrix and… Greyback hadn’t gotten there when they did. But the decision was made, and I’ve had to live with it ever since. I did what I could at the manor. Took care of Loony when I could, didn’t blow the whistle on your arse when you arrived.”

So that was how he and Luna knew each other. Harry had always wondered about Luna’s time in the Malfoy’s cellar, but he’d never had the courage to ask her. “I never did thank you for that.”

“Of course not, Potter. You’re entitled that way,” Draco joked. “And I didn’t exactly win on follow through what with cornering you in the Room of Hidden Things.”

Draco was fiddling with his glass, and Harry knew he was thinking of Crabbe. Harry hadn’t even been friends with Crabbe, but he thought of him often. Crabbe, who had been a bit mean and too stupid to make his own choices, pushed into his own death by teachers who were supposed to have protected him.

“You were scared,” Harry said, his shallow attempt at consoling.

“And you weren’t?” Draco spat, growing frustrated, but not with Harry apparently. “We were all scared. Pansy wanted to turn you in right away, but she turned back around and fought for you, didn’t she? Decided it was more important to stop a madman with views she was sympathetic toward than simply walk away. Then again, Pansy was always better than I was.”

Harry remembered now, seeing Pansy in the battle, but he’d never been able to pinpoint who she’d been fighting for. Like so many times before, he’d just assumed that she’d been fighting alongside her family.

“Everyone was scared,” Draco said, sounding quietly miserable. “I was a coward. There is a broad difference. And the one possibly brave thing I did was to try and capture you, which I didn’t even want to do, but thought I had to. I was so sure Voldemort would win, and if my family hadn’t done something to serve him better than we had, I feared what would become of us.

“So I followed you. So I brought Crabbe and Goyle with me. So I lost Crabbe.”

It had always chilled Harry, how death could be so easily surmised in a brief sentence. “I am sorry.”

“No you’re not,” Draco countered. “You didn’t know him.”

“I can still be empathetic,” Harry maintained. “You lost a friend.”

His grey eyes grew so wide with grief Harry feared for him a little. It still seemed so raw for him, fresh in a way Harry’s losses no longer were. Then, he’d lost so much from the time he was a baby. Maybe he was more used to loved ones falling behind him along the way.

He hated that it might be true.

“I wasn’t strong enough to save Crabbe,” Draco whispered, his hands folded so that his knuckles flushed pale against his skin. “If I’d been faster, if I’d been better… maybe I could have stopped him. I could have done more than just shout at him until it was too late.”

The puzzle pieces began to fall into place. “So you opened the gym?”

Draco nodded. “It occurred to me that wizards rarely ever think of their bodies as a tool for anything, save their hand. I thought… maybe if anything like that ever happens again, if they know how to use their bodies, it would be better. And this also makes your magic stronger too simply by way of repetition.

“I lost Crabbe and my… so much more because I was weak. Never again.”

And the remainder of Draco’s second drink vanished into his stomach. Harry had thought he’d have to cajole Draco into drinking more to force him to admit anything. However, judging by the bleary eyes and the sudden color in his cheeks, Draco was a lightweight.

This surprised Harry not at all.

Harry turned away, stricken. Hermione was right. He was insensitive and boorish and he ought to kick himself on a daily basis to stop being such a bastard. He didn’t mean to be of course, but it didn’t change anything. He hadn’t meant to skewer Draco like a kabob in Myrtle’s bathroom, but he’d still done it, hadn’t he? He still saw the white line of scars creeping up his pale neck. And now he’d gone and reopened old wounds simply to satisfy idle curiosity.

He felt obligated to do something to right it.

“I was a tit to go on about this,” Harry said plainly.

“Well, I’m used to you being a giant tit,” Draco sighed.

Harry decided not to point out that he had not in fact said ‘giant.’ “And I’m sure you’ve been wondering about the… Auror business, and you haven’t asked. Everyone else asks why I dropped out of the academy as early as I did. I never tell them.”

Draco paused, fidgeting in his seat. “You know, Potter, I didn’t mean that you had to reciprocate—"

“No, I want to tell you,” Harry insisted, a little surprised to find out it was true. “Just, you know, don’t go running off to the Prophet with the story, if you don’t mind.”

“Now you’ve taken all of the fun out of it,” Draco pouted.

Harry reflexively reached for a lager he didn’t have, and sat on his hands to keep them occupied. “You might have been able to figure it out on your own soon enough. The charms we’ve been using have been getting harder, and it might be a bit more evident at that point.

“Everyone knows about the whole unintended Horcrux business, that Voldemort and I shared some… things before.”

“Expelliarmus is not a killing curse as such,” Draco quipped. “And there was the whole talking to snakes thing.”

“Can’t do that anymore,” Harry confessed.

“Shame,” Draco murmured. “It seemed rather hot.”

Harry’s eyebrow twitched, briefly disturbed since Draco had been twelve when he’d heard it, and pressed on. “I can’t do a lot of things anymore.”

“Meaning…”

“When Voldemort died, I lost half of my magic,” Harry said finally, whispering it in a rush. He’d never revealed this to anyone before. Ron, Hermione, and Ginny had all been involved in the discovery of the problem, and they’d told everyone else to tread lightly around the subject so he wouldn’t have to deal with it. “It wasn’t even my magic really. It was his. So when he died, it… went away.

“Didn’t figure it out until I was already in the Auror Academy. Then we’re having to duel and do defense spells, and this teeny little Hufflepuff knocked me down. I didn’t get up again. I couldn’t fight her off. And I could feel that something was… missing.”

Draco looked at him with unabashed horror. It would be a terrifying concept to any wizard, especially a Pureblood. “Does it… hurt?”

