Adventure
Draco pulled his door open after the first knock. An empty hallway greeted him, but Potter’s magic gave him away. Draco stepped back to let him in, closing the door behind him.
Potter pulled off the Cloak. “You said you probably wouldn’t be in your room.”
“I changed my mind,” Draco shrugged. He’d been too wound up to go down to the library to study, too wrapped up in his thoughts to even convince himself to go for a walk. Instead, he’d paced his room, waiting for Potter to arrive. “You still found me.”
“I said I would,” Potter said easily. “Are you ready?”
“Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise.” Potter’s eyes played at mischievousness on the surface, but Draco could see the question underneath: Do you trust me?
Draco’s answer surprised himself: he did. Easily. There was a push and pull between Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, and Draco suspected it would always be that way. These days, though, the interaction was playful—friendly, even. The war had turned the entire nature of their relationship on its head, trading hate for— not just peace, exactly. Something more. Something better. Draco tried not to think about how scared he was of losing it, so instead, he put his hand on the door knob. “Lead the way, then,” he said, turning it.
“Wait!” Potter said quickly. Draco turned to look at him. “We need to go under the Cloak.”
Need to? Draco narrowed his eyes, suspicious. “Why?”
Potter scratched the back of his neck. “Er-- I may or may not have taken that sofa again? And Justin may or may not have been sleeping on it before that. And he may or may not be a little bit upset about how I woke him up. I was under the Cloak, so he doesn’t know it was me, but he’s trying to figure out who did it.”
Draco stared at him, bewildered. “Who are you and what have you done with the Potter I know and hate?” He moved his head around, squinting at Potter from a couple different angles as if trying to figure it out. “Gryffindor mumbo-jumbo, Potter. Gryffindor mumbo-jumbo. It would do you well to remember it.” Shaking his head, he opened his door and walked through.
He heard Potter squawk behind him and scramble to put the Cloak on again. Avoiding a muttering Finch-Fletchley masterfully, Draco slipped through and out of the common room without being noticed at all. Once in the corridor, he leaned against the nearest wall, inspecting his nails as he waited. He counted down in his head: three, two, one...
“How did you do that?” Potter’s disembodied voice demanded. Right on time.
“Cloak, Potter,” Draco reminded him. Potter appeared again a beat later. “Coincidentally, it’s done me well to be able to sneak through public places unseen in recent months. Not all of us have Invisibility Cloaks, and not all of us get the type of attention you get from all your adoring fans.”
“It’s not like I enjoy it.” Potter’s response was automatic, defensive, but rather than matching his tone, his magic swirled with a righteous anger.
“I never said you did.” Draco shifted, uncomfortable with how Potter’s magic was reacting. He’d meant to poke fun at Potter, but now the conversation was pushing up dangerously close to the topic of the war. Draco had made his choices, and now he was facing the consequences. He didn’t need Potter doing something stupid like fighting his battles for him.
Best to move on, Draco thought, remembering how an upset Potter tended to result in things being broken by his out-of-control magic. “You did say, however, that there were more pianos somewhere in this castle, and currently, I remain thoroughly unconvinced.”
If Potter had whiplash from the abrupt redirection, he didn’t show it. Instead, he let that crooked grin take over his face. Draco hated that grin. It made him practically melt every time he saw it, and thought that he’d do anything it took to make it appear. “Follow me.” Helplessly, Draco did.
Ten minutes later, feeling like he was being led on a wild goose chase, Draco stopped walking. “Potter.”
“Yes?” The innocent look on Potter’s face didn’t fool Draco.
“This is at least three times as far from the common room than the piano in the dungeons.”
“Oh, definitely. Maybe four times as far, even.” Draco leveled a glare. This was the sixth time he’d voiced a complaint, and the sixth time that Potter had responded cheerily. At this point, Draco was only needling him so that he could see the amusement that danced through Potter’s eyes when he did.
“You said that there were pianos that were closer to the common room.”
“Don’t worry, Malfoy, we’re almost there. Are you going to be alright?” Potter made a terrible attempt at acting concerned, clearly trying to hold back a laugh as he laid a hand on Draco’s shoulder.
Draco swallowed, trying to ignore the warm weight of Potter’s palm. His gaze flit around, trying to find something to hate— Potter’s stupid glasses, the rat’s nest bundle of hair on his head, and the god-awful scar that just barely stopped above his eyebrow. Bugger. He really didn’t hate any of it. At all. Fuck, he was so screwed.
But then Draco remembered that he didn’t want Potter to know just how gone he was over him, so he pushed Potter’s hand off and sniffed. “I’ll be alright when you show me this stupid piano, already.”
Potter rolled his eyes and turned around, facing a suit of armour. “I wanted to show you this one first because—well, you’ll see why—but if I’d realized what a dramatic git you’d be about it…” He pulled out his wand and tapped it on the helmet of the armour, whispering something Draco couldn’t hear.
