Rhythm
Draco wasn’t sure whether he should be flattered or annoyed that Potter kept falling asleep while he played. On the one hand, the music he played always ended with something soft, meant to lull Potter’s magic into a peaceful state. On the other, it meant that it was left up to Draco to bring him back up to the Eighth Year dormitory and put him to bed.
Looking down at Potter’s sleeping form, Draco sighed, defeated, knowing full well that it wasn’t something that he was actually that annoyed about.
Harry Potter was not the scrawny boy he’d been at eleven, Draco noticed all over again as he scooped him up. He was actually quite muscular. Then Draco desperately tried to un-notice that fact. He’d cast a weightless charm precisely so he didn’t have to worry about how completely non-scrawny Potter was, so what did it matter anyways? Focus, Draco, he chided himself. You don’t want to trip again, do you?
The first time it happened, he’d been thinking about Potter’s crooked smile and how it lined up perfectly with his crooked glasses when he reached the top of the stairs without realizing it, having to stumble forward to catch himself. Potter would have fallen down a couple flights worth of stairs if Draco hadn’t been able to cast another levitation charm last second. He knelt there, wand trained on Potter, shaking.
No more levitation charms, he decided right then. If Potter thought that falling asleep in the dungeons was a good idea, he could put up with Draco carrying him to bed. Honestly, Draco didn’t mind.
Potter shifted in his sleep, tucking his face further into Draco’s neck. Draco suppressed a smile, gripping him tighter. He definitely didn’t mind.
After depositing Potter in his room, Draco retreated to his own, climbing into his own bed, feeling like he was turning a time-turner once again. Every day had been the same for the last couple weeks: they would ignore each other throughout the day, Draco slipping in and out of classes unnoticed while Potter struggled to control his magic more and more.
Draco would wait for Potter to come to the dungeons each night, magic practically boiling around him. They didn’t talk much—nothing beyond simple greetings— and it bothered Draco, even if he didn’t know what else he would have to say to Potter. So instead of talking, Draco would play the piano for him, harnessing Potter’s magic with care. Magic safely contained once again, Potter would fall asleep, and Draco would carry him back to his room, feeling pathetic, wishing that he didn’t have to let him go.
--
Harry had a plan, and stealing one of the common room chairs was the first step.
Standing against one of the walls, covered by the Cloak, he eyed his target. It was a rather understated chair, comfy but faded, its original bright purple color having been lost to time. It was big enough to relax into and not in such high demand that its temporary disappearance would cause too much of a commotion.
The common room had just emptied. Harry glanced at his watch. It was nearly time to head down to meet Malfoy, so it was now or never. He began to walk forward, then cursed and backwheeled as Dean and Seamus burst through the tapestry that covered the common room entrance.
“Give it back,” Dean said, laughing.
“Absolutely not.” Seamus backed away with both hands hidden behind him, a grin stretching from ear to ear.
“I’m the only reason we even found that passageway—”
“You’re also the only reason we got caught,” Seamus interjected.
“—so I think I deserve at least half the spoils.”
They stood in a silent standoff across the room, sizing each other up. Then Dean’s eyes narrowed suddenly and he leapt forward, tackling Seamus to the ground. They tussled, both laughing maniacally. Seamus tossed what he had been holding far out of reach—two bars of Honeydukes finest, Harry saw—just as Dean gained the upper hand, pinning Seamus to the ground.
“Alright, alright, gerroff,” Seamus tried to complain, but Harry could hear the note of amusement in his voice.
“Absolutely not,” Dean said, using Seamus’s words against him. He leaned down close to Seamus and Seamus wrinkled his nose. “Not until I get an apology. A proper one.”
Seamus rolled his eyes good-naturedly, grin returning to his face. He picked his head up, closing the distance between them. Harry, hidden under his Cloak, stood in slack-jawed surprise. Dean and Seamus were snogging. He looked around helplessly at the otherwise empty common room. Dean and Seamus were snogging.
Finally, they broke apart. Seamus wiggled a bit, asking to be let free, which Dean did only once he had retrieved the chocolates from where Seamus had flung them. He held them both up with a smirk, raising his eyebrows before turning and running off towards the dormitories. Seamus scrambled up to follow him, hollering about fairness.
Harry watched them go, still in shock. About a million questions ran through his head. Did Dean and Seamus snog on a regular basis? Were they dating? Had they been dating while they’d been in school the first time around, or was this a recent development? Did other people know? Was it very taboo in the wizarding world? Harry frowned. While he knew very thoroughly Vernon Dursley’s views on the matter, he supposed he had no idea how Muggles at large felt.
The sound of a door slamming shut from the direction of the girls’ dormitories brought him out of his reverie. Right. Someone was coming, every mark on his body burned, Malfoy was waiting, and Harry still had a chair to steal. Quickly, he drew his wand, shrunk the chair, and stuffed it in his pocket. Mission complete, though now it felt rather anti-climatic.
