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The snap echoes through the alleyway, and the sound hurts almost as much as the gravel cutting into Harry's skin. He can feel it as soon as it happens, the sudden guttering of his power, the wild, raucous explosion of it as his wand transforms from one solid piece of wood into two.
Cursing, he fumbles for the bits of holly. Knowing they're inert now, empty of whatever power they had only seconds before, doesn't stop him from wanting the pieces in his hands, the time-worn wood pressed against his palms, everything warm from his clenching grasp. The phoenix feather sparks feebly, its bright colours fading before his eyes.
It's only as he hears someone yell from the street that Harry's eyes dart up from the broken wand to the suspect he was chasing. All Harry sees are the soles of the man's feet as they whip around the corner and out of sight. Harry stumbles to his feet, the pieces of his wand stuffed into his pocket, and then he's running again, while the thought it's been repaired before, it can be repaired again echoing in his mind.
"I'm sorry, Mr Potter," Ollivander says, sliding the wand box back across the counter towards Harry. "I'm afraid there's nothing that I can do."
"I don't understand." Harry's heart races.
Shaking his head, Ollivander stops Harry from pushing the box back into his hands. "It was repaired once before, but only with the assistance of the Elder Wand. As you and I both know, that instrument is no longer available to us, and for good reason. Your wand, I'm afraid, is unrepairable."
Staring at the box, Harry nods numbly. He feels cold. Empty.
"I have quite a large selection on hand," Ollivander says with a voice like goose down, "but I think something a bit more special will be required for you."
It makes Harry laugh, though he can't quite say why. "Special. Of course."
"You have lived quite an interesting life, Mr Potter." Ollivander glances around his storeroom, brow furrowed as his bright eyes dart from box to box. "The purpleheart, perhaps, though I don't believe you would do well with the unicorn hair core of that one. Too soft, too sharp. Ah, but maybe the ziricote…" He shakes his head. "No, the heartstring will… But what if…"
"It's fine," Harry says, cutting off the man's increasingly frustrated ramblings. "I'll just… I'll find something, I guess."
"No, no, you misunderstand me, Mr Potter." Ollivander comes out from behind the counter and crosses to the opposite wall. There's a small shelf, and Ollivander places his hands on the side of it before wrenching it to the side. Harry has a brief moment of panic as he expects hundreds of boxes of wands to clatter to the floor as Ollivander upends the damned thing, but it just shivers and rolls to the side on screeching wheels, revealing a set of stairs that lead down beneath the store.
"You'll need something made for you," Ollivander says with a smile. "Bespoke, if you will. Now, follow me, and do try your best to not be rude."
His lingering upset lost under the tide of confusion, Harry follows Ollivander down the stairs. The walls along the staircase are made up of more shelves, though most of them are empty of everything except cobwebs. Here and there are a few scattered wand boxes made of heavy wood and leather rather than the cardstock found in the main store.
The light from the top of the stairs fades, and Harry finds himself squinting into the darkness after Ollivander.
"How much farther?" His voice echoes strangely, both muffled and amplified by the empty shelves.
Ollivander's response is faded and distant. "Not too far, Mr Potter. Just follow me."
Though he has to go slowly, Harry continues down the staircase, feeling for each step as it grows darker and darker. Eventually, he can't see anything, the entire stairway covered in a thick, inky blackness that feels like heavy cloth wrapped around his head.
He calls out, "Mr Ollivander?" and gets nothing in response. Cursing, Harry pushes his foot forward until he feels the lip of the stair, then steps down for the next one. Only, instead of the firm solidity of another step, there's nothing. Open air falls away beneath his foot, and Harry nearly stumbles forward, nearly topples into that nothingness, except that he grabs at the shelves and manages to hold on. Panting into the dark, he waits for his heart to calm, to still, his hand clenched around the edge of a shelf hard enough to bruise.
Harry calls out again, but all he hears is that awful, deadened echo and his own breathing. His only sense of the world around him is the press of the wooden steps beneath his feet and the grit of the dusty shelf under his fingers. A breeze coasts over the back of his hand. It's warm and damp, distinctly other compared to the cold and still emptiness of the stairway. Reaching forward, Harry chases that sensation, thrusting his hand deep into the shelf.
Just like he expected to find another step under his foot, he expects to find the back of the cabinet. Instead, his arm is swallowed up until his shoulder presses against the shelf. But as he pushes against it, the shelf gives away, growing around his body until his shoulder slides in, then his head and chest. Staring forward, he sees a glimmer of light, a winking star in the endless night, and trusting to the light—the way he has his entire life—Harry crawls forward.
