Draco's Compromise - Harry/Draco

[red_cortina]

Rating: U
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Warnings: EWE
Summary: Totally professional Auror partners Harry and Draco are assigned to security for the Muggle Royal Wedding.

For dysonrules on the event of her birthmonth. The prompt was: "You are cordially invited to the wedding of...". Hope you like it!





Harry walked purposefully up the aisle of the abbey, Draco beside him. There was a buzz of anticipation all around them, and a low-level hum of conversation occasionally punctuated by louder greetings as the guests spotted people they knew. Nobody bothered Draco or Harry though; Harry supposed there were advantages to having been assigned to security for the Muggle Royal Wedding. As they passed through the choir stalls Harry nodded professionally to Kingsley, who was chatting amiably to the Muggle Prime Minister. The Prime Minister looked extremely uncomfortable; Kingsley had told Harry that  he’d been decidedly unimpressed to learn that there was yet another organisation with which he’d have to share power.
 
Finally, they came to their seats. Harry looked around approvingly. They were perfectly placed – unobtrusive, but with an uninterrupted view of both the aisle and the altar. As Draco sat down next to him, close but not quite touching, Harry was aware of his warmth down the side of his arm, his hip and his thigh. He sighed quietly, reminding himself to focus on the task at hand.
 
He and Draco had been partners for about a year and a half now. Putting them together had been practically Kingsley’s last act as Head Auror, before he’d become the Minister for Magic.
 
“I know you’re not happy about it, Harry,” he’d said, “but I think you’ll find that your styles suit each other very well.” At the same time, he’d moved Ron to partner Cho Chang; both Ron and Harry had been outraged, but both had subsequently had to admit that they’d suffered far fewer injuries and near misses since they’d been partnered with more analytical, less impetuous people.
 
Draco had clearly been determined to be professional at the beginning, and his frosty, bland politeness had been just on the point of driving Harry mad when they’d completed their first successful operation. Harry had insisted that he had to come for a drink to celebrate, and after that Draco had thawed considerably. That had only been the beginning of Harry’s problems though; the friendlier Draco had become, the more often his icy hauteur had melted into genuine smiles, the more hopelessly infatuated Harry had become. He didn’t know what it was about Draco: maybe his determination to prove himself, or maybe his biting sarcasm, or maybe just that he was ridiculously good-looking and only seemed to get more attractive as he got older.
 
But, as he’d constantly reminded himself, he was a professional and he wasn’t going to let his infatuation ruin their working dynamic, which was getting better and better despite Harry’s alarmingly frequent episodes of tongue-tied awkwardness.
 
Their part of the church was filling up with women in insane hats and men in shoes which probably cost more than Harry’s entire wardrobe – although, to be fair, probably not more than Draco’s. He glanced down at Draco’s shoes, which he knew had cost an astronomical amount.
 
“They’re an investment,” Draco had said defensively after buying them on his lunch break. “A good pair of shoes will last decades.”
 
“No need to justify your shoes to me, Draco,” Harry had said mildly, and Draco had frowned at him.
 
“Well, of course not,” he’d snapped. “You’d be the last person I’d come to for advice on clothes, anyway.”
 
Harry had looked down at his paperwork in an attempt to cover his grin. Draco had been getting increasingly touchy and increasingly snide, and he couldn’t help but feel that it was a hopeful sign.
 
“What?” Draco had demanded irritably, and that had only made Harry grin more.
 
Above the shoes, Draco’s Muggle morning suit looked unfairly stunning on him, and Harry tried not to let his eyes wander up and down him. Focus.
 
If he was honest, Draco looked pretty stunning in all sorts of things, though – Muggle jeans, traditional robes, that time with the kilt, nothing at all – but Harry was most certainly not going to think about that now.
 
“Who are all these people?” Draco asked suddenly, and Harry shrugged.
 
“How should I know?”
 
“You’re the one who was brought up by Muggles,” Draco pointed out.
 
“Yeah, well, I’ve lost touch a bit. And anyway, I bet if you stopped a random Muggle in the street and asked who all these people are, they wouldn’t be able to tell you.”
 
“Is that so?” Draco had a gleam in his eye, and Harry just knew he was actually considering whether it was worth doing it. Whether the chance of possibly proving Harry wrong was worth the effort.
 
