FOUR.
Draco scribbles out another sentence with his quill, getting more and more frustrated with each line he draws over the words. He crumples up the sheet of parchment into a ball and throws it on the pile beside his leg. With a soft thud, his head rests against the trunk of the tree he's been sitting under. He rubs his eyes.
"Gods, this shouldn't be this fucking hard," he mumbles to himself. It's a letter to his mother - his mother. It's a letter to the woman who raised him, who held him, who was the only constant in his ridiculous life. It's a letter to the one person who's always loved him, the only one he can trust, the only one he feels safe around. And he can't fucking write it. It's quite pathetic, really, he thinks to himself. Can't even write a letter to his own mother - what is he even good for then?
But he just doesn't know what to say. Ever since the incident at the lake, she's been more protective, and therefore more observant with what he writes, and it makes everything ten times more complicated than it should be. The worst part, though, is that she's mostly right. It's like she can see right through him. She knows that today was ok means something happened to stop today from being good and uneventful means no one hexed me in the halls today and Pansy, Blaise, and I have been focusing on our schoolwork means we all know we have to work extra hard because we can't give anyone a reason to reject us in the future, especially me. She calls it a mother's intuition. He's starting to worry that they lied when they said legilimency works best when you can look someone in the eye.
So, if he says something like I've been spending a lot of time in my room lately trying to figure out how to write a stupid fucking poem, she'll know something is wrong, and she'll worry, and Draco can't bear to add any more to gloom to his mother's life. She has enough of her own to handle already.
He taps the top of his quill on the parchment twice and two dots form in the corner of the sheet. He looks at the blemish and sighs.
Looking up from his failed letter, his eyes roam over the grounds around him. It's a crisp fall day - the kind that attracts people outside in hoards. He sees multiple groups of the younger students spread out over the lawn - a group of green ties by the lake, a few yellow by the doors to the castle, a group of red heading toward the Quidditch pitch. He frowns - even now, mixing is hard.
His eyes stray to a particular group on the grass - a group of three. Granger is laughing, pulling a book away from Weasley's prying hands - Weasley's almost falling over trying to get it, his red hair bright against the backdrop of dull, mid-autumn green, and Potter has his hands on his stomach, laughing, tipping so far back that he's almost lying on the grass. He looks at each one of them in turn - they should have this. They should be happy.
His gaze settles on Harry. Harry, with his stupid green eyes and his unruly curly hair and his infuriatingly soft smile. Harry, who gets stormed by first years and third years but smiles pleasantly and answers their questions and lets them hug him. Harry, who is too good for his own good. The Boy Who Lived Twice. The Boy who shouldn't have had to in the first place. The boy who keeps saving Draco, no matter how much he doesn't deserve it.
The boy who makes him want to smile, even though he'll never admit it, not even to himself.
Harry is beautiful like that, Draco decides - with his glasses slightly crooked, falling down his nose, and his eyes closed, little crinkles forming around the edges. He looks carefree, like any other teenage boy, and not the capital-s Savior of the Wizarding World - he's just Harry. Just pure, bright, warm Harry. He's everything Draco isn't, and maybe that's what's always drawn Draco to him.
Draco is sharp edges and snide comments, attitude and arrogance and pride. He's walls upon walls and ice-cold stares with a paradox of soft, delicate hands. He's winter's night and spring rain and moon shine while Harry is the summer breeze and autumn leaves and a moment's peace. A moment's peace. Draco sighs and looks down at the parchment in front of him. He dips his quill in his ink and sets it on the paper.
You are the peace I've never found and the ease I'll never feel - you are every almost and every maybe that I've been too much of a coward to ever pursue. You are what my fingers have always grazed, but my hands have never grasped, every dissatisfaction, every lack, every longing. You -
"Hey, what are you writing?"
Draco jumps, turning the paper over so fast that he almost rips it.
"Merlin and Morgana, who in the - " He begins, about to give whoever it was a piece of his mind, but when he looks up, he finds none other than Harry Potter staring down at him and he has no idea why. A million thoughts flow through his head - the most frequent ones being what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck and what do I SAY, Merlin, help me - before he stops thinking for a second and remembers he has to actually say something. He blinks up at Harry, who is looking down at him expectantly with a (growing) dash of concern and - oh, there is that look again, the one where he furrows his eyebrows a little and begins to look Draco over like an injured bird.
He has to answer.
What am I writing about?
You.