It should be claustrophobic. The shelf brushes against his shoulders and arms as he crawls forward, and though the light guides him, it's still dark. But Harry feels that tantalising breeze against his face and smells something sweet and ripe, a floral hint of life that draws him forward. Rather than being afraid, he feels the first kindling warmth of excitement.
Slowly, as the light draws closer, the interior of the shelf comes into view. He's definitely surrounded by finished wood. It's satin smooth, with the slight rasp of grain against his hands and arms as he crawls forward. If he didn't know better, he'd think that he'd been shrunk down to the size of a wand box and lost somewhere in Ollivander's shop, just waiting for some first year Hogwarts student to draw him out and promptly drop him in surprise.
The idea makes him laugh, so when he finally crawls out of the shelf, he's smiling into the brightness of a summer sun, even though it's November and it was raining when he arrived.
There's greenery everywhere. Trees tower over him. Oak and maple, hawthorn and elm, and many, many more that Harry has no hope of identifying. The ground is covered in a thick layer of dead leaves, with small ferns rising from the detritus with curling fronds. There are clover and wildflowers mixed in, a riotous, wild forest incongruously buried beneath Diagon Alley. Spinning in a slow circle, Harry tries to take it all in and fails.
He gives up on understanding and tips his head back, eyes closed, and breathes in the scent of the woods and the heat of the sun trickling through the canopy.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
Harry startles, jumping slightly before spinning around to face the voice. Draco Malfoy, arms crossed, stands in the middle of the forest path, his brow furrowed as he glares at Harry.
"Malfoy?"
"Oh no," Malfoy says, shaking a finger at Harry like an angry school teacher, "don't think you're turning this around on me, Potter. I asked you what you're doing here, and you'd bloody well answer before you even think of asking me questions."
"But you… After the war, you disappeared… I thought… people thought you'd died. Are you dead?"
Malfoy's expression is implacable and annoyed, and he doesn't say anything as Harry stammers his way to silence.
After a beat, Harry says, "I was buying a wand."
"A wand."
"Yes." Harry coughs. "Ollivander brought me down here. Well," Harry glances around the woods, "not here-here, but downstairs, and then things got a bit…"
"Weird?" Malfoy sighs. "Yes, it has a tendency to do that. But a wand, you said? What happened to yours?"
Harry pulls the box out of his robes, opens it, and then holds the broken pieces of his wand up so Malfoy can see. Malfoy's frown turns a bit sorrowful, and he takes a few steps closer before stopping himself.
"May I?" he asks, the uncertainty in his voice a stark contrast to the sneering, confident young man that Harry remembers from school, that he remembers from a few minutes earlier.
Numbly, Harry nods and lets Malfoy take the pieces from him.
"Holly, with a phoenix feather core?" Malfoy smiles at Harry's nod, though it's a small, quiet thing. "I remember it, from when… Well, no matter now. You've done a bang up job of ruining the thing, haven't you?"
A part of Harry wants to bristle at Malfoy's words, but they're said with such sorrow that he can't find the anger.
"What are you doing here?" Harry asks, desperate for some kind of explanation.
Malfoy looks up through his lashes, then nods his head in the direction of the path. "Follow me, Potter. This'll take a minute."
He stumbles after Malfoy, who's still holding what remains of Harry's wand. Whereas Harry feels off-centre and uncertain, Malfoy moves through the forest like he belongs there, as if he's an extension of the living greenery, a bright white shock of a flower that's detached itself from its stem to wander through the roots of towering trees.
The forest around them begins to thin, and Harry has to blink against the sunlight streaming down from a cloudless, blue sky. There's a great field before them, its grass blown about by that same warm wind that drew Harry before. Not too far from the edge of the forest is a small house. Its stone walls are covered with bits of moss and lichen, and as they draw nearer, a flutter of birds take wing from the thatched roof. Malfoy opens the wooden door, holding it wide until Harry stops on the doorstep, more uncertain about entering what appears to be Malfoy's home than he had been while crawling through the dark.
"Come inside, Potter," Malfoy says with an eye roll that settles Harry with how expected the expression is. "I promise I won't try to hex you or anything."
"I didn't think you would." Harry's shoulder brushes against Malfoy's chest as he walks through the doorway, and he pretends to not feel the frisson of heat the contact brings.
The only word that springs to mind as Harry glances around the interior of the cottage is quaint. There's a small table with mismatched chairs gathered around it. In the centre of the table is a crocheted doily that's a bit yellowed with age and spilled tea. A blue ceramic teapot rests on top of it, though its glaze is scratched and chipped in places. It's steaming, and as Harry watches, two mugs pop into existence on the table.
