Chapter 37
Minutes turned to hours, hours turned to days...Harry was as happy as he'd ever been. Not just happy, but secure. Before he knew it, Christmas eve had arrived and the bubbling excitement that filed the castle was tangible. Harry had decided this was his favorite time of year, he loved the chill in the air, he loved the smell of freshly baked pumpkin pasties and butterbeer, but most of all he loved how Draco looked surrounded by white snow and warm fires. His heart felt so tight at times he couldn't breathe, and other times it felt as though it would swell and burst right out of his chest. It scared him at times...how happy he was, it was as though any minute someone would reveal to him that it was all one big joke and Harry's life would return to the misery and the hurt it had been not so long ago.
"What's got you all serious?" Draco asked, on hand caressing Harry's back.
"What do you mean?"
"Your eyebrows are doing that thing."
"What thing?"
"That frowny thing! You look all crinkled up, it's rather cute actually..."
Harry touched his own forehead, feeing the bumps and wrinkles that held tension. Was he really so obvious?
"Did you just call me cute?" Harry laughed.
"I might have."
Just at that moment Duri decided to jump onto their bed and begin to knead her paws into their stomachs. She started mewing loudly, and pushed her head into Draco's.
"Okay okay, I get the message, c'mon I'll take you to the kitchens." Draco sighed, a smile plastered on his face.
"Do you want me to come with you?" Harry asked.
"No no, you stay in bed I won't be long." Draco answered, bending down to pick up an inpatient Duri.
"You better not be Malfoy, otherwise I might have to punish you."
"Is that a promise?"
"You bet it is."
Harry laid there, grin threatening to split his face in half, thinking about the present for Draco he had hidden underneath his invisibility cloak in the wardrobe.
An hour later he was still laying there, alone. The grin was gone and the frown was back.
It had been too long now, Draco should've been half an hour maximum.
Harry rooted around in his bedside drawer for the Mauraders Map, opened it and looked for Draco's footsteps.
They were stood still in a random corridor, alone. Fearing the worst Harry shot out of bed, threw on some trousers, that could well have been Draco's and practically sprinted out of the room through the corridor and into the main body of the school.
It took what it felt like ages to find the right corridor. The churning in his stomach made him want to throw up, he was sweating and his breathing was hard. Things were finally good, why was this happening to them?
When he found Draco he stood face and hands pressed into the glass of a trophy cabinet on the wall. Unmoving and worryingly still.
"Draco?" Harry called.
Draco turned to look at Harry, and even from the end of the corridor Harry could see the wetness of Draco's cheeks and how bloodshot his eyes were.
Harry ran towards him feeling confused and scared.
"What's wrong Draco? What's happened?" Harry frantically asked, wiping the tears away with his hands.
"Nothing, nothing I'm fine, I just...I'm..." Draco turned his head towards the cabinet.
When Harry turned to look he saw a shrine to all the Hogwarts students who had lost their lives during the war. He recognized so many faces, but some seemed foreign and alien to him.
"Awh Draco let's go back to bed, we shouldn't be crying on Christmas Eve, we're supposed to be happy, they would want us to be happy."
There was a moment of silence while Draco just looked at the moving pictures, eyes wet and lips apart, as though he was trying to speak but the words weren't forming. Finally his mouth let out a small soft voice.
"I'm so proud of you Harry, so unbelievably proud."
And that was all that Draco said before taking his hand and leading them back to the room they called home.