Chapter 2
Draco saw Potter at the train station next. Potter was smiling as he talked with his little sidekicks, Weasley and Granger. He had a beautiful smile. It was not the first time Draco noticed. It was the first time he let himself think that so clearly, unapologetically, unlike before when such thoughts were buried under the pressure of gaining his father's approval.
Draco had been in love with Potter longer than he himself knew. He might have felt the first stirrings of such a thing the first time he laid eyes on him in the robe shop. It only grew exponentially the moment he learned he was Harry Potter, the boy he grew up hearing stories about, the boy he dreamed he would befriend and go on adventures with.
Then the rejection. He had thought it all shifted to anger and hatred in that moment, but found the true nature of his feelings peek out in the ways he stared at Potter across rooms and the Great Hall, and the way he felt when he saw him laugh and smile; a bitter kind of jealousy that he soon learned came from not being the person who caused it, and not because he simply hated seeing Potter happy.
It was only in the last year or so that he had honestly come to accept what he felt, now that Draco no longer sought his father's approval as much.
From what Draco knew, mates were selected randomly and the veelas' feelings towards a particular person did play a major role in determining that they would be the mate. After seven years of loving Potter in secret - how could it have been anyone else?
But alas, here they were. The years of heartache and feelings that bordered on anguish some days, repressed and ignored and turned to hatred when he couldn't bear them, had now all come to ruin him in the most physical way.
He watched Potter get on the train across the crowds. He waited a few moments so that he would be certain he wouldn't run into Potter in the corridors of the train, before slowly making his way to it.
Draco's mother couldn't be here. Though she wasn't a Death-Eater, she was an adult that was heavily associated with them and was now on House Arrest for five years. He was on probation and under condition to attend Hogwarts for his last year. His father was still in Azkaban.
It was lonely to walk alone towards the train, to know there was nobody there to look back to. He moved through the corridor of the train and passed by Potter's laugh in a compartment and his heart felt sick. It felt sick with love as much as hurt.
It was lonely to look out the window and see there was no one standing there, watching him go. He missed his mother and he missed his father and he even missed his friends that scattered off to other countries because they were free and they could afford it; Blaise to Beauxbatons, Pansy to some school in Italy, Goyle to Durmstrang.
He missed Crabbe too. Draco stayed awake some nights thinking about the precise second he had watched Crabbe slip and fall off into the fire in front of him, Draco's body jerking towards him and hand closing around air, wide-eyed and terrified. He had held onto Goyle for dear life after, fearing he would lose him to the same fate.
Draco dreamt of it even. Sometimes in his dreams, he watched them both die. Sometimes he watched everyone he loved die. Sometimes it was himself. Sometimes he saved everyone he loved at the expense of himself and his last thought as he fell was, why had I not been this brave before, when I needed to be? He woke up aching and almost disappointed when he remembered he had never been brave in his entire life.
Nowadays, in his nightmares of the Fiendfyre, he watched Potter fly away into the distance on his broom, leaving him behind.
Draco sat alone in the compartment and wished he could have found another empty compartment somewhere much further away. He could hear Potter's voice and his laughter from here, one compartment over where Potter was right against the wall Draco sat against, everything else only background to him. It was all he could focus on for the entire trip.