It’s January and bitterly cold and they catch each other’s eyes across a crowded room and Harry’s heart skips one, two beats.

It’s April and Malfoy is at Teddy’s birthday, grinning under his lopsided party hat as the party winds down. “We should—” Harry says, but Malfoy doesn’t hear him, he’s already disappearing in a flash of spruce-green firelight.

“Dinner sometime?” Malfoy asks at a gala in May, over-bold, but Harry has work, and Malfoy is traveling through June, somewhere warm and bright that leaves pink smudges across his cheekbones when Harry spots him in July.

October dawns, and Harry hasn’t thought of Malfoy in months, but every flash of blond drags his eyes up and over. An early November snow blankets Diagon in heavy, wet wonder. Malfoy holds a door for him at Gringotts and they stand there for a moment too long, until an impatient witch bustles between them, breaking the spell.

It’s December, and the silver winter light is glinting off Malfoy’s lashes as they bend to pick up the packages Harry dropped, spilled across the cobblestones in a sparkling array. Their breath mingles in the crisp air.

“Big night?” Malfoy asks, as he grabs a neatly wrapped gift before it can flit away. A snitch for Teddy, who has discovered Quidditch, to his grandmother’s dismay.

“No,” says Harry. “Just me tonight, actually.”

Malfoy’s long fingers wrap around the box nearly entirely, crinkling the paper. “Do you need any help getting these home?”

Harry doesn’t. It would take a single word to march the parcels into neat order, or to banish them directly to his home. The corner of Malfoy’s mouth twitches upward ever so slightly, because he knows this too.

“If you’ve the time,” Harry says, and can’t fight the grin that bubbles up in return.