There was a fanfare from the other end of the abbey, and after a few minutes a small, yellow-clad elderly woman took her seat.
 
“That’s the Muggle Queen,” Harry said helpfully.
 
Draco scowled. “Even I know that.”
 
They fell silent, knowing that if there was to be any Wizarding attack on the ceremony, it would probably be within the next hour or so. It was unlikely until the bride had arrived, but even so, with the Queen present, the risk had increased.
 
It didn’t seem particularly likely that a wizard would want to attack the Muggle Royal Wedding, but Harry agreed with Kingsley that it would be better to be safe than sorry. He had apparently insisted to the Muggle Prime Minister that Aurors be present at the ceremony, at Buckingham Palace and amongst the crowds. There had been twenty or so Aurors assigned to the day in total, and Kingsley himself had come to the Auror headquarters to explain their tasks.
 
“And if we see any evidence of an imminent attack by Muggles?” Draco had asked.
 
There had been a certain amount of muttering from some of the Aurors present; anything Draco said was met with derision from certain quarters, and his mention of Muggles only made it worse. It was a perfectly reasonable question, though, and Harry just about restrained himself from glaring around the room as Kingsley responded.
 
“Do what you need to do to prevent it. If possible, alert the Muggle security services, but if not, deal with it yourself. It’s in all our interests that this day goes well.”
 
Draco was tense beside Harry. As with any case, there would be more personal ramifications for Draco than most Aurors if anything went wrong. If Harry were to allow an attacker through, he might be accused of being incompetent. If Draco were to fail to prevent an attack, he’d almost definitely be accused of being evil.
 
It had been almost childishly easy to keep their relationship from the media; they made sure they Apparated or Flooed to see each other and neither of them were particularly bothered that they couldn’t go out in public together. They were both frequently on the receiving end of unwanted attention and it seemed safer, somehow, to spend their time in cosy evenings in at Grimmauld Place or lazy, sunny afternoons in the grounds of the Manor where they could just be themselves. Except that- it was nothing important really, but Harry just sometimes felt as if something were missing. It wasn’t as if he wanted to go out for dinner all the time, or anything like that; it was just that he wanted to know that they could. He hadn’t mentioned anything to Draco though; he was generally perfectly happy with what they had and wanting to know that they could go out even though he didn’t want to just seemed… silly.
 
They both relaxed slightly after the vows ended, and Harry half listened to the advice given by yet another bearded cleric – the Bishop of London, according to his order of service. He sighed again. He knew he ought to be concentrating on work, but…
 
He waved his right hand discreetly over his left and murmured an incantation. The third finger on his left hand shimmered slightly as the ring that Draco had put there in a Muggle registry office the previous week appeared on it.
 
“Are you regretting it?” whispered Draco, leaning over and covering Harry’s hand with his own.
 
“Of course not!” insisted Harry, deliberately misunderstanding. Of course he didn’t regret the civil partnership, but after watching Prince William marrying the new Duchess of Cambridge in the full glare of the world’s media, he was wondering whether, in his irritation at the Prophet, he’d cheated them out of the ceremony they should have had.
 
The Muggle civil partnership had been Draco’s idea – he had issues about Wizarding marriage because of what Voldemort had thought it should be for – but they had been planning to have it in a pretty location with lots of guests, and inevitably this would have meant that their relationship would have become public knowledge. Knowing that Draco was only going along with the idea of a big wedding for his sake, when Harry opened the Prophet one morning to find yet another snide article about Draco on the front page – accusing him of being part of a plot to infiltrate the Aurors and kill Harry – he didn’t hesitate to suggest they get married “as soon as bloody possible, and with as few people as bloody possible there”.
 
Draco had predicted that he’d regret it, but Harry had been absolutely firm in claiming that he wouldn’t, and he hadn’t. Until now. Only slightly more than a week later.
 
Harry turned his hand underneath Draco’s to lace their fingers together, and gave his husband a small smile. “Too late now, though, isn’t it.”
 
Draco grinned and whispered the incantation to make his ring visible, too. “Not too late to have a fucking massive party to celebrate it, though,” he said in Harry’s ear.
 
Harry returned his grin, feeling lighter all of a sudden. A fucking massive party. That sounded perfect.