Malfoy sighs. "Go ahead and sit, Potter. The house won't let you leave until we've had tea."
"The house?"
"Just sit down." Malfoy gracefully falls into a chair, then takes a mug as if demonstrating how this encounter should work. Though the text is faded, the words World's Gayest Dad are written on the mug in large block letters.
"I didn't know you had kids."
Malfoy spits out his mouthful of tea, spraying the teapot and doily—and Harry, a bit—as he coughs. Wiping his mouth, he glares at Harry. "Why in the world do you think I have children?"
Harry gestures at Malfoy's mug. "I mean, it says…"
"I can see what it says, Potter. That doesn't mean it's true."
"So you're not…"
"Not a parent?" Malfoy shakes his head. "No, I don't have any offspring. Merlin."
"And the other part?"
Stilling like the sky before a storm, Malfoy raises an eyebrow. "Are you asking if I'm gay, Potter?"
"Maybe?"
Lightning flashes in his eyes. "Not that it's any of your business, but yes, I am."
As soon as he finishes speaking, Malfoy looks like he's expecting a blow. Instead, Harry picks up his own mug and takes a sip. It's Earl Grey blended with vanilla, and as he sets the mug down, it clouds with milk, just the way he likes it.
"Me too." He idly spins his mug until he can read it. SHU DUH FUH CUP. "You have weird mugs, Malfoy."
"I don't have anything," he says. "They belong to the house."
"Are you renting? Why are you here?"
Malfoy sips at his tea again and looks over Harry's shoulder and out a window. Beyond the glass, the forest shifts in the breeze.
"I'm here because the Grove wants me to be," Malfoy says, as if that's a statement that makes any sense. "When the trials ended, I wasn't sure what I was going to do or where I was going to go. Garrick asked me to apprentice with him." His mouth curls into a soft smile. "Apparently, my contact with the Elder Wand, as well as my magical signature, made him think that I would be good at wandmaking. I didn't have anything better waiting for me, not with Father in Azkaban and Mother on the Continent, and my parole required that I be under someone's stewardship, so… Bird, stone."
"But where are we? We can't actually be beneath Diagon." Harry pauses, mind twisting uncomfortably at the possibility. "I mean, we can't be, right?"
"We are and we aren't." Malfoy leans back in his chair, his mug resting on his knee as he gestures around the house. "According to the first witch to live in the Grove, there are a hundred different portals that will lead you here, assuming you're found worthy or some such rot. More recent scholars say it's a pocket dimension or something like that. I don't really think it matters. It just is, and we're here. So far, I've made the most of it and not suffered for not knowing."
"You keep calling it that."
"Calling it what?"
"The Grove." Harry picks up his mug and mirrors Malfoy's position. "What is it?"
Malfoy lifts his chin towards the window. "It's what's out there, though it's also what's in here, I suppose. The house is framed with timber from the Grove, so in a way, it's still part of it. Again, I don't worry too much about the details."
"And you're here to study wandmaking."
Malfoy smiles, and the hint of mischief there sends a childish thrill through Harry. It calls to something deeply seated in Harry, that desire for an easy childhood, one spent with laughter and staying on just the right side of trouble.
Holding out his hand, the two pieces of Harry's broken wand balanced on his palm, Draco asks, "Would you like a new wand, Mr Potter?"
Swallowing the burn of tea and excitement, Harry says, "Yes."
They put their mugs in the sink—Draco informs Harry that the house insists on staying tidy—before heading back to the edge of the woods. Once they step under the shadowed canopy, Harry feels magic settle on them like a warm blanket.
"I didn't notice it before," he says, rolling his shoulders against the sensation. "Is it always like this?"
"Most of the time. It fluctuates, depending on the weather and how the Grove is feeling that day." Draco breathes in deeply, then lets it out with a controlled exhale. "It wants to work today. This should be interesting."
"I'm not entirely sure I like the sound of that," Harry says, but he follows Draco into the forest anyway.
They don't speak much after that. Draco trails his fingers over the trees, touching each one they pass with a delicacy that surprises Harry. There's a questing in Draco's touch, a subtle bit of reaching that Harry doesn't understand but can feel. Moving from one tree to another, he drags his fingertips over the bark, tracing their lines with reverence before moving onto the next tree and the next. Slowly, he and Harry circle through the trees, sketching an off-centre spiral until Draco has worn a slight path around the wide body of a gnarled and cracked oak.
"This one," he finally says after stopping before the tree. "Your hand, Potter."
Draco reaches for Harry without looking away from the oak, and before Harry can overthink it, he presses his palm against Draco's.
