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It started off innocent enough.Late-night confessions in the comfort of their darkened bedroom. “I wanted to kill myself,” Draco says, talking about the war. Or maybe after it. Both.“Me too,” replies Harry. Before, during, after. They can’t see each other with the lights off, but Draco has the advantage of having eyeballs that work without outside assistance, so Harry can feel his gaze on his face more heavily than Draco would his own. The familiarity in splotches of differently shaded darkness let him say, “I have the urge to kill people who’ve wronged me, sometimes.”Draco shifts, his leg brushing against Harry’s under the covers. “Why don’t you?”Harry huffs out a laugh. “Don’t be silly.”“I’m deathly serious, Harry.” The lamp on Draco’s bedside table flips on, bathing the room in a warm glow and giving the Draco-coloured blur next to him the appearance of an angel descending from some fucked up heaven. He’d laugh at the pun if his heart wasn’t hammering in his chest. “You’re one of the most powerful wizards of all time. You could do it.”“I didn’t even kill Voldemort, not properly.” He’s still talking like they’re joking, even though he knows they’re not.“You defeated him because you were the master of death. That’s power, Harry.” Lips parted, Draco runs his knuckles down Harry’s cheek. They both shiver. “Merlin, I feel the magic thrumming under your skin every time I touch you. As if you could split open from the force of it.”“I–” Harry’s mouth goes dry. He reaches out for his glasses with a shaking hand while trying to decipher what Draco’s voice is laced with.“Who would you kill?” Draco prompts, and fuck, it’s excitement. Arousal, even, with the low quality he’s taken on.Harry swallows, pushing his glasses onto his face and looking over at his boyfriend. His eyes are blown so big there’s little left of the grey he adores so much. Fuck.“My uncle Vernon,” Harry breathes, quiet, afraid the tension in the air is magic, his magic. A stench like gasoline, as though it might ignite and send them both to hell.“Yes,” replies Draco. “Fuck yes, let’s do it, Harry.” Surging forward, Draco captures his lips in a dizzying kiss that leaves him desperate for air long before he can’t breathe. Under Draco’s strict guidance, Harry fucks him into the mattress, encouragements panted in his ear like a gospel; he’s a good boy, he’s a God, he’s perfect and beautiful and loved, so loved. He’s not sure about that second one, doesn’t know if he wants to be seen as a deity, but the way Draco calls him it like it’s a promise makes him reconsider. That’s how he knows the last is true, finally, after all those years of being made to think he was unlovable.The morning after, they discuss it like weather over breakfast. He needs to suffer, Harry tells Draco. I’ll make sure of it, says Draco. It only takes a week of planning until Harry feels he’s ready.Wrapped in notice-me-not charms, they apparate to his old house — because it was never his home — on a night Harry knows his aunt will be out, some ladies' lunch that tends to seep into the evening and then night. Draco has a distasteful look on his face before they’ve even stepped inside, remarking about how bland everything looks. Harry tells him he looks awfully like his mother, and Draco laughs, taking Harry’s hand and giving it a squeeze. The living room window is illuminated with the blue light from the television, and Harry can just about make out his uncle’s form sitting in his recliner. The gravity of what he’s about to do hits him then, and he stumbles on the kerb as Draco leads him forward.“Okay?” Draco asks, concern creasing his brow. “If you’ve changed your mind–”“No.” Harry shakes his head vehemently. “No, I need to do this.”