———
“POTTER!” Harry woke up to being shaken by Draco.
“What is it Draco?” Harry mumbled sleepily, trying to fall back asleep.
“We’re late to breakfast you idiot! Pansy’s going to kill me!” Draco jumped out of the bed and started to throw on his clothes.
“Shit.” Harry cursed under his breath, suddenly very awake. Hermione had become very suspicious already and this was no doubt going to give her more reasons to be.
Harry and Draco had started dating a few weeks into eight year. They had tried to avoid each other at the start of the year but they were put together for a Charms assignment and they immediately got along (of course, they had made fun out of each other to start). At first, they talked about basic things like Quidditch and the horrible Charms assignment was completely forgotten. They then started to talk late into the night, eventually talking about the war.
After that, they started to hang out with each other more and more (without their respective friendship groups of course) and one cold autumn day, Harry and Draco were sitting near the edge of the black lake and Harry looked over at Draco and saw the way his cheeks flushed pink in the cold and his large grey eyes that looked like a pool of melted silver.
By the time he had come back to reality, he saw that Draco was staring right back at him.
Before they knew it they were kissing.
The kiss was slow, but passionate, as the two boys were apprehensive about the other boy’s feelings. The kiss slowly grew more and more rough, more needy.
Needless to say, it was now mid-December and they were dating. They still hadn’t got round to telling anybody yet, though Harry suspected Hermione knew: she always knew.
After they had put on enough clothes on to be deemed respectable, they hurried out of the dorm room. They weren’t many eighth years attending Hogwarts so nearly everyone had their own dorm room. There were about ten Gryffindors, eight Hufflepuffs, five Slytherins and no Ravenclaws (they had already done their N.E.W.T.S).
They both hoped they weren’t too late, Pansy and Hermione would have their heads if they were. They may have made it a habit of sleeping together every night. It comforted them to have each other beside them. They didn’t even do anything last night! Well, aside from a passionate make out session in the middle of the night when they had both woken up from post-war nightmares, but, looking at Draco, they looked like they had both been shagging. Their hair was tousled, not that much of a difference for Harry, but for Draco is was rare, only happening when they had actually shagged. Harry found it extremely sexy.
Draco, probably sensing that Harry was looking at his hair, consciously flattened his hair. Harry totally wasn’t upset. But it didn’t matter, Draco’s attempts to tame his hair didn’t work and he groaned in frustration: Harry smiled to himself and mentally gave himself a fist bump.
They turned the corner and there was the entrance to the great hall. They weren’t as late as they thought they were but they were later than usual.
They caught a group of Fifth year Hufflepuffs and Harry snuck in after them. They had an unspoken agreement that every time they had walked to breakfast together, one would go in before the other. Today, Harry went in first: Draco hung back around the corner.
Harry walked over to Ron, Hermione, Luna, Ginny, Dean and Seamus. Dean and Seamus sat next to Luna and Ginny, with Ron and Hermione sitting opposite. Harry sat down next to Hermione and grabbed a piece of toast. He reached out to grab the jam jar but realised that everyone was staring at him.
“What?” Harry asked. Nobody answered him. Seamus started laughing hysterically, consequently, choking on his pumpkin juice. Dean patted Seamus on his back and he stopped choking but carried on laughing.
“I knew it! I bloody well knew it!” He cried between laughs.
Harry was extremely confused at this point. “What is it?” He asked once again. Nobody answered. Again.
He looked at Hermione but she just blushed profusely and looked away. She, and everyone else on the table, looked like they were trying to stifle their laughter.
At that moment, Neville chose to walk into the room. “Neville!” Harry shouted across the room.
“Yeah mate what’s up-“ He was cut off by his own laughter.
“What?!” Harry exclaimed.
“Seamus, you were right.” He said once he had calmed down a bit: he got out a few galleons out of his pocket.
“Pay up mate.” Seamus said, in between laughs. Neville placed the galleons in Seamus’ hand with a groan and Seamus brought them to his eyes and, just for show, inspected them, and put them in his cloak’s pocket.
