I love you, too
Draco was completely flabbergasted. What he had planned to be a fun night in his dorm turned into a trauma-dumping nightmare.
All he wanted to do was forget about what was happening outside, and spend a night with his boyfriend. Now stupid, noble, Harry Potter, was looking at him like he was a glass figure that would break any second.
Draco hated feeling this broken. He didn’t need to be fixed.
It was all going great, until about two hours in when Draco brought out the hot-chocolate.
Something about hot-chocolate always seems to make people emotional. Maybe the smell.
The nostalgia.
Either way, it prompted a series of VERY unfortunate events, one of which led to the trauma-dumping nightmare he was currently experiencing.
The worst part was that it was entirely Draco’s fault. He could have tried to blame it on the Hot-chocolate,emotion-inducing as it was, but such things seemed futile in moments like these.
Instead, he berated himself, angry for losing control.
This entire year at Hogwarts, ever since he had started dating the Iconic Gryffindor in 7th year, he had battled with his emotions over the War. After the end of the war, Draco was tried by the ministry. He was sentenced to 3 years in azkaban.
After Draco heard of his fate, he decided that the only course of action was to end his own life.
The young Death Eater had seen first hand what the dementors could do to someone. How you become nothing but a shell of your former self. All happiness is gone. Kept alive only by the pure animalistic urge that forced one to survive.
Such a time is anything but pleasant to endure.
Even a day in Azkaban is a fate worse than death.
So Draco chose death.
Draco Malfoy planned to commit suicide just before he departed for Azkaban.
Clearly, he never succeeded.
A VERY unexpected second chance presented itself to Draco minutes before his planned death.
The day Draco was supposed to depart to the prison, Harry made a surprise appearance. He vouched for Draco, and pulled a favor in the ministry to set him free.
Once again, Draco owed his life to the All Mighty Harry Potter.
After his release, Draco was given two months of recuperation time before his inevitable return to Hogwarts.
When that time came, Draco was plopped right back where he left off in his studies, treated like any normal student. (with the exception of a mandatory check-in with Professor McGonagall every weekend, and therapy with a professional every month)
For the most part, Draco really WAS doing fine, despite the copious amounts of work the teachers dumped on him. The only issue was that according to his therapist, he had some underlying PTSD from the war.
Apparently, Draco was still suffering from the trauma of being mentally corrupted by Voldemort and the death eaters. He was keeping his emotions bottled up, and by refusing to talk to anyone, he was making things worse.
At least, that's what Mcgonagall said.
Draco wasn’t so sure.
Mgonagall had been trying to get him to open up for months, but he had remained resolute in his belief that he was absolutely, 100%, FINE….
…Regardless of his past attempts of suicide…
So far, he had kept his traitorous tears in check, only breaking his hiatus at night, alone, with a privacy charm around his four-poster bed.
Tonight, however, Harry had managed to worm his way past the barriers keeping his emotions bottled up, opening the floodgates of tears. Literally.
Though his boyfriend's intrusion was highly uninvited, Draco had a hard time getting angry at the green-eyed boy. All Harry had done was try to understand him. It was Draco who couldn’t handle feeling broken.
So he sat there, his cold hand enfolded in the soft warmth of Harry’s own, his pale fingers shaking with the strength of his pain.
The two boys didn’t speak, each one struggling with their own thoughts, anxiety running rampant through their teenage minds.
It was Draco who finally broke the silence.
His mind swam with indecision, but it was his heart that puppeteered the strings to his words. A rare occurrence for the tight-lipped Slytherin.
“I’m not okay.”
Three words. Whispered in the darkness. Seemingly unimportant in the face of such pain. And yet, as the words left his lips, so too did the weight of a secret.
Harry smiled softly, pride warming his heart.
“I know.”
The phrase that could sound haughty, fcarries none of the insult, instead heavy with sadness, and acceptance of his boyfriend's pain. Harry wrapped his arms around his love, kissing him on the forehead gently.
“I’m so proud of you.”
As Draco looked up into almond shaped eyes, his own shimmered tiredly. Harry pulled him close, kissing away his tears and hugging the pale boy, whispering sweet nothings into the Slytherins neck.
The words of comfort fell on numb ears.
Draco rocked back and forth, shaking with silent tears as his boyfriend held him gently, the room quiet save for Draco’s sobs of misery.
The two boys sat together for years, the seconds turning to minutes, and hours to days.
When Draco’s tears had finally ceased, his eyes began to droop. He snuggled closer to Harry, his spindly frame dwarfed by that of a quidditch captain.
Harry only smiled, feeling protective of the small Slytherin.
Moments before the pale boy escaped into his dreams, he looked blearily up at Harry, a sheepish smile winding its way across his thin lips.
“I-“ Draco broke off, his smile falling. He sat there, frozen, his mouth open in a silent confession.
It seemed wrong.
Intrusive.
Never the right time.
Never perfect enough to utter the life changing words that hovered on his parched tongue.
For years, he had toyed with the words, twirling them across his lips, letting them dance in the cool night air.
He had practiced saying them softly, warmly, quietly. He had planned a speech, a declaration of his love, a grand gesture. But when the time came, his preparations were useless.
Such is life.
Plans tend to fail.
Truth tends to lie.
Joy tends to hurt.
Words tend to hide
So the words that came out of his mouth were not fancy. They didn’t bring tears to the listeners eyes.
Nothing grand, nothing big, nothing loud.
Just a mishmash of words, thrown together and molded.
But the words that came out of the tortured boy's mouth were so much more.
They were the truth.
“I love you.”
Three words. Once again. Except these three tell a story. A story of pain. A story of loss. A story of strength. A story of corruption. A story of anger. A story of fear.
But most of all...
A story of trust.
Harry kissed Draco’s forehead, brushing his pale blond hair out of the way.
Harry didn’t know what to say.
Silently, he tried the words out.
They seemed foreign to him, his lips curling awkwardly as the heavy weight of his love sat precariously on his tongue.
It wasn’t until the wee hours of the morning, when draco had long since escaped into darkness, that he finally managed to whisper them.
“I love you, too”