“Closure,” Draco suggests. Harry nods. “Closure.”Hand in hand, they walk up to the front door of Four Privet Drive. This will be the last time he’ll ever set foot in this damned street. Thank fucking god. He’d burn the whole place to the ground if he had nothing to lose. Draco, thumb rubbing reassuringly across the back of his hand, reminds him that he has so much. Too much, to risk doing that. But what they have planned is more than enough to satisfy the monster rearing its head inside Harry. And clever enough not to chop off the hand that feeds it.Draco’s hand slips out of Harry’s as he raises it to knock at the door. (Better that way. Fewer reasons for his uncle to get mad and slam the door in their faces.) He hesitates. A voice telling him to be brave blows through his mind. Mum. Harry swallows. She would understand if she’d seen the way he’d been treated. He’s sure of that. She’d want better for her sister, too. I’m sorry, he thinks. I have to. Harry raps his knuckles against the door three times. From where they’re stood, they can’t see Uncle Vernon anymore, but Harry thinks he hears the sound of him startling awake with a snort reminiscent of the pig he is. Then grumbles, followed by thumping footfall.While they wait for Vernon to struggle to the door, Draco pulls out his wand and begins to cast, quickly mumbling charms under his breath.“What are those?” Harry whispers, watching intently. Draco’s spellwork is always masterful; he works with an ease Harry can only dream of.“Highly impenetrable silencing charms.”“Brilliant,” is all Harry has time to say before the door swings open.Seeing his uncle after all these years makes him feel like an unwanted little boy again. Harry’s taller than him now that he’s hunched over with age, but the disdainful look on his face sends him back to being ten years old, dragged about by his elbow and thrown into his cupboard. He rubs his shoulder for a pain long since healed.“What are you doing here, boy?” he booms from where he stands at the very end of the open door.Harry stares at him, his stomach twisting. Since he was last here, he’d died and come back to life. He was no boy. But Vernon wouldn’t know that, because Vernon would’ve wished he’d stayed dead, even if he would never have been so coarse as to say it out loud.“Petunia isn’t here,” Uncle Vernon barks gruffly, seemingly disturbed by the silence. Looking Draco up and down with contempt, he scoffs. “Is this another one of your weirdo friends?”“I’m not here for her,” Harry says, finding his voice and electing to ignore the insult even as Draco wavers closer to him, hiding his wand up his sleeve. “I’d like a word.”Vernon nods with the expression of someone about to squash a cockroach. “Go on then, be quick.”Draco coughs as elegantly as a person can. “My name is Draco Malfoy. Harry and I went to school together. May we come in?” Vernon looks as though he’d hate nothing more, though the aura of wealth and status Draco oozes seems to offset some of the anti-magic sentiment he holds. “Alright. Better be quick, I don’t want the neighbours to see you and think we’ve been fraternising with the wrong sorts.” Harry bit his tongue. Draco side-eyes him as they moved past Vernon into the hallway. A silent acknowledgement passes between them. They talked about this; how Draco used to remind Harry of his cousin. They’d both changed for the better, but Dudley’s hatred had to come from somewhere. Draco knows better than anyone.“Right,” says Vernon, shutting the door and locking it, as though protecting the neighbourhood from them. “What is it you want?”“I wanted to show Draco the house I grew up in, is all,” Harry says. He shrugs, feigning confidence he barely has as he walks along the hall. He stops, outside a four-walled oxymoron. His one safe space from the shouting and the insults and the fear — yet it remained a cage, a punishment for the crime of existing. “My room.”Draco pulls open his cupboard door and gasps. “Told you,” says Harry, voice flat, locking eyes with his uncle. He’d planned on being less blunt, but thinking about what you’ll say to your abusive uncle versus seeing him in the flesh provokes different reactions. “It’s a cupboard. Under the stairs.”“They really kept you in here?” asks Draco, his voice recognisable to Harry as dripping with rage, ice cold and violent. “For ten years.” He lifts his chin, goading his uncle to try and explain, to desperately justify the years of neglect. I fucking dare you, Harry thinks.Vernon’s eye twitches. “You were small, boy, you didn’t need a lot of space.”“Because you didn’t feed me,” Harry hisses. He gestures to the cramped cupboard space currently filled with a hoover, sat at an angle. Anger settled deep in his heart seeps into the foreground as he looks at the tiny space. A hoover doesn’t even fit. Fucking hell. “I only fit in there because I was skin and bones.”