DRACO
Draco has watched Harry for years. Like he does now. Harry's on the grounds looking over the lake. His friends are around him, like they always are, but he looks... desolate. He seems comfortable in isolation, as if he likes it best there.
"Harry, fucking, Potter," Draco sighs.
"Maybe he's grown up," Blaise says next to him. "Maybe you should too."
Draco looks at Blaise in profile; he thinks maybe he doesn't really know Blaise. He shrugs, turns back to survey the grounds: the quidditch pitch, the forbidden forest, the whomping willow, the lake. They all look so small, so far away.
"Insightful as ever Blaise but I highly doubt seventeen constitutes growing up."
"Still taking that break then."
Draco chuckles lightly.
"I might be taking that one for a very long time after all that shit," he is quiet, and then, "They're really fucking small aren't they. From up here anyway, fucking ants."
"How fitting," Blaise laughs, "I guess that would make us ants sometimes too."
Draco turns to him again, smiles, "I don't do well with being inconsequential."
Blaise grins, cheekily says, "So we've all seen."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Draco replies turning around, "you coming or what?"
They walk away from the astronomy tower together, their thirst for people watching for the previous moment quenched.
Down in the dungeons, back in Blaise's room, Blaise asks him:
"Would you have come back otherwise?"
"No," Draco says, in a rare moment of openness, "probably not."
Then he pulls out a cigarette and goes to Blaise's open window. He pulls out matches and lights it, inhales. Waits for the clouding calm to settle him.
"I don't know why you didn't do that shit when we were up in the astronomy tower," Blaise grumbles, "you know my room smells like smoke for days after."
"Hardly days," Draco says his lips around the cigarette smiling, "one day at most."
x
Today the first thing Draco notices is that it seems like everyone is laughing in the Great Hall. The charmed ceiling is sparkling stars and the space is filled with raucous laughter - the sounds of happy people. Draco doesn't know why he notices today, but he does and he shifts imperceptibly closer to Blaise. He feels incongruent and the warm presence of Blaise's body soothes him. He isn't hungry tonight – hasn't been hungry for a while – and waits for dessert. He always waits for dessert. When it comes he hears Blaise chuckle,
"You're obscene," he says watching Draco eat.
Draco stifles a smile and carries on eating his dessert. He likes it when Blaise watches him; it is one of his last pleasures, really, besides dessert. It is an echo of a once narcissistic stage he looks back on with nostalgia. Blaise knows this and Draco wonders if he humours him; maybe it's a kind of pick-me-up but he thinks not.
After supper and a shower he sits on the window settee in Blaise's room, cigarette in hand as they get homework done. Draco thanked whichever angels he has left when they found out Blaise was a prefect; Draco lives in Blaise's room and has claimed some semblance of privacy away from the prying eyes of the other eighth year Slytherins in the dorm. And sometimes within those four walls he claims, also, some semblance of normality.
Later there's a fire in the hearth and they sit on sinking couches smoking. Not talking.
"You really should quit," Blaise says.
"Do you think I could?" Draco counters.
"Even if you could I doubt you'd want to."
"My vices and I."
They converse watching the orange flames crackle and the logs shift and turn while the smoke travels straight through to the top of the castle and away somewhere.
"You sleeping over?" Blaise asks which is now customary.
Draco shrugs, as is ritual. He takes out another cigarette, one turns to five.
Draco doesn't go back to the dorm, he never does. It feels exactly like he's alone; something reminiscent of the Manor were he to put a description to it. In a strange twist of paradox, he can't stand to be around other people anymore. Only Blaise; and Blaise has become an extension of himself, another limb.
There'll be a time in the early morning darkness, the witching hours when nightmares are most rife, when Draco will feel the chill of the damp corners of the room and get into bed. Blaise barely shifts anymore; he'll groan slightly, shift a little. And eventually, with loneliness ebbed, Draco will fall asleep.