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The end of their world, when it happens, begins on a Tuesday morning.
It’s surprisingly easy. The concealment charms evaporate the minute the Leaky falls, leaving the whole of Diagon caught unaware, belly-up vulnerable. Shopping is abandoned on the cobblestones as witches and wizards grope for their wands, casting blindly while all around them bombs drop and buildings fall. Those who can leave do, as the tanks move in off Charing Cross Road, over broken glass and broken bones, tracks like rolling thunder along the narrow streets. Owls and ravens spill out through the blown-out Menagerie window, disappearing into the darkening sky, as Nifflers scrap loudly over stray bullet casings below.
It's several minutes before Harry, cloaked in the Azkaban-strength wards of the little flower shop, even notices that anything’s wrong.
“In theory, indefinitely,” Draco tells him, thoughtfully. He’s perfect, Harry thinks absently, bathed in high summer light, a puffy, peach-coloured rose held in delicate balance between finger and thumb. “The problem is that ethically harvested unicorn hairs are–”
And that's when everything goes dark.
By the faint blue phosphorescent glow of the ghost orchids, they peer out through the glass. Draco starts at a burst of gunfire, his breath coming fast, the rose still clutched in his hand beginning to tremble. Unthinking, Harry curls his own fingers around Draco’s, stilling him.
“There’s no Floo here, is there?” he asks softly, although he already knows the answer.
“We’re on the list,” Draco replies, distant. “Next week, they said, maybe–”
“And your anti-Apparition wards–?”
Draco just gives a jerky nod, lips pressed together, and that’s that. There’s nothing to be done about it, Harry knows – no duel to win, no long, lonely walk out into the Forbidden Forest – and in a strange way, it’s a relief.
The warded air around them is silent but for the oblivious tinkling of bellflowers. Across the way, a sharp burst of light heralds an explosion inside Fortescue’s, sending slick blue rooftiles crashing one by one to the ground below. For a long, uncertain moment the whole building seems to shiver, its ancient magic struggling against the onslaught, before, like a sigh released, the walls begin to sag in on themselves. Beside Harry, Draco is holding himself stiffly upright; the occasional twitch of his fingers the only nod towards the horror unfolding before them.
“Well,” he says eventually, looking down at their joined hands, “their timing’s dreadful.”
Harry lets out a surprised burst of laughter. “It really is. I was working up the courage, you know–” he looks at Draco “–but there was time. We had time.”
“We did. We had time.”
Their view is blurry now, both windows coated with a thick film of dust, the alley a smeared thumbprint of impressions: shadowy figures moving back and forth, spells cast in quick, colourful flares, the returning staccato bursts of gunfire from every side. Harry turns to watch the reflections in Draco’s eyes, benign as fireworks.
Draco doesn’t return Harry’s gaze. “Give me a second,” he says quietly. He pulls away, rose in hand, and begins darting around the shop, gathering up blooms, humming with approval as he goes. The wards are struggling now, Harry can tell – cracks appearing alongside the window frames, smoke curling in from beneath the door, tremors beneath his feet – but if Draco even notices, he doesn’t show it. Harry’s breath catches as he watches Draco pick out the largest of his precious ever-blooming lilies to add to the bunch: dainty pink-tipped lisanthus, sprays of baby blue speedwell, all cast in the eerie, flickering half-light of the shop.
“Here,” Draco says finally, thrusting the enormous bouquet towards Harry. The fragrance is overwhelming, damp petals tickling Harry’s chin as he takes it into his arms. “That is to say–” Draco clarifies, chin raised, “I had planned – if you had asked me–”
He tails off, the blush on his cheeks apparent even through the gloom, and Harry lifts the flowers to hide his smile. “They’re perfect,” is all he says.
“Not a patch on what I’d intended, really,” Draco says, quickly. “I’d hoped to have perfected the maturation charms, you know, and of course no-one can get hold of luminous larkspur at this time of year–”
“No-one's ever given me flowers before.”
Draco pauses, mid-sentence, frowning. “Really?”
“Really.”
“There'd have been more,” says Draco, and there’s a rueful edge to his smile. “Hundreds, probably. Tulips from Keukenhof, sakura from Hokkaido, mountain lupine from my mother’s garden… you’d have been sick of them in weeks, I’m sure.”
Harry opens his mouth, thinking to object, but is interrupted by an ominous splintering – the first audible indication of the chaos outside – as thin streams of plaster dust begin to cascade down from above the counter. Another crack, louder this time, Draco’s sizzling snapdragons snarling and straining upwards as one edge of the coving crumbles away, uncovering a narrow chink of daylight. The wards are beginning to flicker, more outside sounds audible now – the whir of a helicopter, the clatter of boots – and that’s when Harry feels the first tendrils of hope winding their way beneath his ribs.
“Still got those Seeker reflexes?” he asks Draco with a grin.
Draco’s brow furrows, but then he cottons on, eyes widening. “What, you think we can Apparate before–?” He brings his palm down smartly against the back of his other hand, a gruesome demonstration of their impending fate.
Harry swallows. “Maybe,” he says. “I don’t honestly know, but I want to try.” Louder this time: “I mean, I want to try with you.”
Harry’s never been one to look back once a decision’s been made, but he forces himself to wait, heart in his throat, as Draco chews his lip, eyes fixed warily on the ceiling. He looks genuinely uncertain, and he’s not wrong, either: an end now – quick and painless – versus… what? What will the future look like, if they run?
But a second more, and Draco looks back down at him, jaw set. “Alright,” he says, and Harry leans forward, warm and giddy with adrenaline, to press their lips together – once, a beginning, and then again – flower heads crushed between their bodies as time stands still.
They wait.
***
When it’s finally over, black-clad soldiers spread out across the street. They work in pairs to sweep up the leftover crumbs of magic, guns nosing along the rubble beneath their steel-capped toes.
“Hey, look,” says one of them, voice tinny through his mask. “Someone’s left us a souvenir. You should take ‘em home to the wife.”
“Yeah,” his partner says thoughtfully, stooping to collect the scattered stems, “You know, I just might.”