“Don’t talk to me like that in my own house!” Vernon roars, veins on his neck bulging. “You should be lucky we took you in in the first place, all this unnatural ma – funny business!” Harry pulls his wand out. That shuts Vernon’s tirade right up; his body stiffens. The static energy of Harry’s magic feels like a storm cloud encasing his body, lightning gearing up to strike. He still can’t say magic. “Coward,” Harry spits.“You can’t–” Vernon starts to say. Harry thinks it might’ve been his usual ‘you aren’t allowed to do that!’ from Harry’s teenage years.“I can do whatever I like,” Harry tells him, emboldened by Vernon’s complete ignorance of who he is now and what he’s capable of. It’ll make it all feel so much better. “I’m the Saviour.” ‘Of the wizarding world’ goes unsaid. Draco thinks it limits him.“What–” Vernon has to swallow to continue talking, his eyes almost bursting out of his head. “What are you planning on doing with that, eh? Poking me to death?”Harry’s eyes darken. “I haven’t decided yet.” That’s not true; he and Draco meticulously plotted every detail to ensure Harry had absolutely no regrets by the time his uncle’s body went cold. “Draco, any ideas?” Harry asks, turning to him, letting his wand hang loose in his hand.Almost like clockwork, the door rattles behind them. Draco grins, wand in hand. “Colloportus is a good start.”“Good thinking,” Harry replies, turning back around. “Is that all of them?”“It is now.”The living room door slams shut right in Uncle Vernon’s face. Futily, he rattles the doorknob, before turning around and making a mad dash for the stairs. Harry can’t help but laugh. With a wave of his wand, the stairs shift into a steep ramp, sending Vernon hurtling down at an impressive speed, crashing into the table where the landline sits.Harry walks over to him, casting his shadow over Vernon crumpled on the floor. “I don’t think you’re in a position to be making jokes about my wand,” he says, poking him in the chest, purely for his own amusement. Vernon wheezes pathetically, “Would you like to say sorry?”“You–” By this point, his face is a mottled mess of purple and red. For once in his life, Harry relishes that he’s the source of this anger. “I’ll call the police. They’ll lock you up and break that stupid stick of yours.”Vernon scrambles to his knees, reaching for the phone. He pulls it from the table in the process, dangling uselessly as Vernon groans in annoyance, attempting to punch 999 into the swinging base.Like always, Harry senses Draco’s presence before he strokes one of his hands across the nape of his neck. The touch is like a spark. “That won’t work. Do you really think we wouldn’t block the phones?”Harry leans into his lover’s hand. He hadn’t thought of that, really. This is why he needs Draco; to tie up his loose ends and catch him when he falls. Impulsively, he grabs Draco by the chin, crashing their lips together in a kiss that’s more bite than anything. Vernon squawks beside them, which makes Harry grin against Draco’s lips. They pull away, and Draco has that same, blown-out-pupils look in his eyes he did a week ago.“Filth,” Vernon grumbles, still holding himself up by his hands. “Knew there was something else wrong with you. You’re a bloody poof.”“I don’t give a damn what you think anymore, Vernon,” Harry snarls. He wishes he could kick him right in his ugly face, but for this to work, he can’t have a mark on him other than those consistent with a fall. Softly, Draco whispers ‘ go on’ in his ear, and places a kiss just behind it. Harry wets his lips. “Except, there’s this one spell I’d like your opinion on.”“Ridiculous,” Vernon spat back, gripping the bannister on the stairs and attempting to haul himself up. Harry has to admire how he still thinks he has a chance.“No, it’s not that one.” Next to him, Draco breathes out a small laugh. “This spell will only be a fraction of what you did to me.”Uncle Vernon doesn’t say anything. He just watches, chest heaving from righting himself on his feet. There’s real fear in his eyes now. Harry wishes he could bottle it. He’ll have to buy a Pensieve.