It had been a long and tiring day. Harry sighed as he stood by the dwindling fire, pulling at the tie folded around his neck. "You look weary my love," said Draco as he approached, slipping his hands onto Harry's waist, causing his eyes to flutter closed as he leaned back into his husband.

"I feel weary," he admitted heavily. They had spoken of Harry's troubling conversation with Mrs Skeeter earlier that day, and had also informed Mrs Potter and Mrs Malfoy. "I worry what the future might hold, if such rumours were ever to come to light."

Draco slipped his long fingers through Harry's necktie, and assisted him in its removal, his chest warm against Harry's back. "You have always worried too much," he said affectionately. "Mrs Skeeter is nothing but hot air."

Harry chewed his lip, almost unaware as the tie dropped to the floor and Draco's fingers began work on his shirt buttons. "With her husband's influence over the paper though...?" he trailed off, not daring to think what the printing of their true living arrangement would do to their families. "Perhaps we should consider spending more time with Ginny and Astoria?"

Draco sighed and turned Harry around, resting his hands on his shoulders and his forehead against Harry's. "I will not be cowed in my own home by idle threats," he said firmly, rubbing his thumbs against Harry's shirt. "She would not dare slander such a family as the Malfoys with such an accusation, it is an unthinkable charge to lay at such a powerful name."

Harry swallowed, his eyes closing. "But it is true," he said softly. Once again, he was reminded what he had cost Draco when he had confessed his love for him, what he had asked him to risk with their union.

Draco, though, always knew just how to read his thoughts, and pulled away to tilt his face up, encouraging his eyes to open. "I agreed to our love, to our marriage," he insisted. "Lord, the scheme was of my devising! And there is not a day I have regretted it, so I will not have you thinking otherwise."

Harry frowned at him. "But the fact remains that there is truth in what Mrs Skeeter relayed to me," he argued. "And with Mr Skeeter wielding such influence over The Prophet-"

Draco, however, suddenly looked less perturbed. "I have been thinking for some time now," he said, attempting seriousness, but betraying a gleam of mischief. "Of expanding my ventures. Don't you think it's about time I invested in a solid newspaper to boost the annual earnings?"

Harry blinked, and took a step back to regard his husband fully. "You would...buy The Prophet from Mr Skeeter?"

Draco looked most pleased with himself. "It is a rather elegant solution is it not?"

Harry laughed. "At the very least, it should scare Mrs Skeeter away from her scandal," he admitted. Draco stepped closer to him once more, and re-began his efforts with Harry's buttons.

"I will not let anyone hurt you," he said tenderly, and Harry rose his own hands to stroke at Draco's lapels. "I should die protecting you from the world, dearest Harry."

"Let us hope it does not come to that," Harry said, his fingers tracing the familiar line of Draco's clavicles under his clothes.

Draco smiled at him, glancing through his golden lashes as the petering fire cast long shadows across their chambers. "It will not," he said in hushed tones. "Now, Mr Potter, I wish no more of this melancholy chatter, for my bed is cold and I insist you help me warm it."

And even with his worries and woes not quite banished from his mind, Harry knew he could trust in their love for each other to survive almost any slings and arrows the world could possible throw at them. So who was he to refuse to an offer as that.

"If you insist, Mr Malfoy," he said, as their clothes littered the floor and they embraced each other adoringly. "Then there is little else I can do."

The End

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