Chapter 6
“No!”
“Yes!”
Draco slammed a ringed hand on Pansy’s table as he nearly wept with laughter. One of Pansy’s precious porcelain cats tumbled off her shelf and shattered on the ground. Draco was already five glasses in of Pansy’s finest wine; they were both too drunk to care.
“And then,” Draco barely made out over Pany’s cackling, “he says to Harry, ‘would you like to see my magic wand?’ And Harry has no fucking idea—”
“I’m sure that’s the last time he brought home a Muggle, yes?”
“Actually, no! The next one was even worse—”
Pansy glanced at her watch, which had just started making an odd, high-pitched whirring noise.
“Oh, dear. Draco, darling, you’re going to have to finish your thrilling story later—I’m expecting some company over in a bit.”
She raised her eyebrows suggestively. Draco rolled his eyes.
“I’ve been gone for two months and you’re kicking me out of your house just because you’re a whore, Parkinson.”
“Guilty as charged, Malfoy!”
She blew a scarlet kiss in his general direction. He waved it away.
“But,” she said, raising her eyebrows once more, “I can’t help dwelling on your usage of Potter’s first name. I wasn’t aware you two were on first-name basis?”
Draco nearly blushed, although his years of remaining stoic in the face of adversity saved him, thank God.
“You’re reaching, Pans. Just because I had a rivalry—”
“—an overwhelmingly homoerotic pre-pubescent obsession, you mean—”
“—with H—Potter did not make the two months I was forced into imprisonment any more bearable,” said Draco scathingly. “He continues to be the most arrogant, profusely irritating, and self-absorbed wizard I have ever had the displeasure of knowing, and under no circumstances would I feel any kind of sick, fluffy attachment to that inordinately stupid man, especially one in which you are insinuating, Pansy, a romantic kind. Did you know he has a hair care routine?” Draco finished with a flourish, projecting a bit of spittle onto Pansy’s silk robe that she now draped over her form lazily. For the third time that night, she raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow.
“It seems I’ve offended you, Malfoy.” He could hear the laughter in her voice.
“Not at all, Parkinson,” Draco spit back. “I just want to be clear on my intentions with Potter. He and I are done—that is to say, we had two months in hell, loathing each others company the entirety of my time, and—hopefully—I shall never have to see his irritating face again!’
After grumpily being shooed out of Pansy’s house (and running into three very gorgeous, gender ambiguous people in silk robes, leaving him confused and blushing), Draco walked home. Though he could always Apparate, he and Pans purposely rented houses near each other, so it made more sense to walk.
The cold, foggy air sobered him up quickly, and by the time he’d come to the main street leading home, his head was much clearer.
He had no idea why he’d lied at Pansy’s house. Although Harry had been all of the things he’d described and worse at his school, he had been frustratingly mature about the whole situation and, almost always, kind, funny, and extraordinarily goofy. And, contrary to what Draco might have thought, he had found Harry to be quite amiable and respectful, modest, almost shy, and seemed to have a kind of dislike for talking about himself or his accomplishments. He liked watching movies with Jane Austin-esque heroines purely for the soft-eyed male love interests. He seemed to enjoy reading classics with impressive vocabulary and morals, but Draco could tell he had a soft spot for ridiculous Muggle gossip columns, especially, for some odd reason, the American People magazine where he’d read Draco all about the lavishly disgusting sex lives of famous people neither of them knew. This, more than the reading and the bandaging and the talking, felt the most intimate of everything Draco had witnessed during his stay; Harry had told him multiple times that he didn’t dare tell anyone, not even his closest friends, as he thought they’d make fun of him.
Draco really had enjoyed getting to know this side of Harry that he had never allowed Draco to see. Draco saw Harry as a godfather, saw the brightness in his eyes as he swept Teddy into a hug and the bittersweetness in his voice when he would talk about Teddy’s parents.
On the other hand, Draco got to see Harry through the eyes of the men and women he took home during Draco’s stay. He saw the dangerous glint in his eye as he led them to his room, and would often hear a low, grumbling laugh, not unlike the one Harry had for Draco when Draco would do something embarrassing, like fall off Harry’s kitchen table, or fall asleep on his lap. Draco would seek solace in Harry’s office, the farthest room from Harry’s bedroom, when the other, more filthy noises would start, and he would purposely look away when Harry would stumble out, hours later, with his goddamn sex hair and lopsided smile. He thought he’d probably combust if Harry looked at him the way he looked at his lovers.
Draco also got to see Harry surrounded by his friends: the older Weasley, finally growing into his ears, but his gangliness pronounced even more than it was, his position as stay-at-home dad; Granger, her know-it-all self just as present but somehow less annoying as she had been, smart, kind and funny; the younger Weasley and Lovegood, all aglow with wedding plans; and even Longbottom, who stopped by one time to help Harry out with one of his plants. This was always difficult for Draco to see. He would fight the feeling of jealousy, as he always had, that he wasn’t someone who made Harry’s eyes glow with excitement or fill his house with ringing laughter.
Draco popped into a small corner store as he was almost home; it was one of the only stores open at this hour and Draco needed a cigarette. It had been a filthy habit he’d picked up after his father’s incarceration and, later, death, and he figured now was as good a time as any to pick it up again. As he was waiting in line to pay, his eyes snagged on a magazine–the People magazine Harry was always so fond of. It didn’t even look that interesting; just a bunch of flashy titles and posing celebrities. But Draco picked it up closer to inspect it.
It hit him then, like a ton of bricks. Draco dropped the magazine.
“Oh, fuck.”
The woman in front of Draco looked back at him, frowning.
Draco started chuckling, laughing, actually, in the check out-line in the corner store. He ended up buying the magazine. He left the cigarettes outside on a bench; someone else could have them.
Draco nearly ran home in his excitement. The second he got to his building, he shuffled through his things desperately, until he’d found all the newspaper clippings of Potter that he’d saved over time. Most every single one featured the same photo–a close up of the first publicized arrest Potter had made–dragging Lucius Malfoy away from his wife and son in handcuffs, with a determined smirk on his full mouth. Draco had stared at this photo for years, filled with hatred, and disgust, and sadness and, he had just realized, longing. It was still crashing over him like a wave. Draco was on a high that he couldn’t, under any circumstances, come down from.
He was in love with Harry Potter.