"Um, homework?" he says, though it was more a question than an answer. He wants to hit his head against the tree behind him. He doesn't - he almost does, but he doesn't. Yet. Harry nods slightly and puts a hand in his pocket. He's wearing Muggle clothes: a hooded sweatshirt, jeans, a T-shirt. Messy hair. No effort, yet the prick looks good. He always looks good in the carefree-windswept-boy-next-door-charming sort of way - it's mostly because of the hair, he swears it. The way he's standing doesn't help either, Draco decides - tall and confident but casual, with his shoulders slack and his head tilted to the side and his arms at an angle because of his hands in his damned pockets (which bothers Draco immensely even though he doesn't necessarily know why it bothers him, but it does so he must be doing something wrong). It's aggravating. But Draco is mentally digressing, and Harry is beginning to look more concerned, probably because Draco has probably been staring at him, and Draco thinks Harry asked him something when he wasn't listening.
Draco is useless around boys, it seems.
"I'm sorry, what did you say?" he asks, shaking himself out of his thoughts.
"Um, I asked for which class," Harry says with a (stupid) half-grin.
"Runes. A translation."
Draco is almost happy that he answered quickly and casually, but that happiness fades when he sees Harry look between him and his paper.
"Don't you need an original text for that? Hermione always has one - one of her textbooks, a page covered in symbols that I can't make heads or tails of, you know, something like that."
Draco blinks again. Once, twice. He's an idiot. An idiot and useless. Of course he'd need something to fucking translate when he says that - he really can't believe himself. He doesn't even have anything in his bag to pass off as work for Ancient Runes, just a book on arithmancy that is very much in English. Harry doesn't know that, though. Draco just hopes that Harry doesn't mention that he'd actually written something on the paper because he doesn't have an explanation for that one. But then again - this is Harry Potter, and Potter is not known for noticing things, so he thinks he'll be safe.
"My book is in my bag; I was just about to get started."
"Oh, well, if you're busy - "
"No, no. Not - busy. Per se. Right now, at least. I mean, I can do it later."
"Great - great," Harry says, nodding his head.
"Yeah, great."
Harry takes a hand out of his pocket and attempts to straighten his hair. He only messes it up more - which was to be expected - before putting it in his pocket again.
"Um, you needed something?" Draco asks, setting his quill down.
"Oh - uh - nothing, actually. Came over to say hi. So, uh, hi."
"Hello..."
And now Draco sees that Harry Potter is also useless, which makes him feel only slightly better. They look at each other for a moment in silence - a very uncomfortable silence - sticky and suffocating, like being in a humid room on a sunny day. It sticks to Draco's throat, making any attempts at conversation catch before they can flow out of his mouth. What's up - too casual, How are you feeling - too loaded, How are classes - impersonal, Do you still see him in your nightmares, too - rough and raw and jagged and just, no.
So, he looks up at Harry towering over him like he feels like he's done his whole life. Even before they met in first year, he'd heard his story, sometimes whispered in awe, sometimes shouted in joy, sometimes spat in incredulous spite - but always told. The image of him infiltrated his life long before the real thing, but both always made him feel so small. When he was young, the Boy who Lived was a symbol of his insignificance: a baby had achieved more than most achieve in their lifetime, more than he could ever achieve, no matter how much he tried. When he grew older, Harry Potter became a rival: someone to show him all the cracks he had tried to ignore and hope they disappear one day. Then, the Chosen One made him question everything he ever knew. And now, the same boy is standing in front of him, one hand out of his pockets, fiddling with his zipper, trying to talk to him in a civil manner, and Draco doesn't know what to call him anymore - doesn't know how to define him anymore, and he doesn't exactly know when that happened.
Draco blinks again (he's been doing that a lot today, he thinks, does he need to go to Madame Pomfrey? Do his eyes have a problem?) and notices that he hasn't asked Harry to sit yet.
"Merlin, where are my manners? Sit, please, sit," he offers hurriedly, moving his bag to his other side, next to the mountain of crumpled-up papers.
Harry gives him a smile and sits down facing him, cross-legged. Draco straightens up a little, his back resting against the trunk of the tree behind him. He sets his parchment and book aside with his quill on top and puts his hands in his lap.
"Uh, so," Harry begins, "How have you been?"
"Good. I've been good. You?"
"Good. I've been good, too."
Harry looks down at his hands. His elbows are resting on his knees, and his hands are clasped in front of him, his fingers laced together. He's slightly hunched forward, as opposed to Draco's rigid posture against the tree.
"Nice weather we're having," Draco comments, raising his hand to gesture at the sky - mentally kicking himself when he does because of course Potter knows where the sky is, you complete moron. "Yeah, the sun is, er, shining," Harry agrees, and they fall into silence again.