“No, it’s sort... sort of like a phantom limb.” Noting Draco’s confusion, he added, “When Muggles have to get limbs amputated, for awhile it feels as though it’s still there.”

Draco swallowed. “It sounds awful.”

“I’ve gotten used to it,” Harry said, which he hadn’t. Not really. He’d accepted it as a reality, but it wasn’t the sort of thing one got over. “It’s why I stopped using magic so often. With every spell I cast, I… feel it lurking there, the hole he left behind.

“And the worst part is that Voldemort was a lot stronger than I am. It turns out most of my magic was from him. Complex charms require more effort, and I’m pants at just about everything but the simplest defense spell.”

Harry was beginning to worry that Draco might actually be ill. “Can you still fly?”

“Yeah,” Harry said, smiling a little. “I still have that.”

Draco’s shoulders sagged slightly in relief. “That would be the worst, I think. Not being able to fly.”

Harry smiled a little. “Yeah. I think so too.”

“Dear God, we have something in common,” Draco drawled, shattering the tension that had grown between them. “Be still my heart.”

Harry shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”

They both left shortly after that, knowing more about one another than they perhaps should have, and probably revealing more than they’d intended. But it shifted things around for them a bit, Harry thought. It didn’t make things awkward or uncomfortable, but there was a certain air about both of them when they were alone. An acknowledgment of mutual loss and understanding.

Luna asked one day if Harry thought he was friends with Draco, and Harry no longer knew how to answer.

-----

A short time later, Harry was below fourteen stone. At this point, Draco decided that Harry would not disgust him in a swimsuit, so he would allow him to do laps as a means to work off some more calories. More of that muscle confusion business, Harry supposed.

So Harry arrived at the Dragon’s Den, went downstairs to the pool, and readied himself for a work out.

And then something happened.

To his surprise and annoyance, the pool was not entirely empty. Although Harry thought he looked a lot better – particularly in his face and stomach – he wasn’t ready for the world to know that Harry Potter had put on weight. He knew that any fame-seeking stranger would turn his name in to that bint Rita Skeeter as fast as she could whip out her Quick Quotes Quill. He nearly turned tail and ran, when he saw the flash of platinum at the end of the pool as the swimmer emerged to turn.

It was Draco Malfoy.

More specifically, it was Draco Malfoy half-naked.

Harry’d known Draco had gotten buff, probably just to irritate him. Harry’d admired the shoulders and the chest and several other things, but Draco had always been decent enough to wear clothing. Granted, it may have been tight clothing, but still, there had been a layer of fabric in between Harry and Draco’s body, which Harry had appreciated more than he realized.

Now Draco had decided that in order to coach Harry’s swimming, he had to be in a swimsuit as well.

And he felt no need to wear a shirt.

Harry watched, a bit mesmerized as Draco’s sinewy arms shot out of the water to propel him from end to end. That he could handle. True, he had a large fondness for forearms, but he’d seen them before. He’d gotten used to them.

Then Draco got out of the pool, and everything more or less went downhill from there.

It was exactly like those cheesy movies and music videos where a girl in a red suit emerges slowly from the pool, dripping with chlorine and sensuality. Only this time it was a man and the speedo – speedo – was green. Harry could see every single muscle on Draco’s body, all of which had been cultivated just to drive him insane, Harry was sure. Draco had probably the most perfect set of abdominals in the world – David Beckham may have been envious. There did not seem to be a stitch of fat on him anywhere. It seemed inhuman for Draco to be that attractive. It was also supremely unfair that Draco was essentially standing in front of him wearing a bikini bottom with his perfect abs, broad shoulders, thin waist, hard chest, muscular thighs, and ohshitohfuckohgodthat’sahardon.

“Potter?” Draco called out as Harry ran as fast as he could for the showers. “Where are you going?”

“Piss off!” Harry said, uncharitably he knew, but it had certainly been uncharitable for Draco to be practically nude in front of him! And so it was that Harry ran for the showers, leapt into a steady stream of cold water, and tried very hard not to think about Draco less than practically naked.

So, he finally had to admit it to himself. Why he’d been worried about Draco’s relationship with Luna. Why he’d cared that Draco was gay. Why he’d so pursued the knowledge of Draco’s private life.

He was attracted to Draco fucking Malfoy.

-----

Harry had planned to ignore the impulse to fuck Draco blind until it went away. Surely if he just didn’t think about it and never ever talked about it, it would eventually fade to a dull memory. Then perhaps one hundred years down the road when he and Malfoy were in the old wizard’s home, Harry would make a joke about it. Providing of course that Ron was dead, because certainly hearing about it would have killed him.

But as they say, the best laid plans…

“Harry, do you by any chance want Draco’s balls?”

Harry gave a loud yelp and leapt at Luna, coming out of a rather complicated yoga pose to do it. He very nearly tackled her, but of course, Luna was stronger than she looked. He covered her mouth with one hand, noting that she looked surprised by this behavior. Or at least she looked more surprised than usual. Then he looked around to make sure no one was around to overhear them before he said, “How do you know that?”

“You’re looking at Draco the same way you look at steak,” Luna explained blithely. “I assumed you didn’t want to eat Draco. I hope you don’t. He doesn’t look like he’d be very tasty.”

Harry decided not to speculate on what Draco’s meat would taste like in case he blew a blood vessel. “Luna, you can’t tell anyone.”

“Not even Draco?”

“Especially not Draco.”

“How sad,” Luna remarked. “Since I think he’d want to know.”

Harry laughed despairingly, running a hand through his sweat-damp hair. “Yeah, so he could laugh his arse off about it.”

“Oh, I don’t think he’d find it funny, Harry,” Luna assured him. “I think he’d be interested.”