“Do it, Harry,” Draco urges, his hand tightening on Harry’s nape. “He stole your childhood from you. He deserves it.”Using the killing curse isn’t the way Harry thought he’d kill his uncle, if he ever did. There were times he’d thought about it when they’d shut him in his cupboard under the stairs. Maybe if Harry opened the door forcibly enough he’d get him square in the face and that would do. Or maybe he would push him down the stairs as he’d just fallen, Harry watching with glee as Vernon hit his head at the bottom and never got back up. He even thought about stealing Dudley’s stupid Smeltings stick and swinging until his uncle went quiet. When he learned he was a wizard, all sorts of ideas flooded Harry’s brain: Engorgio on his tongue so he would choke on it; Colloportus on all the doors so they felt locked up like he did, starving in the house as he starved in the cupboard; Aguamenti to drown him where he sat in his chair.Seems fitting, now though. That the spell that trapped Harry there in the first place is the one to free him from the shackles of their abuse. He rather likes that idea. But first, Harry wants Vernon to feel his rage. To experience all the pain he did at his hand. A simple killing curse straight out the gate is far too merciful for a man like Vernon Dursley. And Harry wants to make him hurt.“Crucio!” he shouts, the word coming from his mouth easier the third time around.Uncle Vernon’s body jerks abnormally, the shrieking scream he produces wavering the soundproofing charms Draco had laced Four Privet Drive with. They hold strong, though, of course they do. Draco wouldn’t settle for anything less than perfect. The surge of power through Harry’s veins is unlike anything he’s ever felt before. If Draco didn’t have his hand grounding him, he could easily lose himself in the magic and how twistedly good the curse feels rushing through him. He closes his eyes, Vernon’s cries fading into the background but still there, reminding Harry of everything he was put through, as he allows himself to be bad on purpose and knowing he won’t be locked away for it. Not this time, not ever. Eventually, when his arm begins to tire, Harry lowers his wand, the red jet of light splintering off into sparks that dance in the air before dissolving. His head is spinning and his hands shake.“Draco,” he says, mouth dry all of a sudden.“I’m here,” Draco replies, steady and sure. His hands rest on Harry’s biceps, and he bends close to his ear. “You’re doing so well. Almost there, my love.”Harry breathes in deeply, then opens his eyes. A strange feeling blooms in Harry’s chest that reminds him rather a lot of pride. His uncle lies on the ground, legs bent at an unnatural angle a man of his age would never be able to achieve. His face is red and tear-stained, long wet tracks that merge with the snot pouring from his nose as he whimpers. He’s a wreck. A mess of Harry’s creation. “How was that?” Harry asks, his voice light and breathy.“No more,” his uncle groans. “Please.”“That wasn’t the question. Do you need a reminder so you can answer me properly?”“No! Please! I’ll do anything!” Vernon wails. But he won’t apologise, will he? He’s made that abundantly clear.“Nothing you could do would ever be enough,” Harry says callously. He raises his wand again. “Except dying.”“C-come now,” Vernon chokes out, voice trembling horrendously. “I’m your uncle.”The anger in Harry doubles at that. “Damn fucking right you were,” he snarls. “And you treated me no better than the shit on the bottom of your shoe.”Vernon reaches out a quaking hand. “Harry–”“No,” Harry yells, baring his teeth. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you use my name, you know that? It’s always been boy, do this, what’s wrong with you boy, you need to be whipped into shape, boy, like I’m a fucking dog. But I’m done taking shit from anyone. Least of all you.”Hot tears well up in Harry’s eyes, a mix between overwhelming anger and relief. He promised himself he wouldn’t cry, but this is it. The end. Liberation is so close he can smell it.“I deserved to have a family that was proud of the good things I did. And I did a lot of good things you have no idea about. You can’t fix that. Not now, not ever. And I wouldn’t want you to. Because you know what, Uncle Vernon?” The name slithers from his mouth like a slur. “You deserve to be six feet in the ground. You’re the pathetic waste of space. Not me.”“Please. Don’t do this,” his uncle begs one last time. It doesn't make Harry feel any pity. Only disgust.Draco is silent, a few steps behind him. Harry smiles; he knows not to interrupt, to let Harry have his moment.