The grass is cool beneath them, the sun lulling, warm. They lie amongst the apples in the grass, the branches of the trees that tower above them from the ground creaking because of the wind.
Harry had found a box of apple tarts and pies that some enamoured fan-girl had gifted him, and so he had brought it.
It’s peaceful, the coast is clear here, they can’t find him, them. His arm is pressed up against Malfoy’s, and he doesn’t want to move because they’ve never been this close. His glasses are discarded somewhere amongst the apples.
His hand that’s not by Malfoy finds a little patch of clovers, and he plucks one from the ground, holds it up, counts how many leaves it has— just three.
“You should go.” Malfoy says, and Harry feels something in him break, a light shattered, all the tiny shards piercing him. The clover falls from his fingers, taken by the wind.
“What,” He starts, and Malfoy turns his head away, still lying on the ground. His hair falls over his eyes, and he closes them, closing off a part of himself from Harry. Rays of sun break through the leaves, painting his face with the glow of sun, his hair an almost holy shade of blonde that has Harry on the verge of kneeling before God himself.
“This—“ Malfoy says, eyes clenched shut, head still tilted away from Harry, “It won’t work. What’s your plan when the paparazzi find out— Weasley, Granger?”
Harry sits up, leaning against the palms of his hands, feeling betrayed by the sun whose rays are making it hard to look in Malfoy’s direction, too bright, too consuming for his eyes.
“They don’t need to know— they won’t know—“ He hurries, and the words are falling out of his mouth like a river that’s broken free from its path and is traveling in the wrong direction. “Ron wouldn’t tell anyone— Hermione would un—“
Malfoy gets up, mouth a straight line, dusts off his trousers, turns away. “They’re everywhere,” he mutters. “Every street you walk on, every house you leave, every room you enter. Us? You would never live it down. You’d be cursed.”
The sun is vivid against him, leaving only the silhouette of his tall frame visible. His hair is like a halo with the tufts that the breeze is lifting being lit up by the sun behind them. Harry wants to intertwine his fingers in it, tie himself to all the parts of Draco Malfoy. He can hardly see him.
Harry fumbles around for his glasses, scrambling around clasping at strands of grass in the hopes of them turning up.
Malfoy turns again, even further from Harry, this time the angles of his nose highlighted. He sighs, making to leave, before pausing, face blank, but eyes melancholy.
“We both know what we would’ve become.” He says, and Harry splutters, because he doesn’t know, and he would at least have liked to be granted the knowledge of what it was they would’ve become.
“Sit, Malfoy, what are you doing?” Harry gets up, grabbing his arm, and Malfoy freezes, slowly peers down at where Harry’s arm is clasped on his. The sun brings forth an incandescent glow, infallible despite the tree that sits besides them.
Harry loosens his grasp, meeting Malfoy’s eyes. His hand slips down Malfoy’s arm, meeting his hand. He clasps it in his own. Malfoy’s hand is soft, yet so, so, cold despite the heat of the day.
He realises that Malfoy is shaking.
Malfoy is confusing, to Harry, because he isn’t quite sure what it is that Malfoy thinks, or how he feels, or what he wants. Yet despite that, despite the house of stone that Harry had put up over the years, over the past months, preventing others from getting too close, Malfoy invades, consumes, devours him.
But Malfoy seems insistent that everything they are— what they could become— will never work, that it’s a war not worth fighting.
“Run” Malfoy says, voice hollow, shaky. “All I do is ruin, Potter. I destroy things, everything I touch turns to gold—“
Harry doesn’t know what Malfoy means by that but he’s desperate, and all he wants is Malfoy, he realises, and he realises that the stone walls of the house that he kept himself in were broken down months ago, infected by Draco Malfoy, his roots tearing apart the land of his house that he hid in.
But it’s not sad, it’s not upsetting, it’s not aggravating.
All of Harry has been consumed by Draco Malfoy, but he feels more free than he ever has.
He sits, dragging Malfoy down next to him. He holds him tight, wraps an arm around him, keeping his other on him.
Malfoy is still shaky, still tense. “What are you doing, Potter, this is foolish—“ He spits, voice breaking.
“I’m sitting, and watching what we’ll become.”