Draco internally sighs. How does one talk to someone they'd spent almost their entire school life hating? How do they sit and have a conversation that doesn't consist of insults and ridiculous showing off? He almost misses it, being able to talk to (or, rather, poke at) Harry without thinking. It was much easier than whatever they're trying to do right now - a jibe there, a sneer here and he could get Harry's full attention, his eyes blazing because of him and him only, and rile him up until he had no choice but to answer back.
But, though it was admittedly much easier, it was hollow. Hurtful and hollow. It's one of the many things he thinks about now, how all of his words before were nothing but empty vessels of spite, designed for pain and nothing more. His words were meaningless. Thinking about it makes his mouth sour.
"Thanks for your help. In Potions, I mean. It's really been a help to me - and Ron."
Ever since the first time Draco did so, him helping Harry (and, by extension, Ron) had become routine. It happened twice every session: first, Draco would give Harry advice while they were getting their ingredients at the beginning of class, and then again, toward the middle of the period, he'd walk over to his desk to ask for something (he has probably four of Harry's quills because of this, two of which were almost certainly originally Hermione's) and check their progress, again giving any advice and answering any questions that Harry (Ron still refused to talk to him) might have. There weren’t any doubts in Draco's mind that Slughorn knew what they were doing, but being the Savior of the Wizarding World has its perks, he assumes, so no one has said anything yet.
Draco gives him a small smile, "It's no problem, really. Anything to keep you and Weasley from blowing up the classroom, you know." His smile widens at the end of the sentence. It was a tease, not an insult like it would've been in the past, and instead of Harry's mouth pressing into a thin line, like it had so many times before, the ends tug up in a smile, and a small laugh puffs out from between his lips. It made Draco's chest feel slightly warmer. Yes, he decidedly likes this feeling much more than the fleeting sense of false satisfaction he'd used to feel, and he'd quite like to feel like this again in the future.
The silence returns between the two boys, a little less awkward, but still wholly unwelcome. Harry had started to pick at the grass, Draco notices. Probably bored already, he thinks. He wishes he could just figure out what to say.
He knows what he should say - knows what he wants to say - but he was afraid. Harry smiles at him now - is concerned about him now - he even came to sit next to him. Bringing up the past would make him lose this. The past is a rotten, bitter thing; it ruins and taints, opening old wounds and tracing over old scars, or, at least, his will. The brave thing would be to bite the broomstick and get it over with, but Draco was never brave. But he wanted to change that, didn't he?
"So, um, potions - "
"Potter, I think we should talk about something," Draco says, his voice much stronger than he felt inside, but then again, he knew how to bluff (his father had wanted him to be a politician, after all).
"Oh. Um, ok. What about?" Harry straightens slightly, dropping the pieces of grass he was picking at on the ground. Draco takes a deep breath.
"About - before - "
Harry stops him, "You've already apologized, we don't need to talk about it again."
"But I do. Please?"
Harry hesitates before nodding his head, "Ok, go on."
"It was wrong - the things I did, the things I said. I was wrong. First, I was a brat. No - stop, we both know I was. Don't try to erase what I did and what I was, that's not what I want. I tormented you and your friends when we were younger, which wasn't too long ago, I might add. The name-calling, the bullying - making fun of Weasley, fighting with you, hell, even cheating at Quidditch - Potter, I see you opening your mouth, don't even try; we both know my whole team tried, and Weasley is Our King was not in any way playing fair. And then, the - " he swallows, "the serious things. The... pureblood supremacy. What I did and said to Granger - that word. The ideas that I had in my head, it was just - it was - it was fucking horrifying."
He runs a hand through his hair - he's babbling, he knows.
"And I don't know why you're being so nice to me right now - I don't understand it in the slightest. I don't know if you feel sorry for me, or if this is part of the whole 'unity' thing, but I just want you to know, I'm grateful for it. And I know I can't make it up to you three, to anyone really, but I can try, and I want to try. I - "
"Malfoy, breathe," Harry let out an awkward laugh, "I appreciate it, I do. Genuinely. And maybe we can - er - not start over, there's too much there to start over, really - " Draco's heart sinks " - but, we could still start fresh now. Try again." He grins. "Maybe this time you'll be less of an ass."
Draco shakes his head and smiles in spite of himself. "So eloquent, Potter, I'm in awe," he drawls, teasing.
Harry holds out his hand, and Draco's brows raise in surprise - he never thought he'd be on the other side of this gesture.
"New beginnings?" Harry asks.
Draco nods and takes Harry's hand in his own. They shake on it.
"New beginnings."
And maybe Draco is winter, and maybe Harry is summer, but maybe, after all this time, they can meet somewhere in the spring.