That gave him pause.

“Really?”

“You seem his type,” Luna commented.

That was rich. Harry Potter? Draco’s type? Clearly Luna was more deranged than he’d ever imagined. “Um, Luna, I don’t think—"

“Draco likes very aggressive men,” Luna informed him breezily. “I rather suspect he’s a bottom, and I’m quite sure you’re a top.”

If Harry could die, right then, he’d have been totally okay with it. “Oh, God.”

“He also likes to be taken care of,” Luna continued, oblivious or unforgiving of Harry’s discomfort. “He has to spend so much time taking care of his parents that he likes being pampered you see. Lucius never was the same after the war. I rather think he’s a bit mad. Narcissa does much of the day-to-day stuff, but Draco still has to help her. And of course, money from the gym is keeping them afloat.”

Harry frowned. “I didn’t know that.”

“I’d imagine not,” Luna responded. “The only reason I know is that Narcissa and I are rather close.”

“Didn’t she have you locked up in their cellar?”

“Yes, but these things happen.”

Harry twitched.

“He also tends to go for darker men,” Luna concluded. “He thinks being with another blond would wash him out. And I don’t have to tell you his opinion on red hair.”

Harry nodded, taking all of this in. “So… you think he might…”

“I do.”

Harry glanced down at his body. He was no Draco Malfoy (oh, how he hated saying that, even if he did want to screw the bastard), but he was looking rather nice. He was very close to his goal. He just wasn’t sure if he was quite close enough.

Sensing his discomfort, Luna reached forward and took both of his hands. He so preferred this to her hugs. She’d adopted the gesture from Hermione and Ginny, but it had never come easy. She was awkward with it. But he’d always liked how easy it was for her to grab his hand, something that had never been done for him as a child. He took great comfort in it.

“You look good, Harry,” Luna assured him earnestly. “So very good.”

“Thanks,” Harry murmured. “I know I look loads better, but… he’s so…”

Luna nodded in agreement. “He is something like a walking brick wall. Nothing like Goyle of course, but Draco’s always had a smaller frame.”

“I just… I don’t know,” Harry murmured. “I know intellectually the world wouldn’t end if he… if he said no, but… it’s still hard.”

She gave his fingers an extra squeeze. “Be brave, Harry Potter. If your courage fails you, what are the rest of us supposed to do?”

Harry smiled at her. He did love her like yet another sister he’d never had. Not for the first time, he regretted not meeting her sooner. “Ginny and I were going to name a daughter after you. Lily Luna or Luna Lily. We hadn’t decided on the order.” He stopped, swallowing. “I suppose we won’t now.”

Luna’s eyes widened, and they began to sparkle with tears. “Oh, Harry.”

“She’s not going to come back, is she?” he muttered.

“No. She isn’t.”

He nodded, swallowing. “I know she’s heard about what I’m doing, and I… I kept waiting to hear from her. She never said a word.”

“It hurts her to talk to you,” Luna said. “She still loves you in a way. She always will.”

“And I’ll always love her,” Harry murmured. “In a way.”

“I’m glad you realize,” Luna said. “She was worried that you’d come knocking on her door with a bouquet in your birthday suit, and things would have been awkward. Particularly if Lavender answered the door.”

The Lavender of his youth would have jumped him on the spot. The Lavender after the war… he didn’t know. Perhaps she’d run off or perhaps she’d think it was hilarious. He didn’t know. They’d all changed so much after Voldemort fell.

Draco and him especially.

“So you think I should try?” Harry asked, pressing again.

“I do,” Luna said. “People don’t always trust my judgment. They think I’m a bit mad sometimes. But I believe in this: if you ask Draco, I don’t think he’ll say no.”

He leaned forward, pressing his lips against her forehead. “Anyone who thinks you’re mad isn’t worth knowing. When I have burly muscles, I will go kick them for you.”

“That’s very nice in a violent sort of way.”

“You’d be surprised how often I hear that.”

-----

“Ready to work, Potter?”

This was the day. He’d steeled himself for this. Rehearsed it countless times. Made sure Hermione would keep Ron busy. Made sure Luna kept Goyle out of the way. Made sure he didn’t smell bad.

He was going to do this. He was going to ask. He imagined his eleven-year-old self having a conniption fit over this, and hoped that he would forgive adult Harry. Draco just wasn’t something Harry could pass up.

“Potter, you’re staring at me like I’m food again, and I find it very disconcerting.”

Right. This was it. All he had to do was remember to pause between his words as a repeat of wangoballwitme was not something he wanted to endure. And also not to throw up everywhere.

“Umm… Malfoy?”

Draco paused, looking mildly alarmed. “Yes?”

“I was just… erm… wondering if…”

“Well, I was worried for a moment, but apparently you’re still your inarticulate self. Nouns, Potter. They are helpful in times like these, when you’re speaking and such.”

Harry cleared his throat. Twice. “I only thought it might be a… good thing if possibly we, you know, went out. Some time. If that’s all right with you.”

Well, there had certainly been pauses.

Draco stared. He opened his mouth to respond. Then he closed it. He repeated this pattern again. And then he began to twiddle his thumbs.

“Oh,” Harry murmured, sensing which way the wind was blowing. “I see.”

They stood in stone silence for three whole minutes.

“I’ll just go see Goyle, shall I?” Harry said too loudly.

“Probably for the best,” Draco agreed at the same volume.

“Right.”

“Good.”

“Okay then.”

“Yes.”

But Harry did not go see Goyle, and he especially did not go see Luna. In point of fact, he Apparated home, ran a hot bath, and tried very hard not to drown himself.

He was either the stupidest or the most unattractive person alive. It had been a mistake to even ask.