“Please.”Harry sucks in air through his teeth. He pulls back his shoulders, cracks his neck, and straightens his wand arm. A form he hopes Professor Flitwick would be proud of. And a curse he hopes Voldemort would envy. “Avada Kedavra!” Vernon Dursley goes limp in a flash of green the same colour as Harry’s eyes. It doesn’t feel as good as Harry imagines bashing his brains in with a bat would feel, but the sick satisfaction churns in his stomach all the same.The house is silent apart from Harry’s laboured breathing. His mouth splits into a grin, beginning to laugh as his salty tears wet his lips. “Free,” he says quietly, turning around to face Draco who’s watching him with an expression Harry can’t quite figure out. He thinks it's a mix between twisted appraisal and something animalistic. Whatever it is, it’s his, for him, because of him. Harry would be disturbed if it wasn’t like looking in a mirror. “Draco, I’m free.”Draco’s arms are waiting for Harry when he falls into him, his elegant thumbs rubbing Harry’s tears into his cheeks as he kisses him with the force of a gust of wind. Harry clings to Draco like a lifeline, like he’s all he has. No one gets him like Draco. And from now on, no one ever can. They’re bonded through death as much as they are in life. Mutually assured destruction, Harry thinks. But he’ll ruin the world for Draco, destroy everything and everyone before letting him go. Even himself. Even Draco. They’ll go down in flames together before anyone can force them apart. Harry’ll make sure of that.“Take me home,” Harry says.The Dursleys’ house glowed red and green that night to no one but them. “Our colours,” Draco whispers in his ear as he apparates them away, dissolving their charms in his wake. Leaving no trace.When they arrive home, his lover holds him close, kisses him, smoothes down his hair, whispering reassurances to him as though he is the most precious thing in the world. Holding him together, keeping the piece that broke from the rest of him when he killed Vernon with the remains of his soul. They shower, Harry scrubbing blood that isn’t there from his hands, Draco massaging his apple-scented shampoo into his scalp and kissing his bare skin, each press of his lips another promise. Draco takes him apart in their bed as Harry floats in a daze of pleasure, cheek pressed against his pillow as Draco fills him, makes him whole, like he always does. There’s no Harry Potter without Draco Malfoy, of that Harry’s certain, as he’s kissed one last time; a vow to stay, always. Draco curls around him after they’re done, faces turned to one another so their lips are inches apart, breath mingling. “I'd kill a million times over for you,” Harry mumbles, feeling emotion overtake him. “I’m yours.”“You are,” Draco replies, tilting his head to kiss Harry’s chin. “All mine.”Harry sighs. “Marry me, will you?” he says a little impulsively. “Ask me properly,” Draco laughs. “Ask me properly when you aren’t half asleep and I’ll marry you. I’ll do anything, as long as it’s with you.”Vernon’s death is recorded as an undiagnosed heart issue, because none of the Muggle doctors can find anything wrong with him. “It just stopped!” cries Petunia to some distant relative, black hanky pressed against her eyes while Dudley’s hand is clenched in her own. Harry hangs at the back of the funeral party; he isn’t meant to be there, Petunia banned him from coming, but under a disillusionment charm and with Draco by his side, Harry can do what he likes.“She’s better off without him,” he says, clenching his jaw. “Maybe if they hadn’t met she wouldn’t be such a shitty person.”“At least your cousin seems to have come to his senses eventually,” Draco murmurs in his ear, hand tightening around Harry’s arm. Dudley has an odd conflicted look on his face, even as he wipes tears from his own eyes. Draco clears his throat. Harry thinks Draco knows exactly what Dudley’s feeling.“I think we’ll send him a Christmas card this year,” Harry says.“Will we now?”Dudley looks in their direction. For a short moment, it’s almost as though he can see them standing there. Then he turns away, offering his arm to his mother as they leave Vernon’s graveside.