“Right.” Harry slammed his hands on the table and stood up on the bench. Hermione jumped up from the sudden loud sound. Harry would have felt guilty for scaring her like that, but he was angry. “Somebody better tell me what’s going on.” He didn’t like not knowing.
Everyone glanced at each other until Luna spoke up. “Your tie Harry.” She spoke, in her ever-so-soft voice.
“What about my tie?” He asked.
Is his tie dirty? Is his tie untied? Does he even have his tie? What’s so funny about that?
“It’s the completely wrong colour.”
Oh no.
Harry loosened his tie around his neck and glanced down at it
Oh no.
A piercing scream rang throughout the Great Hall: it came from the Slytherin table.
—
Draco dodged around the corner once Harry had snuck in behind the Hufflepuffs. He was still out of breath from running from Harry’s dorm room.
Draco had become quite lazy in the last year- the eighth years were not allowed to play in the official House Quidditch teams so Draco had not been playing Quidditch as much as he usually would have. Granted, he did have midnight seeker games with Harry every so often but nearly every time, Harry had won (except the times Harry had let Draco win or when Draco had cheated) but it was all good-natured.
But it was winter now, and a thick blanket of snow was shrouded over Hogwarts and it was too cold to have said midnight seeker games.
Draco didn’t mind that much. Time that could be spent somewhere else, was spent with Harry. And he loved that time. He loved Harry. Though Draco wouldn’t tell Harry that. It was too soon, Draco thought.
Pansy and Blaise often got angry with him because he was spending so much time without them. Pansy was getting suspicious: but, to be honest, when wasn’t Pansy suspicious? She was extremely worried about him when they first started Hogwarts for eighth year: she wouldn’t let him out of her sight for the first few weeks. When he had to start the assignment with Harry, Pansy wanted to come along because she thought that they would kill each other.
“Pansy! We are completely mature adults!” Draco had told her.
“Remember sixth year?” She asked. Of course he remembers sixth year, how could he forget? He still has the scar.
The scar. The silver-white scar that splits his torso in half almost diagonally. The scar that will never go away. The scar that Harry Potter had forced upon him.
Draco forgives Harry for that. He forgave Harry for that the second he did it. Even though it bloody hurt.
Granted, Draco was going to do worse. Draco was going to Crucio him.
That would have been bad.
Draco knows that Harry feels guilty. The first time he saw it, Harry had nearly burst into tears. After Harry had apologised at least a thousand times and Draco reassuring him about a thousand more, they had cuddled on the red and gold Gryffindor bed and they had never talked about it again. He knew Harry had never meant to actually hurt Draco: the idiot didn’t even know what the spell did. How do you even learn a spell when you don’t know what it does?
Draco thinks Harry may have a bit of a thing for the scar. No explanation needed.
Draco’s trailing thoughts were interrupted by him remembering that Pansy and Blaise were still waiting for him in the Great Hall.
Begrudgingly he got up and walked around the corner and was greeted by the entrance of the Great Hall.
There was this thing about the entrance of the Great Hall: it was warm. It had this aura surrounding it: comforting and inviting. Draco was sure that it would lose its touch after the war, but it was set to prove Draco wrong- like the rest of Hogwarts. In fact, it was actually more heated, more comforting and more inviting. It was a relieving scene to be welcomed back to when he entered Hogwarts for the start of the newly-made eighth year, when he was thinking that the whole world was against him, when he thought that the great Harry Potter would not give him a second glance. Oh, how very wrong he was.
He strutted through the entrance of the Great Hall, the feeling of warmth blanketing over him, and over to the Slytherin table which was on the opposite side of the Hall to Gryffindor. Not that it was a bad thing, it gave him a good view to stare at Harry, even though he almost always got caught by someone, whether it was his friends, Harry’s friends (and Draco’s pretty sure Granger has figured it out. She was a smart girl, the only person Draco was competing with to get top marks) or some random student who was fortunate enough to catch his line of view.
