A/N: I have just realised (with disgust at myself) that I have not really thanked people for reviewing my stories. So here it goes . . . Thank you so incredibly much, you have no idea how pleased I am when I see your reviews, and the praise and the hate and the constructive criticism! So, a hugely wonderfully MASSIVE thank you to every single person who has ever reviewed my work!!! Now be a bunch of darlings, will you, and review this story too!

Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot and the words, nothing but that.

WARNINGS: Harry, Draco, smiling, smirking, people doin' da nasty.

Smirk Through the Tears

Ever since the first time you saw him at Hogwarts, you have been fascinated with smiling.

There was Madam Malkin's too, of course, and on the train. But he didn't smile then. He didn't smile at you.

But then when you reached Hogwarts, in the Great Hall, and he was placed in Gryffindor . . . he was smiling so much it seemed to light him up from inside, make him so attractive and popular and you just knew you wanted him to be yours.

Pity he was the Boy Who Lived and you were a Malfoy, isn't it?

Most of the times that you saw him, he would be smiling . . . until he saw you.

This confused you when you were young, in your first year, until you realised that he hated you.

So you watched him from afar, smiling away with his friends. He looked so beautiful when he smiled. The corners of his eyes (like sparkling emeralds) crinkling, those lovely lips on that lovely mouth widening, the smooth sound of soft bells tinkling that was his laughter . . .

In the bathroom of the Slytherin first year boys' dormitory, with the door tightly locked (who cares about Crabbe and Goyle?), you tried to smile yourself, looking in the mirror and studying the movement of your mouth.

But . . . you couldn't do it. No matter how much you tried, you just couldn't do it. You couldn't smile.

You could smirk and sneer and grin mockingly and leer, but you just couldn't smile. You had never been taught how.

The closest you'd ever gotten to smiling was on your first night of Hogwarts, after you had seen him smiling.

You started hating his smiles when you realised that they meant the person was happy, and happiness was something you'd never experienced, and the smiles were never directed at you, anyway.

That goddamn Potter, he was constantly smiling, wasn't he?

Not at you, Lord knows not at you, at you he would furrow his brows and glare and try to stare you out defiantly.

It pleased you that you could actually make him stop smiling.

Whatever he did, all his dangerous little adventures, dangerous little Quidditch matches, after all of them, you'd still see him smile. They were supposed to upset him, god damn it! He wasn't supposed to still fucking smile after all that shit with Voldemort! But, you supposed, he was still Dumbledore's Golden Boy, the whole world's Hero, little Harry Potter, Saviour of all of those in the whole-bloody-fucking universe.

You didn't think you'd ever known anyone who smiled as much as he did.

Throughout the years he smiled less and less.

It took you so long (ages and ages and ages), but you got there in the end, didn't you, you're going out with him, aren't you?

So why have you still not learned how to smile? He was a person who smiled a lot, wasn't he? Shouldn't you have learned from him by now?

But you're still not happy, are you? You can pretend to be, but the only way you can pretend to be happy is by smirking, not smiling, for you do not know how to smile.

Sometimes you like to think that you can leave him at any time at all, whenever you feel like it, that you don't need his commanding voice and his domineering nature, his rough hands and his lips hot against his neck, the whispered insults while he's fucking you hard, the way he likes to make you feel worthless.

Sometimes you like to think that you're still letting Harry do this to you because you feel sorry for him, not because you care for him or something as ridiculous as that.

"More," you pant, the essence of hate and sweat so very evident in the warm, musky air of the room.

Harry obliges, and pumps in harder as his fingers start to draw blood from the pale skin on your hips.

"You're nothing, you know," Harry whispers, his breath hot and sweaty, just like the rest of him, and you just close your eyes and accept the sensation, the stinging pain when Harry slaps you and yells at you to look into his eyes when he's talking to you.

Sometimes you like to think that it amuses you when Harry leaves imprints on his skin, hand-shaped or lightning-shaped, you don't care, really.

Sometimes you like to think that the reason you let Harry practise the Cruciatus Curse on you is because you know that Harry needs to learn it if he wants to stand a chance against Voldemort, and it isn't because Harry just wants to hurthurthurt.

Sometimes you like to think that the reason Harry never smiles at you is because he's too tired, too tired after Quidditch practise and going out and studying hard for his NEWTs, he's just too tired for even the corner of his lips to quirk upwards at you.

Pity why that doesn't explain why he smirks at you, though, isn't it?

One day you ask him to smile for you.

"Just once," you say. "It doesn't even have to be at me, just for me. Please, Harry. Smile."

You get a week of living hell in reply.

Sometimes you think – no, no, not think, you know – you know there's something, something about you, something about him, something about the both of you that just screams for hurt and pain and blood and tears, not fluffiness and rabbits and candy, and especially not smiles, which is why you stay with him, stay with him for ages and ages and ages and it's going to be the end of Hogwarts soon, it's going to be the end.

What will happen next, you wonder.

Well, Hogwarts has finished, and you're still together (surprisingly), but you're not quite sure why. You think it's because of his non-existent smiles.

The days for you have become a blur of fists, torment, and pain. But you don't care. You no longer have the strength to care.

He used to smile, used to be your Hero.

Now he's just a guy who you – accept – one whose life was so full of pain that he is now putting all the pain onto someone else, and he's just a guy with messy black hair and round glasses and green eyes and lightning-bolt scar who used to smile.

He never smiles.

So as the days progress, you smirk through your tears, sneer through all the pain, and maybe one day, just one day . . .

Maybe one day you'll learn how to smile, and then you won't need him anymore.

End.