Draco Malfoy, Slytherin Prince and admitted coward, was far out of his league.

-----

For the next week, Harry and Draco avoided one another. Harry found excuses to avoid the gym, or he stuck to Luna and Goyle like a permanent sticking charm. Luna tried to apologize for her miscalculation, but Harry refused to discuss it. Goyle, thankfully, was of a similar opinion.

But on the seventh day, something very odd happened.

Draco burst out of his office the moment Harry arrived. His grey eyes burned into Harry the same way they had at school – fueled by irreconcilable hatred and loathing. Of course, now they inspired Harry with lust and confusion as opposed to anger in equal measure.

“Boxing ring, Potter. Now.”

Harry had no idea what was going on, but he decided it would be wise to simply go along with it until it seemed prudent not to. So he followed Draco several paces behind, making his way to the ring through the private halls Harry always used. They arrived quickly and prepared just as swiftly.

Harry was barely in the ring before he was nearly knocked flat by a sucker punch.

“The hell?” Harry asked, surprised to find his lip was bleeding. Though really, the intensity of the sparring match should have been obvious. “What is your damage?”

“Shut up, Potter,” Draco snarled, lunging for his throat. Draco was quick on his feet, and had he done this when Harry was bigger, he might have caught Harry again. But now Harry was in much better shape, and he’d always been fast even for his large size. He danced away, concentrating on his footwork so he didn’t go down like a load.

“I’m just curious as to what’s inspired this sudden hostility,” he snapped, guarding his face.

Draco threw a right hook, which Harry dodged. “It isn’t sudden, Potter. I’ve always hated you.”

“Oh,” Harry said, unsure of how to handle that. “I thought…”

“That what? I’d grown enough distance to be your fuck buddy?” Draco growled, throwing still another punch that Harry dodged. “So nice of you to overlook that time I tried to kill you in the bathroom. Oh wait! That was you!”

Harry ducked down to avoid what could have been a very damaging kick. “Malfoy, I was sixteen, and I didn’t know what it meant. I know haven’t apologized for it—"

“Funny, how you keep not apologizing and not thanking me,” Draco shouted. “One would think that you thought of me as less than human or something.”

“Malfoy—"

“I’ve been trying to figure it out, you know,” Draco confided. “What possessed you to ask me that. I did consider that you’d actually been possessed, because why else would the great Harry Potter deign himself to tread the murky Malfoy waters?”

Harry could not stop stuttering in shock long enough to form a cogent sentence. “What—"

“And then it dawned on me,” Draco yelled, throwing an elbow in Harry’s face, and this time, it connected.

Draco leapt forward again, attempting to get Harry’s neck locked in a hold. Harry defended himself in such a way that they were an immovable tangle of arms, straining to break free. Harry could already see a bead of sweat running down Draco’s cheek.

And then he realized it wasn’t sweat.

“Did you think it would be funny, Potter?” Draco whispered in a voice as sharp as a blade. “Were you going to tell Weasley all about me under you, how I begged to come and cried your name? Well, get this through your thick skull, Potter.” He pushed forward so that their faces were inches apart. Harry could see every detail of the curl of his lip and the fury that raged in his eyes. Then with a word, he pulled apart and his gloves vanished.

And he pulled down his shirt, revealing the mess of scars on his chest. Harry had seen them before, but had been able to ignore them in favor of admiring Draco. Now he saw them in context, with Draco towering beside him like a pale inferno. He seethed and snarled, and Harry wondered what madness had overtaken him to think that things would ever be anything more than this.

“I don’t beg. And I haven’t forgiven you.”

He began to walk away.

And with a cry, Harry was on him.

It wasn’t fair to attack from behind, but it wasn’t as if Harry had been quiet about it. Draco spun in time to block the first blow, but he wasn’t fast enough for the second or the third. Within seconds, they were a blur of movement and pain, each one of them going for whatever skin he could find.

“You haven’t forgiven me?” Harry raged, overtaken by righteous anger. “You let the Death Eaters into Hogwarts! You tried to kill Dumbledore! You tried to turn me in to Voldemort!”

“Maybe I was their ally,” Draco responded. “But you’ve seen my arm. I never took his mark. I was never his.”

“Please! You cowed to him like a scared little bitch, and you know it!”

Draco’s knee connected with his sternum. Harry punched Draco as hard as he could on his ear.

“I don’t expect you to understand the desperation that comes with defending one’s family,” Draco spat. “Since you’re a pathetic orphan whose aunt and uncle kept him locked in the cupboard!”

Harry ran at Draco, catching him around the knees, and bringing him to the ground. Then he started punching Draco over and over again, and Draco was either too dazed or too slow to fight back. And Harry was too driven by hatred to stop his fists.

“And what good did all your work do?” Harry shouted. “Everyone knows what your father’s become. You didn’t save your father.” He leaned forward, ready to say the one thing that would break them forever. It would be unforgivable. Harry had forgotten what it was like to fight and want to hurt someone in the worst way, and he thirsted for it now. He tasted the words on his lips like blackberry wine.

‘Just like you couldn’t save Crabbe.’

“Harry!”

Luna and Goyle burst into the room, both of them leaping into the ring with the help of a lightening charm. Oddly enough, it was Goyle who came barreling over to Harry, probably because he was the member of the duo with the upper arm strength to pull Harry off. Still, with Goyle wrapping him in a fierce bear hug to hold him back and Luna cradling Draco’s bleeding head, he couldn’t help but think they were mismatched.

“All right. That’s enough, Potter,” Goyle said, his voice surprisingly soothing. “You’ve pummeled him enough for today.”

“What happened?” Luna asked, not chastising and not even curious. Simply concerned.