Once he was half way to his space at the Slytherin table, he noticed that the room was suspiciously getting quieter each second: everyone’s eyes were on him.
Nosy little shits. Don’t have their own life so they work their way into mine.
Once Draco reached his spot on the table, he found his friends waiting for him.
Suddenly, Blaise fell into a fit of laughter. Draco turned to Pansy and gave a what’s he going on about now? look to her.
Her eyes grew wide once she caught his view.
“DRACO!” She shrieked, making the whole of the Great Hall eerily silent.
—
Harry stood up abruptly and his glance went straight to the place where Draco and his friends usually sat. Surely enough, he found Parkinson staring at Draco in shock and Draco looking very flushed.
Harry loosened the tie around his neck and caught Draco’s eye.
Teasingly, Harry waved the Slytherin tie in front of his own face with a massive smile on his face.
Draco was now a very very deep vermillion: he grabbed the tie around his neck harshly and pulled it off in one clean movement. Harry would have admired him if he wasn’t in this predicament.
Draco stared down at the Gryffindor tie in his hands with disgust, and maybe a little bit of fear.
“I knew it I bloody well knew it!” Cried Seamus, slicing the silence with his words. Everyone else in the Great Hall followed Seamus and fell into endless fits of laughter: of course there was the odd couple of first and second years who had no idea what was going on.
Knowing very well that their relationship was well and truly out, Harry strutted over to Draco and without breaking eye contact.
“I think you have something of mine,” Harry says into his ear with a growl, his voice deep and rugged, his hot breath brushing up against the nape of his neck. Draco shivered slightly.
Harry looked over to Draco’s friends: Zabini was rolling on the floor laughing, Parkinson was staring at Draco, her mouth wide open, making her resemble an ugly sort of fish. Goyle, however, was completely oblivious to the whole scene happening before him, as he was stuffing his face with food.
“You git.” Draco whispered and pulled on his the tie around Harry’s neck harshly, pulling him into a deep kiss.
The Great Hall broke out in applause and many wolf whistles, courtesy of Seamus and Blaise. Harry could have swore he heard a sigh of, “fucking finally” from Pansy.
After about a minute of kissing, they were pulled apart by some one talking.
“Mate, I have no objections to you dating Malfoy,” Ron still spat out the name Malfoy, though he didn’t seem as near to as angry about it as Harry thought he may have been. “But please, not in front of my food.” Hermione slapped Ron on his shoulder.
“Ron!”
“What?!”
“Do you ever stop thinking about your food?”
“Nope!” Ron said, popping the ‘p’, and he bit off a large piece of toast to accentuate his point. Hermione sighed, and looked over back to Harry, who was still over at the Slytherin table: he and Draco red from their earlier displays of public affection.
Harry laughed at the antics of the couple: relieved that the whole him and Draco being a... well, a ‘him and Draco’, revelation turned out to seemingly be a success. Then he remembered about people outside of Hogwarts.
“What is the Daily Prophet going to say about this?” Draco turned around and stared at Harry.
“What does it matter to us?”
“You do know who we are, right?” Harry asked, wondering when Draco had gone soft in his head. The public didn’t like change; people were probably still expecting him to marry someone like Ginny. Female.
“Of course I do. The Savior of the Wizarding World and the Death Eater.” Harry moved to say something, but Draco kept on talking. “But when have you started to care what people think?”
Harry didn’t know what to say, so he just looked down to his feet.
Draco lifted Harry’s chin up gently with two fingers. “You aren’t scared, are you Potter?” He whisper-growled, a smirk written plainly across his face: awaiting the not-forgotten response from all those years ago.
“You wish Malfoy.” Harry whispered back, he then proceeded to kiss Malfoy, once again in front of all these people. This elicited another round of applause from most people. From Ron, however, this just got a groan.
“Gross mate. At this rate I’m never going to be able to eat with them snogging each other’s faces off.”
“Ron!”
“What?!”