Lavender

This is for the lions living in the wiry broke down frames

Of my friends' bodies

When the flood water comes, it ain't gonna be clear

It's gonna look like mud

But I will help you swim

I will help you swim

I'm gonna help you swim

This is for the snakes and the people they bite

For the friends I've made, for the sleepless nights

For the warning signs I've completely ignored

There's an amount to take, reasons to take more

Around eleven - thirty after a hasty dinner of more chinese food Lupin and Black go into Harry’s room and Draco walks into his, disgruntled, followed by the other boy.

Draco had eaten through the books on Harry’s shelf, something that was quite evident through the multitude of them scattered around his bed and table. 

Harry takes off his shirt and socks then moves up to the far corner of the bed, pressed against the wall, Draco stands beside the bedside table because well, Harry Potter is in his bed, shirtless. Oh, a sixteen year old him would be so jealous, not that sixteen year old him was gay per se. 

“You changed the wall color then?” he asks Draco.

“Oh, right fuck, i shouldve asked.”

“No, no it’s nice - I had no idea ‘hopeless’ was a color.”

Draco doesn’t reply, just stands still like he had been petrified. 

“What are you waiting for?” Harry asks, turning to the wall. The small ridges of his spine were accentuated and Draco really did want to reach out and touch, he thought they’d be quite soft despite the way they looked. 

No he did not. 

“Right,” he says thickly, taking two of the four pillows on the bed and forming a sort of barricade. He then lies down next to the pillows stiffly.

A good half hour passes by and Draco still can’t fall asleep, he looks over to Harry. Harry isn’t the best sleeper, he knew that, overhearing crashes and a load of swearing late into the night quite often, but the boy was however snoring ever so lightly, it was almost endearing he thought. Harry twitched every three seconds, muttering something under his breath in a foreign tongue, he groaned and twisted and turned, not quite enough to wake up but to stay just on the brink of rest. 

I can’t sleep like this, Draco thinks to himself. He distangles himself himself from underneath the heaps of blankets he had piled upon himself and walks to the kitchen looking for something to eat. The large jar of peanut butter Harry made him promise he wouldn’t finish looked quite appetizing right now so he accios it towards himself. 

And that is why Harry finds Draco curled up under a blanket, propped against three sofa cushions licking peanut butter off his fingers at three in the morning. 

He doesn’t say anything at all, he just sits there next to him as though it were perfectly normal. Their knees brush against each other and their elbows knock together, something a lot like fondness sits in the rungs of Draco’s ribs. 

“People are coming over tomorrow.” Harry says finally. 

“What?”

“Hermione, Ron, Rose, Remus and Sirius, Neville maybe, Luna and Seamus.” He counts them off his fingers, “Also Dean.”

“Your ex?”

“Not exactly,” Harry scrunches up his face as though thinking very hard about what he’s going to say next, “We just - well, I guess we just mucked around, you know?”

Draco didn’t know but he nodded. 

“Oh don’t be cross.” Harry chides. 

“I’m not cross, why would I be cross?”

“Exactly, you’re not  my boyfriend, you don’t get to be cross.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Do I?”

“I don't know what we’re talking about anymore.” Harry says, looking up from the other end of the sofa. 

There’s a long pause. 

“Don’t slouch Potter,” Draco mutters finally, “It’s undignified.”

Harry exercises his free will by arching his back more than it should be humanly possible and throws up a V towards Draco. 

“Very mature.”

“Aren’t I?”

“Oh fuck off.”

Harry leans forward very suddenly, the lamp by the TV casts a warm glow over him and Draco quite obnoxiously thought he was going to get snogged by the boy, who instead just sticks out a finger and wipes a clean stripe of peanut butter from just beside Draco’s lip. His finger admittedly lingers there a moment longer than necessary, but he withdraws his hand then and licks it off. And he does all of this without taking his moss eyes off Draco's cold gray ones. 

Draco just about thought he’d die then with how fast his heart was beating. 

“Why aren’t you asleep?” Draco asks, and it comes out like an undignified squeak. 

“Bad dreams.” Harry runs a hand through his hair, “what about you?”

“Couldn’t”

“Oh.”

There’s another pregnant pause, the air is soaked in awkwardness. 

“How do you do it?” Draco asks finally.

“Do what?”

“Pretend you’re okay.”

“I’m not pretending.” 

“You are though, every single day.” 

Harry laughs, soft and bitter, as though regretful. “What would you want me to say here Draco?”

Draco. 

Draco doesn’t say anything. 

“Not all of us have rich daddies and nice mummies, you know.”

And that’s what sets him off. 