“Potter is a bastard,” Draco hissed, spitting out a mouth of blood.

“I made the mistake of thinking you grew into a better man,” Harry returned. “I was wrong.”

After that, Harry broke free and stormed out of the gym, for the first time not caring who saw him. He heard the whispers and gasps, and he ignored them all. He simply strode off, bleeding and limping, bursting into the light of day wearing his bruises like a badge of honor.

Draco had always felt like it would be a mistake. However, he was no longer one Harry wanted to make.

-----

Following the fight, Harry decided that the best thing to do would be to lock himself in his apartment and eat.

Draco had been saying that Harry ate his feelings, and Draco had given him quite the appetite. So Harry bought all sorts of things that would make Draco blow a fuse and proceeded to eat them in earnest. He didn’t care how much fat, how much sodium, or anything else. He just ate.

And just to spite the little bastard, he threw his wand underneath the bed.

Several hours into the binge, someone knocked at the door.

“Bugger off!” he called out around a mouthful of cake.

“Harry?” he heard Hermione call, her voice lofting into his kitchen. “Harry, dear, won’t you let us in?”

“Did I stutter?” Harry snapped.

Hermione sighed. “Well, I did warn you. Go ahead, Greg.”

It did not take Harry very long to put two-and-two together. Particularly when his door fell in.

“Honestly, Harry,” Hermione admonished, stepping into the room ahead of three more bodies. “I don’t think locking your doors on us is a very good reaction at all.” Then she sighed and bent down, hugging his head to her chest. “But you poor dear. You are miserable, aren’t you?”

“Course he is,” Ron shouted, storming into the room with ginger rage. “Sodding Draco Malfoy turned him down.”

Harry felt all of his blood pool around his feet. “Fuck. Luna, did you have to—"

“Harry, Luna had nothing to do with it,” Hermione chastised, attempting to smooth his hair down. “She called and said you were upset, and I knew you’d gone and done something like make a pass at Draco—"

“How do you know these things?”

“—so of course we came over right away. I know you, sweet. You don’t take rejection well at all.”

“I cannot believe this!” Ron said, his voice at full volume.

Harry shrank away. “Ron, I didn’t want you to know.”

“Oh, because you didn’t want me to kill him?” Ron snapped. “Because I will. Bloody pointy little son of a whore… How can he turn down Harry Potter? That’s like Jesus Christ coming down in all his shiny angel glory—"

“He is not an angel, Ron, for the last time,” Hermione sighed. “And angels don’t have equipment anyway.”

“—and he offers himself to you sweet as can be, and you say, ‘No thanks. I’ll just have that totally mortal boring bloke over there.’ Idiot!”

Harry blinked. “Ron, are you… okay with…”

“You wanting to boff Malfoy?” Ron finished. He shrugged. “I mean, I think you can do better. I think you’re lowering yourself, and he’s being a ponce and a half saying no, but you know. I know you have weird taste in blokes, so.”

“How does Harry have weird taste?” Luna asked from the doorway.

“He wouldn’t have me of course,” Ron said with a winning smile.

She tilted her head to the side. “I thought you ran away to George’s when Harry came out because you thought he’d attack you.”

Ron visibly deflated. “One minor misunderstanding, and you’re a bigot for life.”

“Now then,” Hermione said briskly, pulling the cake from Harry’s hands. “Enough moping, Harry Potter. We have to get you back to work.”

“Huh?” Harry asked, staring after the cake as it left him.

“You still have one stone to lose, Harry,” Luna reminded him. “Obviously you can’t do it at the Dragon anymore, so we thought we’d come to you.”

Ron snorted. “Dragon’s Den. Sounds like a brothel.”

“We tried to tell him,” Goyle sighed. “He wouldn’t hear it.”

Harry raised an eyebrow. “You’re helping me, Goyle?”

He shrugged.

Gregory Goyle was such a delightfully simply creature.

“’Course he’s helping!” Ron proclaimed. “Greg’s sensible. He knows Draco’s gone completely off his rocker.” He paused, glancing meaningfully at Greg’s crotch. “Well, sensible except for the spandex.”

“He likes the faces people make,” Harry explained.

“Oh, well that’s all right,” Ron decided, proving he had a bit of Fred and George in him after all.

“Luna has explained to me in detail Draco’s weight loss method, since of course all you gave me were vague generalities,” Hermione said, emerging from the pantry with an armload of horrible food just as Draco had months before. “I believe I understand it, and that I can improve on it. So, Luna will be overseeing your cardio and flexibility program. Goyle will continue to manage the weights for obvious reasons. I’ll be working with you on your magic to see if we can improve some of the more complex charms.”

“What about me?” Ron asked, practically wagging his tail at her.

Hermione smiled fondly. “You, Ron, have the most important job of all.” She dropped all of the food at Ron’s feet without ceremony. “You get to dispose of this in whatever way you see fit.”

Seeing the array of deliciousness before him, Ron’s lower lip trembled. He looked at Hermione with such adoration that Harry felt a bit ill. “You are the best wife ever.”

“I know, dear,” Hermione said, clapping her hands. “Now! To work!”

-----

And so began phase two of Harry’s weight loss plan. It took a bit longer without Draco and the gym’s resources. They were without a lot of equipment, which meant they had to use a lot of the outdoors to get Harry’s exercise in. It was a bit of a relief to be free of the walls of the gym, but Harry did find he missed knowing exactly how many calories he was burning, sans the spells of course.

His strength and flexibility continued to improve, and the cardio exercises continued to be less strenuous. He began to really see and accept the changes in his weight. His body was certainly not like it had been in his youth, and perhaps that was for the best, but it was turning out rather nicely. Maybe he didn’t have a six-pack and maybe he couldn’t quite build as much muscle on his upper body as he liked, but he looked better and better each week.