Magic sparks where their skin touches, then crackles its way through Harry's arm and into his chest. It stings and aches, leaves his hair standing on end, but it isn't unpleasant. There's a hum in his head, a low note that blends with the sound of the forest into a strange harmony. Mixed into it is a thread of Draco, a crystal clear note that sings out above the rest.
"There we are," Draco sighs.
He presses his other hand against the bark of the tree. At first, nothing happens. But then it deforms, shifting underneath Draco's hand like the soft give of flesh. It's as if the wood has turned to clay, and he pushes his hand into the body of the tree until it starts to curve back over his fingers, nearly engulfing his hand. He curls his grip into a loose fist, and as he pulls it back, the tree follows with it. A thin stretch of wood grows from the trunk, smooth and pale without any hint of bark covering it. The oak glows golden in the half-light of the shadowed Grove. Draco pulls and pulls, and Harry can feel it in his veins, in his heavy limbs, in the deep centre of himself. Heat curls through him, and as Draco stops, Harry feels want twist within him like curling vines.
Trailing his fingers over the outstretched piece of wood jutting from the tree, Draco pinches where it meets the bark. It shifts forward, then tips into his hand easily. Draco brushes a thumb over the blemish where the wand used to be, and the bark flows over it, hiding the scar as if it was never there.
Draco drops Harry's hand, and Harry wishes it didn't feel like an abandonment. Unaware, Draco spins the smooth stick between his fingers, testing the balance and shape of it before smiling as bright as the sun.
"We'll have to get you a core now," he says, glancing deeper into the woods. "That's a bit trickier than getting the wood, but the Grove is making it easy on me today. It must like you."
"I… Thank you, I guess?"
Draco smiles again, and the vines in Harry's blood twist. "It's a good thing, Potter, and the Grove is more than a little fickle. Appreciate its good graces while they last."
The leaves above them rustle, and Draco rolls his eyes. "Do you see what I mean?"
Harry doesn't, but he pretends like he does. He suddenly wants Draco to like him, wants his attention and smiles and his hand back in Harry's. He doesn't know where it's coming from. When they were sitting at Draco's small table, Harry hadn't wanted anything more than an explanation and perhaps a bit more of the lovely tea. He certainly hadn't wanted to know what Draco's mouth would feel like against his own, or if Draco was a heavy sleeper or what he preferred for breakfast.
It's not the first time that Harry's felt mental magic working against him, but this is a new, insidious kind, one that makes him want to give into it. Shaking his head, he reaches for his magic and wandlessly casts a Protego. The heat in his blood cools, though his fascination with Draco is as strong as ever.
"Malfoy," he asks, following after the man as he hurries down the path toward a small clearing, "does the Grove… does it ever work against people?"
"Sometimes." Draco spins, his eyes darting through the branches above them as if searching for something. Harry takes another step towards him, drawn to Draco like a wave to the shore, but Draco holds up a hand. "Don't move, Potter. I need you right there."
Right there is exactly where Harry wants to be, and a second after the thought forms in his mind, he realises that it's not brought about by the magic at all, but rather Harry's own natural curiosity and a lingering fascination with Draco.
"Do you see it?" Draco looks at Harry, then back into the canopy, his body entirely still as he tries to get Harry to see what's so thoroughly grabbed Draco's focus. "It's about ten feet up, on the branch that looks a bit like a bent arm. It's obvious when the light catches it, but you've got to be looking."
Trailing his eyes up the tree, Harry scans the branches but doesn't find anything. Until, suddenly, there's a flash of colour, a quick glimmer of red that's covered by drab brown as the bird settles its wings back along its body. It's a small bird, no bigger than the palm of Harry's hand, with brown feathers that fade into red around its head and chest. It hops on the branch, tilting its head to the side before ruffling its feathers again.
"It's a house finch," Draco says, as if that’s obvious. He raises his arm, the piece of wood outstretched, and whispers a spell that Harry can't hear but feels ripple through the meadow like a soft gust of wind.
In the treetop, the bird stills, its small head and sharp, black eyes turning to look at Draco inquisitively. It chirrups, a sweet, questioning song that rises to a trill at the end. Hopping down the branch, it spreads its wings, chirps once more, and then leaps from the branch and into the air. Its tiny wings outstretched, its grasping claws spread wide, it flies down from the tree, then hovers for a breath over the wand before settling gently on it. Draco's hand barely dips under its infinitesimal weight.
His voice is breathy and quiet as he sighs, "Wonderful. Just wonderful."
