41, dealer's choice on pairing
for my beloved tee we are kicking it old-school with some DRARRY! tee i hope you enjoy 💓
The Smiths, I want the one I can't have.
Five years after the war.
Haz—
I had another idea for our divorce party. BEER KEGS! They’re an American thing, they’re like beer barrels but you do handstands on them while you drink and your friends hold your legs up. Eh?!! We’ll have to stop my mum from trying it, though, her back’s been playing up.
Love Ginny xxxx
P.S. It is very very crass to ask for presents so don’t tell Aunt Ermintrude I’m doing this, but, as a divorce present, do you want to get me a new set of stationery? I have REAMS of this ‘From the office of Ms. Ginevra Weasley-Potter’ stuff, I thought we could do a bonfire with it at the party, but!! then I won’t have anything to send letters with. Let me know. Flourish & Blotts have a sale on……
Hazzer—
Sorry to bombard you but had another thought: should we have party favours? Should we have party favours that are COMMEMORATIVE TEA TOWELS WITH OUR FACES ON THEM AND THE DATES OF OUR MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. I’m so glad you agree I have ordered them. DON’T make that face it will be very funny.
Love Ginny xxxx
Hazzest—
GREAT NEWS Seamus has a friend who can get us the kegs!! Don’t worry he says it is 100% nearly legal but also can you just check if we’re inviting anyone from Customs & Excise. Thanks a million babe, love youuu.
Love Ginny xxxx
Dear Gin,
No problem re the stationery.
No problem re the kegs, although any chance we could go for ones that’ve been imported legally? Does the smuggling make the beer taste better? Perhaps Seamus can advise.
Please, please tell me you are joking about the tea towels.
Love,
H.
Haz—
What smuggling?? So glad you understand about the kegs. And the tea towels are definitely a joke…..
A joke that we will be giving to our lucky friends and family, heyaaaaa!!
Love Ginny xxxx
*****
It’s a good party. They have it at the Burrow, in the garden, fairy lights twinkling overhead, but it reminds Harry of parties in 8th year. There’s the same giddy tone to it, and Neville has brought his specialty (“primo kush,” Seamus insists on calling it, having gone worryingly Californian after a two-week holiday in New York), and there’s the taste of butterbeer and firewhiskey, and the smell of bonfire and the stars bright and cold overhead. Harry loops an arm around Ron’s shoulders. He wouldn’t have done that, in the war, but he touches his friends all the time now. “Does this remind you of,” he says, and Ron finishes “8th year, yeah,” lazy and happy.
It’s a good party, and when Harry runs into Ginny by the snack table he grins at her and says “Fine.”
“‘Thank you Ginny, this was a brilliant idea, and I was wrong to doubt you,” she says, in a growly mock-Harry voice.
He smiles, pulls a face at her. “I should never have doubted you, Gin.” After a beat he adds, “Should never have married you either, mind,” and Ginny says “Oi!” and elbows him.
The crisp bowl is running dangerously low and Harry feels a duty to the party to refill it. Also, possibly, he wants a moment to himself out of the heart of things. Sometimes he enjoys things more that way; it’s probably the war trauma.
The door from the garden into the kitchen is jammed, which is a bit odd. He’s never known it to stick before. He rattles it, then sets his shoulder against it, and shoves with his magic too. It yields suddenly and Harry stumbles across the threshold. And—Draco Malfoy is in the kitchen, leaning back against the countertop, face flushed, trousers round his knees, one hand clutching the hair of the man kneeling before him. Harry blinks, shakes his head, but the scene doesn’t change. “Er,” he says.
“The door was locked, Harry,” Draco says. He is staring with great focus at the ceiling.
Harry looks frantically away from Draco’s face. “No, I, just, I,” he says. Oh Christ, the man on his knees in front of Draco is Charlie Weasley. Harry has died and gone to absurdist hell. “Aaahh?” he says, and flees back into the garden.
“Are you all right, Harry?” Hermione asks, touching his arm, concerned but keeping her voice private.
“Yes! Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Really feeling the need to, er, to play some beer pong though! Partner me?”
“....sure,” she says, and he knows she knows something is wrong and he’s not off the hook, but all the same they trounce everyone: Ginny and Lee, and Ron and Neville, and Blaise and Luna.
“Re-rack!” demands Blaise, voice high with outrage, “I demand a re-rack!” and Hermione says, in her most serious Senior Magister voice, “With respect to my learned friend, I believe he will find that, pursuant to subsection 88b.1 of the Code of Sporting Practice, only one re-rack is permitted per round.”
Blaise points at her and yelps “You invented that! You have entirely made that up!” and Hermione smiles toothily at him and says “Yes, yes I did,” and it’s not entirely surprising when Harry spots them later making out against a tree.
“I just can’t believe Draco got off with Charlie at my divorce party,” Harry says, several nights later. It possibly isn’t the first time that evening he’s said it. Ron and Hermione exchange looks.
“No, yeah, I definitely hear you, mate,” Ron says. “But, um, forgive me for asking again, I’m sure it’s obvious and I’m just missing a trick, but, uh. Why exactly. Is it a problem that Draco got off with Charlie?”
Hermione is staring studiously into her beer.
“It’s not—it’s not the hooking up that’s the problem,” Harry says. What was the problem? “It’s doing it at someone else’s divorce party! It’s like… like getting engaged in the middle of someone’s wedding reception.”
Ron coughs and takes another sip of his lager. “Mmm. Is it, though?” He raises his eyebrows at Harry. “Pretty sure there aren’t really many hard-and-fast rules of etiquette governing people’s conduct at divorce parties. Not really a huge fixture of the traditional pureblood social engagement calendar, are they.”
“But—”
“You know, Blaise and I hooked up at the party too,” Hermione interrupts, looking up at him. “But you haven’t mentioned that at all.”
Harry shifts uncomfortably under her gaze. “Well, I didn’t walk in on you and Blaise in the kitchen,” he says defensively. Charlie had been on his knees, Malfoy leaning back against the countertop, eyes closed, one hand in Charlie’s hair. His cheeks had been flushed, his breath stuttering as he thrust into Charlie’s mouth, Charlie’s eyes closed too, his hands clamped on Malfoy’s hips. “I know what Malfoy looks like when he’s about to come! Tell me that’s not rude.”
Ron sighs. “Mate.”
“What?”
Ron looks at Hermione. “Do you want to take this one, or shall I?”
Hermione raises her glass. “All yours, Ronald. Go with god.”
“Ok. Harry.” Ron draws in a deep breath. “Do you think. That maybe. You want to get off with Malfoy, and that’s why Charlie doing it made you so upset.”
Harry stares at Ron.
“Er. Some kind of response… would be great.”
“Oh, fuck.”
“And the penny has dropped.”
*****
Hi Draco,
Are you dating Charlie Weasley now?
Yours,
H.P.
Potter—
Lovely to hear from you as ever. Ah, I hear you saying, but I haven’t written to or indeed spoken to Draco for years, and I avoid him at social gatherings! You are correct, but I implore you to think nothing of it. I positively adore being brusquely interrogated about my romantic life, particularly by casual acquaintances.
I’m not dating Charlie Weasley, but we are fucking. Enthusiastically, at length, and often. I hope that answers your query but please do let me know if you need further details. I shall be delighted to oblige.
I beg to remain, Sir, yr most obt. servant
Draco Malfoy
P.S. You can call me Malfoy.
Draco, I didn’t
Dear Draco, I am very sorry
Draco,
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