Lavender

Strange as it was, Draco knew he kind of meant what he said. He didn’t want people to know, he didn’t want to do it either. I mean he did think about Harry fucking him into the floorboards and running his tong- 

Draco was not ok with what was going on in his head. Not one little bit. He was not ok with whatever just happened either.

So he just sits there on the sofa with his conscience carefully stashed away in the ridges of his spine so it wouldn’t come in the way.  

Draco had his entire life planned out by the time he was sixteen, he had an image somewhere in the back of his head - not something in particular, more like a scatter of images, a love poem in itself. Lord fucking hipsquat trying to take over the world did thwart his plans a little bit, with the terrorisation and the constant threat of death, but he was trying to get back on his feet - he was trying his best. 

He looks back to the first six months after the war, something that always skirted around the edges of his thoughts, something he actively avoided thinking about. 

Those were the worst times. The trials, no money, his dead father. 

His mother was supposed to be there, if not for him at least for herself, but she wasn’t, and Draco couldn’t exactly blame her. He suspected he’d act the same if he lost his entire life in the fall of an hour. 

Lucius Malfoy was a terrible, terrible man. Draco knew that, he acknowledged the fact, he wasn’t a fool in denial, but he was still his father, Draco still did have some sort of genetic obligation to love him. 

He remembered his chain smoking, the first time he found out about his father he had just sat in his cold dark room, the one he had grown up in - and smoked two entire packets of cigarettes.

Draco doesn’t like reminiscing, it often brought about unwarranted tears and dissociation. He recognised the triggers to his anxiety now. He gropes around for his wand, deep breaths, his ribs felt too small for his lungs. Deep. Fucking. Breaths. 

He flicks his wand at the tv, just for some type of white noise to fill the space. He glances towards Harry’s room for a second, it was open just a sliver, as though waiting for someone to push it open and come in. 

The TV shows some kind of crap that only airs at two in the morning. 

Draco wants to pile under the cushions and blankets on the sofa and disappear. He craved that just then. Isolation isn’t safety though, a sweet poison. If no one knows you’re alive, you really are not. 

And then Draco realizes what a fucking huge drama queen he is. A boy refuses to have sex with him and all of a sudden he’s blaming himself for his parents marriage problems and what not. 

So what if Harry was a bloke though? It doesn’t really change anything. It had been one week and  a fucking half. A little too less for an identity crisis and a world changing crush. 

It was too soon. Way too soon. 

Draco hadn’t really ever fallen for someone per se. There was Astoria Greengrass in sixth year but they were sixteen it was barely anything more than making out and clumsy groping. He makes a mental note to owl her one of these days. 

Point being, he didn’t know what to do. No one had made him dinner or laughed with him till late into the night in almost two years. It was a liberating sort of freedom, or maybe it was just a lot of unrecognized loneliness. 

And again, a week and a half was too soon. 

Three days went by and neither of the boys said a word to each other aside the hastily muttered ‘good mornings’ and ‘do the fucking dishes malfoy it’s been five fucking hours.’

It wasn’t awkward, they both just did not want to be around each other. Draco painted himself an image of shame bordered rage and Harry was a mystery as he usually was. On the fourth day however Harry tentatively approaches him to the sofa where he had taken home.

“I need you to go out with me.” He says, no ‘hiya, how’s it been?” or anything.

“What?”

“Yeah well, it’s been more than a week since we’ve gone out isn’t it?”

“I don’t want to go out with you.”

Harry scowls, “Ditto mate, just that we’re -” he gestures between the two of them, “-a thing, and we’ve bloody well got to act like it.”

“Yeah, no I don't think I  can act like -” he imitates Harry’s gestures exaggeratedly, “-I’m a thing with you right now.”

“Then fucking break up with me, just do it proper.”

Draco sits up straighter at that, cocks an eyebrow, “Fake break up?”

“Well obviously.”

The gears in his head start to turn. Look, Draco was never a nice person, he didn’t claim to be one either. 

“Yeah, that’ll work with me.” He smiles venom sweet, “sweetheart.”

Harry spares a withering gaze towards him and saunters off like the condescending arsehole that he very much is, with his crooked fucking smirk and his god awful hair and that shirt looked very much like it belonged to a very unhygienic troll.

He was so beautiful. 

Draco wakes up at eleven pm, as soon as he knows Harry is for sure asleep. And he knows that because he might have slipped him  a swig of sleeping draught with his tea. 

He changes into socially acceptable clothes and wraps on a robe, apparating to ‘Eugenia Ereid’s engagement rings’ skirting the edges of Diagon Alley. 

And so the next day he walks hand in hand with his lord and savior Harry Potter into the streets of wizarding london. 

People stare, more than last time even perhaps, and Draco basks in it. He knows for a fact what he’s about to do is just the pettiest things anyone could do but he relishes too much in his wit to recognise it. 

A witch holds up a camera, two wizards give them side-eyes, no one actually comes forth but a lot of people jut their chins out and hold their heads higher as condescendingly as they can while they walk by. Draco would have yelled at them but he would’ve practically done the same thing five years back.

Harry gets some grocery shopping done, Draco chips through the few coins in his pocket and pays for it despite Harry’s protest. The cashier stares. 

Draco buys a stack of parchment and some ink. Harry chides him about how something called ball-point pens are more effective, Draco makes a crude joke that’d earn him an approving thump on his back from Sirius Black. An old lady with a black cat stares. 

“Do your break-up bit right after we leave, ok?” Harry mutters into Draco’s shoulder, guised as a laugh. 

They stir up quite a crowd outside Flourish and Blotts. The frugal late february sun bathes Harry in a magnificent way, Draco can practically hear him thinking, and before any repercussions strike he’s on one knee. 

If you would have suggested to a fifteen year old Draco that he’d be fake proposing to Harry sodding Potter in an awkward afternoon late february the chances of you getting yourself hexed into the next century would be quite high, however -

“Harry Potter, will you marry me?” Draco asks as sincerely as he could, he doesn’t blink so that his eyes could water and he’s biting his lip in a way that could have passed off as nervous instead of holding back a laugh. 

A camera flashes, everybody around stares. 

Harry takes a step back, his eyebrows shoot into his hair, he hiccups once, twice. “What?” he asks eloquently. 

“Will you marry me?” Draco repeats, smiling wide as he could. He starts counting,  one, two, three, people around were getting restless, all tapping feet and bitten fingernails. 

Harry still looks like someone kicked him very hard in the stomach but he rearranges his facial expressions in the blink of a second, fast enough to be considered a trick of the light. He grins as though every dream he had as a twelve year old just knocked on his door with a box full of cookies.  It was so fake Draco wanted to throw up.

“Draco Malfoy, I will abso - fucking - luutely marry you.” He says, a little louder than a whisper. He lets Draco slip on the ring, a small one with a tiny engraved diamond on it. 

Cameras flash again, everywhere, Draco grinds his teeth, this was not supposed to happen, not one bit. Harry looks like christmas came early, he stretches out his hand as the crowd goes wild, as they bloody should too - the boy who saved the entire fucking world was fucking engaged to a fucking death eater by the looks of it. 

Former. Death. Eater.