Furthermore, as promised, Hermione did work with him on improving his magic. He hadn’t had much hope for this, and she certainly was not a bestower of miracles. However, he did feel that her constant drills made some more complex charms feel more natural to him again. He was beginning to wonder if with enough work, he would stop having to strain himself for everything more complicated than a Summoning Charm. He didn’t know if he’d ever be proficient in Defense again, but he supposed if things could stay quiet in the wizarding world, he wouldn’t really need it.

It took twice as long as it would have with Draco. As it turned out, there were complexities to Draco’s method that he had not shared or that Hermione couldn’t get a handle on. Nevertheless, he did eventually get there.

Harry Potter had reached his goal.

-----

Too bad he felt like shit.

He finally felt like he could feel good about himself – like he was allowed to. He was healthy, and by Draco’s logic that meant he should be happy.

But Draco was something of the problem, wasn’t he?

Harry had spent the past two months trying to make sense of Draco’s behavior. What had made him think that Harry wasn’t serious? Had Harry given him some indication that he was just doing it as a joke? Or had Draco inherited some sort of paranoia disorder thanks to inbreeding?

Harry wasn’t sure. And for awhile he told himself that he didn’t care. He could live the rest of his life without Draco Malfoy. Sure, he had been instrumental in shaping his youth, but what did Malfoy have to do with him now? Nothing. He’d helped him for awhile, and then punched him in the mouth. Draco was nothing to him.

But eventually, he couldn’t lie to himself any longer. He was attracted to Draco, to be certain. But more than that, Harry found himself… missing Draco. He hadn’t realized just how much of a fixture Draco had become in his life again. It felt odd to have him missing. He was a shadow on the wall or an echo in the back of his head.

More importantly, Harry felt thwarted. Something strange had happened to make Draco react so violently. Harry didn’t know what it could have been, but he had to find out. Perhaps he even wanted or needed to fix it. Maybe he was still willing to cast his lot with Malfoy just to see what would happen.

And that’s when he found himself at the Dragon’s Den after hours.

It wasn’t very hard to get into the building. It was warded against magical entry, but Draco was a Pureblood and hadn’t thought of the possibility of anyone picking a lock. Harry was rather surprised he still knew how to do it from the nights when he’d had to get into the rooms the Dursleys tried to keep him away from. But he accomplished it with only minimal trouble, and it wasn’t very long at all before he was standing in the doorway to Draco’s office.

He wasn’t the least bit surprised to find the owner there.

Draco looked up from his papers, bleary-eyed and slow. He didn’t seem to register that Harry was actually standing there for a moment. “Oh, I can’t be hallucinating. You’re not fat.”

Harry nodded. “Lost the last stone.”

Draco frowned, and Harry knew he was disappointed he hadn’t been involved. “Congratulations. Good-bye.”

Harry came further into the room because he’d never been good at taking direction. “Malfoy, this is stupid. You act like I broke your puppy’s neck. I only asked you for a… date.”

God, he hated that word.

“I know what you asked for,” Draco snapped. “And I am not a dog person. Honestly, Potter. Don’t you know anything?”

“I thought saying peacock would hit too close to home,” Harry ground out, moving closer and closer to his target. “What the hell got into you? Or what’s still into you?”

Draco leapt to his feet, and Harry already felt concerned that this would turn into a fight with no one to stop them this time. “What got into me was the realization that there is no way in your right mind that you would actually ask that. Unless of course you were doing it for a laugh. Which you obviously are.”

“Call me crazy, but I have since decided that there’d be nothing fun about pursuing you at all,” Harry said unkindly. “So I can’t imagine why I’d laugh.”

“Well, it would be the perfect revenge, wouldn’t it?” Draco snapped, circling the desk. “Couldn’t ever control Draco in school. Couldn’t get him to see reason. Couldn’t manage to kill him in the bathroom. So if you fuck him, then you’ve finally got him right where you want him.”

Harry’s mind swam from this logic. “Draco, you are assuming that I’m far more diabolical than I actually am. Or far more mental.”

“I was practically a Death Eater,” Draco shouted as he circled round to the front of the desk, as if Harry needed reminding. “I was a racist coward in school. I’m still racist. I wouldn’t call Granger Mudblood or Weasley blood-traitor to their faces, but you’d never know whether or not I was thinking it. It’s not as if I could have you around for Christmas since my father would try to kill you on sight. I ran away from a war. I tried to kill you, but I didn’t even have the bollocks to do it directly. You wouldn’t shake my hand when we were eleven, Potter, so why on Earth would you want to fuck me now?”

Harry often wondered how different his life would have been if he had at least taken the little bastard’s hand all those years ago.

Before he could consider what a terrible idea it was, Harry sprang forward. He held Draco fast by the shoulders and slammed him up against the desk, stopping himself just short of laying Draco down on the damn thing. He leaned in as close as he dared, and when he whispered, Harry’s lips brushed against Draco’s mouth.

“I don’t want to fuck the idiot you were in school. I want to fuck the man you’ve become. And maybe you are still racist, still a coward, and still a lot of things I can’t stand.” He licked his lips, purposefully letting his tongue graze Draco’s skin. “But you could have done any number of things to help rebuild your family, and you decided to help people. You never abandoned your family even to save your own skin. You know what you’ve done and you regret it and you’ve tried to do good in the world now.

“Everyone thinks I’m the Jesus figure in the story, but I’m not. I was a guy unlucky enough to attract Voldemort’s attention and barely lucky enough to survive it. And on top of that, I had anger issues, I rushed in and I didn’t think, and I could be a bit of a bully and an arse. None of us were good people in school. But I try to be better now, and I can see you do too.