Harry wanted to roll his eyes at himself—had he really gotten so used to struggle and frustration that he didn’t feel satisfied when a plan went right? He slipped out of the common room through the tapestry, hurrying towards the dungeons.
He slowed as he approached the door to the piano room, acting like he’d walked leisurely the whole way down. Turning the handle, he took in the now-familiar sight of Malfoy sitting at the piano bench, posture as perfect as ever. He was running his fingers over the keys, not playing but looking like he was working out part of a song in his mind. Harry pulled off the Cloak and shut the door behind him.
Malfoy turned at the sound, catching sight of him. “Potter,” he nodded, stiff as his posture.
Harry couldn’t help but smile a bit. “Malfoy.” Instead of dropping into the chair next to the piano as he usually did, he stopped just short of it, considering. This might be a bad idea, but he wouldn’t know for sure until he just did it.
He took out his wand and vanished the chair before he could think much about it. Malfoy’s eyebrows knit together as Harry dug out the miniature chair from his pocket, setting it on the ground and enlarging it until it was its original size. Then he flopped into it, looking at Malfoy with a grin, waiting.
Malfoy looked like he knew he should be offended but wasn’t. “Potter. Are you, by chance, implying that that chair wasn’t good enough for you?” Those were words that were coming out of Malfoy’s mouth, arranged into a full-on question that could be the start of their first full-on conversation since the end of the war. Harry’s plan was working.
Harry tried to shrug nonchalantly. “It was a bit lumpy, honestly.”
“Oh,” Malfoy said. “Oh, right, I’m sorry, I forgot I was dealing with the Savior of the Wizarding World, the Boy Who Lived Twice, the same one that lived in the woods for months while working to defeat the Dark Lord, but can’t handle sitting in a slightly, mildly lumpy chair.”
Malfoy’s smile matched his own, at this point. Harry brought his hands up indignantly. “That’s not all, one of the legs was shorter than the rest. It kept tilting.” Harry moved his head back and forth to mime the tilting.
Malfoy scoffed—Harry supposed that it was supposed to be an offended scoff, but it turned out to be more of an amused one—and said, “Really, Potter, I’m so sorry for my absolutely atrocious conjuring skills that were evidently fine for the last few weeks but are suddenly the greatest of inconveniences to you. My deepest apologies.”
And then Harry’s brain derailed, thinking about Dean and Seamus and how they apparently apologized to one another, imagining, in abrupt and unexpected clarity, him and Malfoy apologizing like that. Huh. That was far less horrifying in his mind’s eye than he would have thought it would be. Quite the opposite, actually.
Malfoy was looking at him and Harry remembered it was his turn to respond. “Apology accepted,” he croaked out, face heating as he cursed himself. What was he thinking? The whole point of the chair was to finally get Malfoy talking to him and it had been working rather well. Apologizing like that was many, many steps beyond where they were now, and thinking about it had left him at a complete loss for words. He floundered in the silence.
“Is that a chair from the common room?” Malfoy came to the rescue.
“Er… yes?” Harry asked. It was the wrong answer, based on Malfoy's disappointed look.
“And how, pray tell, do you expect to bring it back to the common room?”
“I wasn’t?” Wrong answer again.
“That would be called stealing, Potter. Doesn’t that go against whatever Gryffindor mumbo-jumbo you have?”
“Lumpy chairs go against my Gryffindor mumbo-jumbo.” Harry folded his arms. “If I bring it back, I’ll have to steal it all over again tomorrow night.”
Malfoy’s eyes lit up. “And wouldn’t that just be a pain, Potter? Not to worry, I’ll bring it with us after you inevitably fall asleep to my music.” He cracked a couple knuckles, then seemed to register how Harry had taken his words.
Really, Harry’s marks were a pain, far more than stealing a chair every night would be, and he hated how he felt like he was using Malfoy to fix them. And then, for good measure, Malfoy had to bring him all the way back up to the Eighth Year common room because he couldn’t stay awake when Malfoy played the piano for him, which he didn’t even have to do in the first place. There he was, trying to keep Ron and Hermione from the burden of his constant problems by dumping them on Malfoy instead. His marks stung as his magic responded to his agitation. He stood, feeling like it was his turn to apologize.
“Potter,” Malfoy snapped. “Sit down. I was kidding, it’s fine.” Harry hesitated, and Malfoy softened. “Really, I don’t mind. Sit.”
Harry sat. Malfoy eyed him, as if checking to see that he was going to stay in place.
“Okay,” Malfoy said, as if that was that. He turned to the piano and placed his hands on the keys. Harry watched as his eyes sank closed and he began to play.
Everything—the fear, the guilt, the self-doubt—drained out of Harry as he listened, leaving him floating in a pool of peace. The burning in Harry’s marks disappeared as his magic calmed, and Harry thought that someday he’d apologize to Malfoy for using him like this, for his music.
As he started to drift, he thought that Malfoy was a better drug than Dreamless Sleep, and that he didn’t mind if he got addicted.