19) Growing Up and Apart
When Draco returned home, cheeks flushed and smiling, he immediately knew something was going to happen. The apartment was dim, almost impossible in the bright light of Paris, but Theo had managed with a dozen of blackout blinds and shut windows.
He paused in the doorway and carefully set his duffle bag down. He'd been away for a couple days, not far just across the border to watch Ginevra's Quidditch match against the Cudley Cannons in Belgium. Half of the Weasley clan had been there and Draco had been invited, practically begged, by a hounding Bill Weasley, who was mourning his daughter's absence due to her return to Hogwarts. Draco had gone along happily.
He'd gone to a fair number of things quite happily in the last few months. London had given him peace, had settled an age old fury and he felt better, better than he had in a long time. This development had been met with great enthusiasm by his family and friends en masse who had been missing him dreadfully but never wanted to say as much. Draco had missed three years worth of time, more even if one counted the war, and he was playing catch up.
Only him, it seemed. The more Draco tried to expand their circle, the more Theo seemed to shrink inwards. He had tried just about everything to convince his boyfriend out with him, but Theo was content to laze about the flat and forget the outside world even existed. Draco indulged him his peace, Theo would come around when he felt like it and he would be there when it happened.
"I'm home," he called as he carefully shut the door behind him. Something felt odd, a feeling in his bones, a jittering he couldn't quite explain.
"Have fun?" came the voice from down the hallway.
"Sure. The Harpies won, obviously, with Ginny on the team it's inevitable. Bill's glumness evaporated briefly at the win, won him a fair share of money. Weasley is the only one stupid enough who still bets against the Harpies when they play the Cannons. Ginny introduced me to her team, apparently one of them is seeing Potter, rightly so I think. Potter's always been gone on Quidditch players, I would've ragged him about it but he's stuck in London helping Neville and Luna with some nefarious plant or the other. Everyone asked after you. Molly especially."
Draco could've gone on talking happily about the rest of the Weasleys (Merlin, if his younger self saw him spewing this much about the Weasley bunch, he'd have had a heart attack), but when he turned back around, shoes shucked off, the look on Theo's face shut him up.
"We should talk," Theo began and patted the sofa beside him.
Almost as if he were moving through sludge, Draco crossed the room to sit beside him. He had an uncanny ability of knowing, and what he knew right now didn't spell out anything good.
Theo's face, so beloved, so handsome seemed to be working through a series of movements too fast for Draco to decipher.
"I don't want to move back to London," he settled on saying.
Draco opened his mouth, closed it. He'd been cautiously putting feelers out for a potential move back to England. It felt like the last three years had paused his life and now it was finally moving forward again. He longed for home. He hadn't told Theo as yet, though it seemed that his boyfriend had caught wind of his plans.
"Pansy came by while you were away," he continued, answering the unspoken question. "Had a bunch of leaflets, photographs of shops and houses in England that you're looking to rent out. She was surprised I didn't know you'd been planning to move, open a Potions shop. She said it was all you'd been going on about for weeks."
Draco refined from rolling his eyes. It wasn't Pansy's fault, it was his and his alone. He had been meaning to speak to Theo and had kept putting it off. His reluctance had been for the very reason they were sitting beside each other now. They both knew it well enough. Time had come to make a decision and that decision seemed to be pulling them in opposite directions.
"I was going to tell you," Draco began, and he had been. He had just been waiting, terrified and delaying the inevitable. "I was hoping you'd move back home with me."
"Home?" Theo asked, and his voice was bleak. Hollowed. "This is home, Draco. France. We've been here for three years."
Shaking his head, he said, "It isn't. Not to me. London will forever be home for me. We came here for the war, it was never meant to be permanent. I was too afraid to go back then but I'm not anymore. Those few weeks when we went back for the wedding was the most peace I've felt in years."
"Why do you think that the world has changed?" Theo's voice was sharp with anger. "That they'll accept a Death Eater, two Death Eaters back into their midst ? That you'll never be more than that Mark on your arm? You won't, they'll spit on you in the streets, hex you behind your back. I can't live a life like that Draco."
"Maybe," the blonde acknowledged with a slight smile. "But the people that matter only see me as Draco, the rest of it fades away. I have a mother back home that I miss with every breath I take, a little cousin who I'd like to get to know. Tonks, Sirius, Aunt Andromeda, an entire family I never would have dreamed of. I ran away from the war, but I'm tired of running."
"Well, I don't have anyone!" Theodore was up from the couch now, moving a couple paces back shaking his head. "My father is in Azkaban, mother has disappeared. The rest of my family has washed their hands off of me. My closest thing I have to the Nott family is the bloody trust fund in my name!"
Standing up too, Draco took a gentle step forward, "You have me. You'll always have me."
His hand reached for his boyfriend but the dark haired boy shook his head, took another step back.
"It's not enough."
Draco would've crumpled there, would've screamed and raged. He had given up so much for Theo, he had turned his back on his life for him and here the other was saying it wasn't enough.
Instead, he took a deep breath, centred himself as he learnt in mediation, "Pansy, Blaise. The Greengrasses, Daphne and Astoria. The other Slytherins, Millie, hell even Greg. Hermione and Ron. My mother. There's more than enough people in your corner, you just have to see them."
Theo shook his head, voice low but resolute as he whispered, "It's not enough. The hatred of most of the wizarding world against a choice few. It will never be enough. London is my personal version of Hell and no amount of love will convince me back."
Draco was equally soft as he said, "I cannot stay. I love you, but if you ask me to, I can't."
"I know," Theo looked at him, smile watery and oh so beautiful. It was a look Draco would carry with him for the rest of his life. "I would never ask you to do that. You deserve to spread your wings Draco. You've kept them tucked to your chest far too long and I've let you. I've-I've depended on you far too much, to save me, to feed me, to always be there. You deserve to be your own person. You deserve an entire cup of tea, not a half-empty one and the only cup I have to give is half-empty. I refuse to let you choose me over the rest of your life anymore."
Draco was crying, stupid, half gasping sobs, "I never minded. Any of it. I was happy to do it. I love you."
"I love you too," Theo finally stepped forward and caught him up into a fierce hug, "but if we carried on, we'd destroy each other. I keep leeching life from you and you keep letting me."
In his heart of hearts, Draco knew he was right. Still it didn't make up for the hurt that felt like his world was ending all over again. He had loved Theo, as much as he was able, and that love had changed him. The hurt would take a long time to fade.
They held each other that night and when they fell into bed for a final, heart breaking time, they were both sobbing by the end of it. They fell asleep that way tangled in each other, and when morning came Draco dressed and moved through the apartment saying goodbye to the artificial but wholesome life they had created. He picked up the duffle bag still sitting by the door and made his way back home.
Nothing had ever hurt so much and yet felt so inexplicably right.