“It doesn’t matter that I wouldn’t shake your hand, you little sod. All that matters now is that I like you, and I would very much like to kiss you now.”

Draco continued to scowl, so the two of them stood there, at an impasse. Harry knew if Draco really wanted to get free, he could throw Harry off. It would be awhile before the two were equal in strength again. The fact that Draco was allowing this to go on meant that maybe there was a glimmer of hope.

Draco’s eyes bore into Harry’s, searching for something. Harry wished he could help Draco find it, whatever it was he needed.

“Are you sure you can let it go?” he finally asked. “Every rotten thing I did. Every trick I pulled. Everyone who died because I didn’t do more.”

Harry’s fingers tightened their grip, strong enough to bruise. “We were kids, Malfoy. Just stupid kids. It matters, and it’ll have an impact, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life judging everyone based on stupid things they did when they were sixteen. Even you, whose stupid things were rather catastrophic.” He paused, swallowing. “What about you?”

Draco’s response was surprisingly direct in that he curved a hand around Harry’s neck and dragged him down for a kiss.

It would be a blatant lie to say that Harry had never thought of kissing Draco. During his peak obsession periods, Harry had had some rather disturbing visions of what it would be like to teach Draco a most humiliating lesson. And even after that, in the years that they hadn’t seen each other, such fantasies had prevailed. In those fantasies, Harry wondered what sort of kisser Draco would be.

He’d never come close.

There was a desperation Harry had not been expecting, as if the kiss was asking a question Harry couldn’t understand. It was all sure pressure, without fumbling or hesitation or teeth knocking. His tongue was lithe inside of Harry’s mouth, twisting and writhing like a snake in a cave. It was all Harry could do to hold on and give as good as he got, praying he didn’t do something idiotic.

It was amazing how certain they were of one another. Harry had forgotten how well he knew Draco’s body from years of fighting him, playing against him, watching him, and now working with him these past few months. Harry felt that he knew every angle and curve. It was all familiar from years of knowing each other, and yet alien now that they were experiencing one another out of context. Harry’s blood pounded and raced between his legs, leaving him hard almost instantaneously. Judging by the sudden pressure at his thigh, Draco was not far behind.

Harry began to rut against him, seeking friction and pressure and thinking nothing of skill or the usual concerns with a new lover. He didn’t care what Draco thought of him in that moment; he simply wanted Draco. And judging by the way Draco ground his pelvis forward, thrusting hard and grasping at Harry’s chest, he couldn’t have been doing that badly.

Harry should have dragged it out. He ought to have savored it in case Draco decided later that this hadn’t been a good idea, but he’d never been good with patience. He spun Draco around roughly, bending him over the desk and yanking his trousers down. He had never seen Draco’s arse unencumbered by clothing, but as he’d expected, it was a thing of beauty. One he intended to bruise.

Harry bent down, sucking on his index finger before inserting it in Draco’s arsehole. It seemed impossibly tight, and even the slight pressure made Draco moan quietly. Harry inserted another finger, sliding them in and out at a steady rhythm. Draco pressed back against him as much as he could manage, driving them in deeper.

He soon abandoned his fingers entirely, splaying them against Draco’s arse, spreading him wide open. He dipped his head, his tongue sliding against the taut flesh, circling with his tongue and flicking it inside.

“Oh, Christ, Potter,” Draco gasped, gripping the edge of the desk.

Harry grinned. “That’s dangerously close to begging, Malfoy.”

“Fuck me, or I will Crucio you until your eyes bleed.”

Harry rolled his eyes, but couldn’t help but agree with him. With trembling fingers, he undid his fly and cast the trousers aside. Then he gripped Draco’s hips and entered him with one hard thrust.

Draco shuddered, arching his back. “Son of a bitch.”

Harry pushed Draco forward so that he could barely maneuver and slammed into him again. Draco was so tight, and for Harry, it had been so long. He wasn’t sure how long he could hold out, but he was damned if he was going to appear like an overexcited teenager in front of Draco. “Oh, fuck.”

“Get on with it Potter,” Draco snarled, swiveling his hips.

Harry didn’t need to be told twice. He entered Draco again and again, fucking harder than he’d fucked anyone in his entire life, and then harder still when Draco said he wanted it. As promised, he never begged. He demanded. And there was something so intrinsically Draco and so absolutely sexy about it that Harry decided all of his lovers would have to be so assured in the future.

The orgasm hit Harry as suddenly as a sucker punch, a bolt from the blue that began in his stomach and stretched all the way to his toes. He quivered, clutching at Draco’s shoulder to stay tethered. He saw white, and he swore for a moment that he tasted it too.

Harry managed one more thrust, and it was enough to send Draco over the edge. Draco swore, spilling over onto the polished mahogany. Harry had a feeling he was going to catch hell for that later, since the location had been his idea.

Harry pulled out, but couldn’t quite bring himself to break completely away from Draco. He clung to his back like Draco was some sort of snarky life raft, hoping against hope that Draco wouldn’t tell him to move away.

Gasping, Draco said, “Jesus-God, Potter. Why did you ever allow yourself to balloon up like that? You fuck like it’s going out of style.”

Harry laughed, wild with relief, and then turned Draco’s head to kiss him all over again.

And they spent the rest of the evening through till morning christening various parts of the gym.

-----

All was well and truly wonderful in the world of Harry Potter. Unlike most people, Harry knew exactly what he had done to deserve happiness, and he was pleased to bits that someone had finally seen fit to give him his due. He looked around at the park, sun pouring through the clouds in the rarity that was gorgeous British weather, and felt content for maybe the first time in his life.