The suit of armour creaked to life, stepping forward before turning its back towards them. It reached up to the red curtain that hung behind it, pulling it to the side to reveal a wooden door. It stood to the side, holding out an arm as if to say, Come on in.
Potter nudged him with a shoulder, so Draco walked up to the door, pushing it open.
A dark entryway gave way to more darkness until Draco heard Potter whisper, “Lumos,” and a dozen floating lanterns came to life. In the center of the room sat the grand piano. Nothing about it suggested outwardly that it was any different or better than the one in the dungeons. In fact, it looked dusty in the shadows, everything about it suggesting years of disuse. But something about it called to Draco, and he felt his feet moving forward of their own accord.
He sat carefully on the bench, sliding his fingers across the keys. He paused for a moment, resisting, drinking in the quiet and feeling Potter’s magic pressing in from all sides, then began to play, giving in to the urge.
The song was an old one from his childhood, carefree and adventurous, and its notes rang clearly through the chamber. Draco didn’t remember picking it consciously, but everything about it seemed right as he played. He wasn’t sure if it was the song, or the piano, or both, but the music seemed more powerful than ever before, intermingling with Potter’s magic easily.
Draco knew it wasn’t a long song, but it felt like days had passed by the time he finished it. As the last notes hung in the air, he withdrew his hands from the keys, knowing that if he left them there, he’d launch into the next song without a thought. But there were thoughts that he wanted to have first, and turned to Potter, ready to express them.
Potter wasn’t on his couch next to the piano, so Draco turned further to find him, discovering that Potter still stood near the entrance, where Draco had left him when he’d been drawn in to play. A deep blush covered his cheeks and his lips were slightly parted. He looked like he was frozen, watching Draco as if in a trance.
Draco cleared his throat. “Well?” His voice was almost hoarse, and damn him, Potter’s blush seemed to be infectious because it was spreading across Draco’s face as well.
Potter shook himself out of it. “Well.” He seemed to force himself forward, stopping next to the piano. He looked at Draco again, then appeared to be at a complete loss for what to do, patting his pockets and fumbling with the miniaturized sofa that emerged from them. He set it down and squinted at it for a second, then looked back at Draco. “The acoustics are good, aren’t they?”
At this, Draco barked out a laugh. “Yes, Potter, the acoustics are good.” He drew his wand and enlarged the sofa before Potter could even consider it because Potter’s magic was revealing a confusing swirl of emotions that didn’t inspire much of Draco’s trust in Potter’s current magical stability. He frowned back at the piano. “That’s not all though, and you know it— otherwise, you wouldn’t have made me trek this absolutely obscene distance to play on it.”
Draco said something about old magic, thinking about how wholly the music had overtaken him as he’d played. He tapped his finger on the wooden frame thoughtfully, then turned to Potter. “Why’d you bring me to this piano first?”
Potter was staring again, and started when he realized he was being addressed, despite being the only other person in the room. “It—I dunno. I think my magic led me here? It just seemed right. And it was, I mean, you were—I mean, it was—beautiful.” Now Potter looked thoroughly embarrassed, and gave off the impression of someone that was casting about desperately for a lifeline. ”I mean, the acoustics, Malfoy.”
Draco, amused by his struggle, held back a grin. The blush from earlier still stained Potter’s cheeks, so Draco took pity. “Yes, yes, Potter, the acoustics. Ten points to Gryffindor for the big word. Now sit down, already, shut up, and let me play.”
--
Over the next couple of weeks, Harry showed Malfoy every piano he could think of in the castle. There were more than Harry originally realized, though he supposed he had never really kept count. Some were pure magic, making the lights dance or the wind blow as Malfoy played. Some were so old and decrepit that Malfoy had barely laid a finger on before demanding to be taken to a different one, refusing to waste his talent on so poor an instrument.
In the end, though, they kept returning to that first piano—the one that was at least four times farther from the common room than the one in the dungeons, the one that transformed Malfoy’s music into something that never failed to catch Harry off guard.
It was a position that pre-war Harry would have loathed to be in, but one that post-war Harry knew almost instinctively that he needed. He’d follow Malfoy anywhere to listen to him play, he thought, and not just to feel the marks on his skin soothe as his magic calmed. He was bare and vulnerable there, yet protected and cared for by the music—by Malfoy.
And so he led Malfoy back to that piano time and time again, countering his complaints with reminders that Malfoy was the one that requested to go to that piano, which Malfoy responded to with outrage because which other piano was he supposed to choose, when none of the others worked as well on Harry’s magic as this one?
The walks together were long and numerous, and when the taunts wore into gentle teasing, Harry wondered if they weren’t flirting, and what that might mean because Merlin, he wanted it to mean something. But before he could wonder too much, they would reach their destination and Harry would light the floating lanterns and Malfoy would start playing.
Harry would inevitably wake up in his room the next morning, feeling like he and Malfoy were standing right on the edge of a cliff, practically goading one another to take the leap.