“Yeah. Merry Christmas, Good Riddance, and a Happy New Year.”Hermione hugs him fiercely when he meets her and Ron for lunch at their house the week after, as though she thinks some small part of him might be sad. He gives her a tight-lipped smile and pretends that’s what it is, like he isn’t bursting to tell them how the light went from his uncle’s eyes like a candle being blown out. There’s a lot he doesn’t tell Ron and Hermione now. Something shifted in him when he’d died, losing a familiarness they once shared, like a piece of his heart had shut itself away, scared of being opened in case they abandoned him like everyone else. They have each other to spill their secrets to, and that’s okay, because Harry has Draco to whisper awful things to in the dark. Ron and Hermione can hear his good while Draco soaks up his bad.“Alright, mate?” Ron asks, pulling him into a much more relaxed embrace.“Brilliant,” Harry replies, forcing a touch of sarcasm. “I’m dying for a cuppa.”Maybe it’s his paranoia that follows him around like a shadow, but he swears Ron looks at him a little differently, as if he has to squint to recognise him as his best friend.A month later, Draco’s curled up at Harry’s side on their bed, his head on his shoulder, as Harry traces the scarred shape of the Dark Mark on Draco’s arm. The wave of euphoria he rode after his uncle died has mostly worn off, replaced by a satisfaction that sits deep in his gut, cemented into him, like everything else traumatic that has happened to him over the years. He… misses the high. And that scares him as much as it intrigues him. His grip tightens on Draco’s arm unconsciously, catching his attention.“Harry?” Draco asks, lifting his head.“Is it bad–” Harry wets his lips. It is. Bad, that is. They both know it’s a slippery slope. And they’ll fall right down it together. “I want to do it again.”“Do you now,” replies Draco smoothly. Like he was expecting Harry to tell him just that. “Anyone in mind?”Harry hums, affection warm in his chest. “One for you.”Draco makes a soft noise; it’s his version of a cat purring. “Who?”“You tell me. Someone must have wronged you, Draco.”Draco raises an eyebrow, which has hair missing from where a scar cuts through his face. He rests a slim hand on his chest pointedly. “Other than you, that is?” he drawls. It sounds so like it did at Hogwarts Harry can’t help but smile.“Other than me.” Harry bites his lip, smile fading, and reaches his hand out to close it over Draco’s. He watches, like a cat. Harry’s other hand comes up to Draco’s shirt collar and begins slowly unbuttoning it. Draco lets it happen without helping, lets Harry move his hand, lets him hold his wrist to the bed so that he can’t move it, can’t stop Harry. Not that he would, of course. That line of thought has Harry take a deep breath in. A couple of buttons means he can see the scars that cover Draco’s chest, long and white and Harry’s. The rest lets Harry place his mouth to where the lowest one ends, right above Draco’s belt, dragging his mouth up as Draco squirms and sighs but stays still, so still, because Harry wants him to. Merlin, Harry’s ruined him and Draco’s the more beautiful for it.“You really are mine,” Harry says breathily, dizzy with the realisation and the thrill that comes with it. “I’ve marked you.”“Property of Harry James Potter,” Draco whispers. He looks down at Harry with half-lidded eyes, their lips only inches apart. “I can’t look at myself in the mirror without seeing what you did to me. Without seeing that I’m yours.”“My God, Draco,” Harry says, pressing their lips together in a searing kiss that has Draco gasping against his mouth in no time. Draco’s nails dig into Harry’s biceps when he pulls back, the sting going straight to Harry’s head in a pleasurable rush. “What hex have you put me under to make me feel this way about you?”Draco laughs. With a dusting of pink across his high cheekbones, the look on his face is intoxicating. “All I do is bring out the worst in you.”“I love it, you know that?” Harry says sincerely. “Maybe that’s it. No one sees me as honest as you.”“Yes,” Draco says, grabbing a fist full of Harry’s hair, eliciting a groan from him. “They all get the boy who lived. But me? I get the boy who died. And I find him far more interesting.”Harry smiles wickedly. He lets one of his fingers map the scar bisecting Draco’s face, following its path across his nose. “Good to hear. You’re stuck with him now.”Draco runs his tongue across his top lip. “I think I can handle that.”Harry thinks of the ring box in his bedside drawer with delight and kisses Draco until he’s begging for more.