“You are smiling like an idiot, and I hate that I find it adorable.”

Harry glanced down at the man with his white-blond head pillowed in his lap, refusing to alter his grin. “I have been compared to a puppy you just can’t help but cuddle.”

“Yes, and the puppy just can’t help but chew on your best shoes,” Draco sighed. He slid down further on the bench, readjusting the position of his head. “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad you stopped losing weight when you did. You’d make a really terrible pillow if you were all muscle and no pudge.”

“I’m so glad my soft belly amuses you,” Harry deadpanned.

“That is your purpose in life: to amuse me.” He paused. “What are you thinking about that is able to put that stupid look on your face? And please, nothing obscene. There are little Slytherins about.”

Harry shrugged. “I’m just thinking of how wonderful it is to be me.”

Draco snorted. “When do you ever think of anything else?”

“It helps that I have such a sexy boyfriend.”

“I do what I can to aid humanity, and apparently my chief responsibility is getting Harry Potter laid,” Draco muttered incredulously. “What an unexpected life change.”

Harry was about to bend down and kiss Draco, as he was wont to do during any brief lull in conversation, when he saw a flash of red coming down the way. He sat up so straight that Draco nearly tumbled off the bench. Ron had decided he would do his best to accept Draco in Harry’s life, but Harry didn’t see any reason to rub it in his face. Draco likewise wanted to keep anything remotely sexual as far away from Ron Weasley as possible. It seemed his feeling on gingers would never change.

But when Harry got a better look, he saw that it was not Ron coming towards them, but Ginny. And strangely enough, she had Luna and Goyle in tow. The trio didn’t seem to notice the couple on the bench at first, but by the time they did, it was too late for Ginny to tactfully turn around. She paused, steeled herself for a world of awkward, and moved forward.

“Hello, Harry,” Ginny said, her voice sweet and a little shaky. She glanced down at the vision in his lap and hardened considerably. “Draco.”

“Girl Weasley,” Draco returned nonchalantly.

Ginny seemed to want to start something, another impulse from her temperamental youth, but Harry saw her mentally count to ten and quash it. “How are you, Harry? You look great.”

How strange that he’d waited so long to hear her say those words, and now, they didn’t matter.

“I feel great,” Harry said sincerely. “Never better.” He winced a bit, afraid that had been cruel, but Ginny didn’t seem to perceive the accidental slight. “I want to thank you for… doing what you did. It was a wake-up call.”

Ginny smiled at him, radiant as a fiery dawn, and Harry remembered what Hermione had said about them always loving each other in a way. “I’m glad I could help. Really, all I ever wanted for you was to be happy.”

Harry watched Draco strain not to gag out of the corner of his eye.

“So,” Harry said loudly, hoping to distract them from this uncomfortable situation. “I didn’t realize that you were friends with Goyle, Ginny. When did you two meet?”

Ginny looked at him oddly. “Well… Harry, I’m friends with Luna, and since she’s dating Goyle—"

“WHAT?” Harry and Draco squawked in horror. Draco sat up like a shot, clocking Harry’s chin with his forehead. They both yelped in pain and they jumped to their feet.

“You’re dating? Goyle? This Goyle?” Harry asked in disbelief.

“There has been a tumultuous office romance going on right under my nose, and no one said anything?” Draco shouted. “Unbelievable!”

Luna stared at them as was her way and said, “I am sorry. I assumed you knew.”

“Well, it isn’t like you go around making out in the weight room,” Draco snapped. Then he shuddered. “And please, for the love of everything that is holy, do not start.”

“When did this even happen?” Harry shouted.

Luna beamed up at the pair of them. “Right after Draco asked me for his help with the gym. We had a lunch meeting with Goyle, but Draco had to rush off early. After that, we got to talking, and… well, things progressed from there.”

Harry gaped in disbelief. Luna had gotten interested in Goyle through conversation? Harry knew Goyle must have something to offer in a relationship, but intellectual stimulation could not possibly be it.

Sensing his confusion, Goyle leaned forward and murmured, “I was wearing the spandex.”

Harry felt he gave a very manly yell, but Draco’s shriek was entirely too girly to be believed.

“I do like large cocks,” Luna informed them solemnly. “Goyle really is very good at sex.”

Goyle smiled proudly. “I do what I can.”

“Oh, my ears,” Draco moaned. “I will never get those words out of my head!”

“I’m a bit more concerned about the images they bring up,” Harry hissed.

Luna’s eyes sparkled with something that might have been mischief, but like so many other times before, Harry had no way to be sure. “The absolute best thing—“

“Let’s go for a run, Draco!” Harry shouted. “Right now! Very fast and far away!”

“Way ahead of you!” Draco called out from down the road.

And so they ran from the laughing group behind them as fast as their legs could possibly carry them. With the memory of that encounter beginning to fade, Harry could allow himself to be amazed by how much everything had changed. A few months ago, he couldn’t have dreamed of running at all for the thrill of it, much less at this speed. Nor could he have pictured who would be his companion – the awful little boy who had grown into a man who wasn’t quite as noble as he wanted to be. And never in his life could Harry have pictured being so happy.

He reached out his hand, catching Draco’s between his fingers. Draco raised an eyebrow. “If you trip and bring me down, I will never forgive you.”

Harry didn’t care. In that wild, adrenaline-fueled moment, he wanted to promise the moon and the stars. He wanted to vow that he would never let go. He wanted to hold tight to Draco for fear of losing him again to stupidity or unexpected anger. Maybe he even wanted to tell Draco that he could very well fall in love with him.

But now wasn’t the time for that, so Harry said, “Piss off, you wanker.”

And Draco smiled as if he knew what that really meant.