With his free hand, he holds out his fingers, waiting for something. Harry doesn't understand what's happening, not until the bird lifts its wing up and out, flight feathers spread, and looks at Draco, expectant and waiting.
He delicately grasps a red-stained feather between his fingers, then pulls gently but inexorably. The feather comes loose after a moment, hardly the length of a held breath, and then the bird ruffles its wings, leaps into the air, and is gone.
Holding the tiny feather up like a trophy, Draco grins at Harry. "I told you the Grove liked you."
He doesn't understand—not in any meaningful way, not in a way that Hermione would—but he knows what's going to happen before it does. Draco's magic rolls over Harry like a caress, and as he watches, Draco places the feather against the shaft of wood, then presses it into the wood, until it's subsumed, consumed, encased by the oak. When it seals shut around the feather, Harry's breath punches out of his lungs at the shock of magic that ripples through the Grove. He feels it in the marrow of his bones and the singing centre of his chest, feels it like home and hope.
"Here," Draco says, holding the wand out expectantly. "This is yours."
Harry's not ready to cross the space between them. Though he can't say why, he knows that nothing in his life will be quite the same after he takes that wand. He's reminded of Hagrid in a doorway, of Ron smiling out of a train car, of boats coasting their way across a mirror-glass lake. What comes after this will be new and terrifying. It will be integral.
When Harry takes the wand from Draco's hand, their fingers touch.
The bottom of his stomach drops out. The forest whirls around them, a blur of green and brown and blue. Harry closes his eyes against the disorienting swirl and the twisting nausea it brings. When he opens them, he's at the Ministry, Draco at his side. They're laughing, and Draco's hands are tucked into his pockets. Harry wants to reach out, and then the world swirls away. They're in the middle of a rain-slick street, lights catching the droplets lingering on Draco's eyelashes. As Harry stares, captured by slate grey filled with banked heat, a raindrop drips down the curve of Draco's cheek, and Harry's finger catches it at the corner of Draco's mouth.
Another twist, and they're at Grimmauld. Draco's body is pressed against Harry's, and they're both pressed against the wall where Walburga's portrait used to be. Draco's hands are pinned above his head, and his mouth is hot and hungry, his prick pressed hard and insistent against Harry's. It feels like drowning, like finally finding air, when Harry kisses Draco.
But then that's gone as well, and Harry's stomach aches and his throat burns. There's a flash of tangled sheets, of early morning light painting pale skin, of Harry's favourite blue robe wrapped around slim shoulders. Then the smell of growth, of fresh summer heat and grass, of storms crackling on the horizon. Draco, his hair drenched and plastered to his face, on his knee before Harry, a question held in his eyes as his hands hold a small box. Joy erupts like lightning in Harry's chest, and he's whirled away before he can thunder yes.
Draco's hand draws back.
Harry's in the centre of a forest, a slender piece of wood held between his fingers, and his future swirling through him like leaves in a whirlwind.
He waits for everything to settle, knowing it won't.
"Cast something," Draco says, as breathless as Harry feels. "We won't know if it worked if you don't."
Nodding numbly, Harry lifts the wand, swishes it smoothly through the air, and says, "Lumos."
Magic pours from him as easily as breathing, and a bright light shines from the tip of the wand. He sketches patterns with it in the air, watching as sparks trail behind in a stream of trickling stars.
"Well?" Draco asks as Harry lowers his wand. "What do you think?"
Draco's not talking about the wand.
Something gives him away. Maybe it's in the tightness of his shoulders, maybe the white knuckles of his elegant hands. He's not smiling, barely breathing. He stares at Harry, his grey eyes wide and waiting. Somehow, Harry knows that they've seen the same thing, the same visions that still have Harry's heart racing and his blood running warm beneath his skin.
"I like it," Harry manages through a tight throat and a heavy tongue. His heart is pounding. "It's good."
Draco's smile is full of sparks. "Good. That'll be fourteen Galleons."
When Harry presses the money into Draco's palm, he lets his touch linger.
"Would you like to finish that tea now?" Harry asks, curling his fingers into Draco's palm, next to the skin-warm gold. "You said the house wouldn't let me leave until we did."
Draco holds Harry's hand in his. If the coins weren't there, they'd be palm to palm. A memory of Shakespeare shimmers in Harry's mind like a mirage.
"So I did."
Harry isn't sure if the desire he's feeling is from the Grove or if it's his own, but he doesn't care. He gestures towards the path, suddenly short and lined with red chrysanthemums, honeysuckle, and yarrow. "Lead the way."
He breathes in sweet grass and heady earth. He tastes lightning on his tongue.
He goes to have tea.