“Fucking hell?!” he turns towards Harry, looking as offended as a blonde with peanut butter smeared across his face could, “my father is dead, Potter - thanks for that by the way -” 

“He literally mass murdered people bro.” Harry mutters. 

“- and my mother is in her head somewhere, dreadful and miserable, so i’m sorry for trying to be nice over here-”

“Did a good job of hiding the nice part.”

“Stop being such a fucking martyr.”

“I am a fucking martyr! Died for your sins and all, didn’t I? A better looking Christ is what I am.” Harry half - yelled. 

“You’re just drowning in self pity aren't you?”

“Well I’d bloody hope so, seeing people you love dying will do that to you.”

“I watched my best friend burn, Potter.” 

“Your best friend wanted to kill me, sorry if I’m not flowing with sympathy here.”

“Look mate,” deep breaths, “I’m just saying, you aren’t the only one who's been through shit.”

“I ain’t saying I am.” Harry crosses his arms and Draco looks at him completely. His wiry frame was shaking, actually fucking shivering, he was tugging on his hair distractedly and pinching his skin. The lamp light washed the room a warm golden and it accentuates his eyes and makes him look almost edible. If this were a bird Draco would’ve probably stuck his tongue in her ear and told her something dripping with charm. The thought of having his tongue anywhere on, in, Harry made a small tremble run up his spine. Deep breaths. 

“Are you okay?”

“What?” Harry asks, disconcerted with the change in conversation. 

“I asked are you -”

“I know what you asked.” Harry inhaled - exhaled, once, twice - “Sorry.”

“What?”

“I’ve been a prick, I know.”

Draco shrugs. 

“I don’t like letting people know too much, like I barely go out anymore because of the constant scrutiny.” He paused and met Draco’s eyes, “it’d difficult, you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well I don’t know loads about wizard stuff, sure i know the charms and hexes but the real shit, like do y’all wash your dishes? Use a spell? Who knows? Certainly not me-”

“Spells.” Draco mutters, “quite like doing it the muggle way to be honest.”

Harry quirked an eyebrow. 

“Shut up.” Draco says defensively. 

“I’m not even talking!” Harry protests, a smile ghosting his face. 

“Well you were going to,”

“Was. Not.” Harry punctuates this by lunging two cushions towards Draco, which he deflects with a wave of his hand, a small laugh startles from him. “It’s relaxing, the dish washing.”

“Do the laundry too, from now on.”

“...I’ve been doing your laundry since I got here.”

“Touché”

They sit together for a while, neither saying anything they really want to, legs tangled together and elbows knocking into each other. 

“Dumbledore, then?” says Draco after a considerable pause.

“What about him?” Harry replies stiffly. 

“Uh… weren’t you close?”

“Withered old goat.”

“Excuse me?”

“Dumbledore i mean.”

“I thought you people were matey pals?”

“Yes actually, until he figured out how my parents would be alive if not for that dingy dangling duck.”

“Alliteration.”

“Mhmm.”

Harry doesn’t elaborate, Draco doesn’t ask him too, he notices the way Harry’s knee is bouncing off his socket and the way he’s scratching away the skin off his thumb with his ring finger. He gently places a hand over Harry’s and the boy freezes immediately. 

Draco counts till five and removes his hand, Harry doesn’t move and he looks very kissable he thinks. 

As soon as that flits through his head, alarm bells start ringing, he realizes how close he is to him, how he could just lean over and -

He coughs loudly, “going to bed then.” He says getting up and forcing his facial muscles into what he personally thought was a very sweet smile. Harry gets up almost immediately to follow him and in his haste trips over his own feet, without a thought Draco grabs his arm. 

“Damn, buy me dinner first.” 

Draco lets go of his hand and Harry falls on his back. A startled laugh escapes him.

‘I’d quite like to catch his laughter from the air and thread it into a blanket.’ Draco thinks. 

Harry gets up again without any major casualties, he stretches out, shirt riding up his ribs and Draco can do little but stare at the strip of skin. He then screws the peanut butter jar’s lid back on and charms it back into it’s cupboard in the kitchen.

“That’s mine,” he says. 

“Debatable.”

“Debate then.”

“It’s only the intellectually lost who ever argue.”

“Do you quite often quote Oscar Wilde?” Harry raises an eyebrow, “besides who’s talking about arguing?”

“You’ve read Dorian Gray, Potter? I didn’t know you could read.”

“Haven’t come up with anything new since second year, eh Malfoy?”

Draco elbows Harry in the side and leaves him there, returning to his room. He expected the boy to come in with him but a good twenty minutes pass and he doesn’t, not that Draco was counting, mind you. 

And so he sleeps alone like he does every other day, hugging a pillow and imagining it to be a scarhead. 

Draco was a sad, pathetic man.