Curate, connect, and discover
The Detection Charms on Draco’s Knockturn Alley flat activated just after midnight, startling him awake like a cold-sweat nightmare.
He switched on the lamp, then shook the bare shoulder of the man sleeping beside him, his rising panic making him rough. Draco’s escape plan did not account for him. Merlin, he’d been a fool. A besotted, reckless fool.
“Potter, wake up. We have to go. Now.”
“What’s going on?” Harry mumbled.
“We have about three minutes until the people outside dismantle my wards.”
Draco jerked open the drawer of the bedside table and fumbled through it to find the stirring rod that was charmed into a Portkey. The thought of shadowy figures watching them through the windows, listening, made him shudder.
“What people?”
“Aurors, I assume. For fuck’s sake, move—unless you want to do some fast talking about why you’re naked in my bed.”
Harry didn’t move. He watched Draco pull on his trousers and slip his arms into his button-down with obvious disappointment. Draco avoided his eyes.
“I thought you said you were doing Potions research.”
“Well, the Potions part is true,” Draco said wryly.
He threw Harry’s clothes at him before grabbing the satchel that was always packed and ready. Beneath his bare feet, the floorboards began to vibrate from the tendrils of magic creeping over his wards, seeking a crack.
“Draco, what are you—”
“Not now! Are you coming with me or not?”
Harry’s gaze flickered over Draco’s face, then he nodded and gathered up his clothing. Draco felt his knees weaken with relief.
“Where are we going?”
“Kyiv. Then we’ll Apparate a few times to make sure they’re off our trail.”
Draco crawled across the rumpled bed until he was straddling Harry. He smelled like sex and the cheap Firewhisky that they always sipped in Draco’s draughty lounge, talking, circling around each other, until their veins burned with it and they couldn’t hold back any longer. It was the closest thing Draco had to predictable in his unpredictable life.
“What the fuck have you got yourself into?” Harry whispered.
Draco wrapped one hand around the satchel handle and the other around on the back of Harry’s neck, pressing the stirring rod against the knobs of his vertebrae.
“Something dangerous. Something I can’t walk away from now.”
He wasn’t talking about the illegal Potions lab in the attic.
With a whispered word, Draco activated the Portkey.
Written for the @drarrymicrofic song prompt, "Dangerous" by Big Data ft. Joywave.