a/n: i wrote this for the wonderful pettigrows on tumblr. i thought i would share it here. please enjoy, and comments and favourites are always very appreciated!
His eyes gloss over when nobody is looking.
It's something Harry noticed about Draco Malfoy very soon after they met. It was as if, when people weren't looking at him, he lost his purpose. And, then, Harry thought this was probably true. After all, his ego seemed large enough.
But it was the little things, over the years, that made him think maybe it wasn't quite an ego thing at all.
It's the way his entire body slacks, his face loosens and he looks so utterly relaxed. It's the way his hand, which he never seemed to know what to do in conversation, drops easily to his side. It makes it seem like some hardship has been won with the end of each new conversation. Harry can't help but wonder about Malfoy. Malfoy leaves far too much to the imagination, after all.
Over the years, Harry's watched Malfoy. Really watched him. Watched the way his hands tap surfaces all the time, moving to some beat no other person can hear. Watched the way he frowns in concentration when he works on things in classes, but easily slides a mask over that look so people don't think he's trying too hard. Watched the way he brushes people beneath him and stands on them like they're some kind of stool.
It's the way he always looked so cool and calculating, the way his eyes glinted when his gaze locked with Harry's. A few years ago, Harry had had that look pegged as malice, but now he's not so sure.
Malfoy is a strange person. That's something Harry knows well, has known for ages. He's a prejudiced and spoiled child, but there's something deeper to that that Harry never did bother to look at. It's a kind of everlasting fear, set deep in his eyes, swimming around like storm clouds. And it never seems to fade away.
When they were eleven, Harry was insistent on hating Malfoy. He was sure, so sure, that Malfoy was the person he needed to hate, would always hate. The person he could never not hate.
But now, he doesn't hate him. At all.
Malfoy's made a lot of mistakes. Harry knows this. Maybe it's thanks to Hermione that he's willing to acknowledge this, but he can acknowledge it, and he's doing just that. Hermione helped him realize a lot of things that day. It was the end of their sixth year, Harry thinks. So, a year. A year since he got the slap in the face that's changed his entire outlook on Malfoy, maybe even on himself.
He remembers it clearly, of course he does. He thinks Hermione probably does, too, but maybe not. It didn't exactly have the same effect on her as it did on Harry.
"He wasn't going to do it," Harry had said. Maybe he had said it too much already, too, because Hermione had whipped around, and her eyes had flashed in anger.
"Stop it!" she cried, and Harry blinked. "Stop talking about him!"
"What do you—?"
"You're just making it worse for yourself! Don't you understand that blaming him isn't going to bring Dumbledore back? It wasn't his idea, Harry. And it wasn't him that killed Dumbledore."
"I know that," Harry said, narrowing his eyes. "And I'm not blaming him for anything. I don't know what you're talking about, Hermione."
"You think that if you blame him for everything that happened, you won't feel guilty about it! But you do, and anyone could tell! You still feel guilty about what happened in the bathroom, and you feel guilty because you didn't do anything to stop Dumbledore. You blame him for causing the entire thing, and I know you do, because you've said it."
"I don't—"
"From the very beginning, you knew it was him! You've blamed him all year. You haven't just thrown that away because you knew he couldn't actually kill Dumbledore like that. You blame him for letting the Death Eaters into the school, for hurting Ron, for hurting Katie."
"No, I don't," Harry protested, but it was weak, and she gave him a sympathetic look.
"I don't think you need to judge someone on their mistakes. We all make them. Some of them hurt people, some of them are harmless. But in the end, that's what makes us human, isn't it? And Malfoy just . . . made a lot of big mistakes."
And that was it. Harry had sat, dumfounded, and he had allowed to all sink in. Now, he thinks that Hermione probably was right—to an extent, anyway. Because Harry's not entirely sure about feeling as guilty as she seemed to think he did. He thinks that, perhaps, it wasn't entirely guilt he was feelings.
He remembers watching Malfoy at the Yule Ball in his fourth year and wondering why he looked so unhappy, wondering might make him look at least a little bit happier. And after that, he was with Parkinson a lot, and she clung to him like glue. Yet he hardly seemed to care at all, until somebody said something.
Maybe it's about power, Harry thinks. The powerful ones are the ones who understand their emotions, are in touch with them. The ones who think they're powerful are the people who keep their emotions locked away, the people who destroyed everything they were and everything they are to make it seem as if they were at the top, to be the cold ruler who needs nobody, who fought for the power they have.
Malfoy seems like the kind of person who was taught to think he was powerful. In the end, that may have been his undoing.
Harry knows what he saw in the bathroom last year. It was a boy who had long forgotten the rush of emotion and had laid himself bare where he thought nobody would ever see him cry. And when someone did, he lashed out. He grew afraid of losing that power he thought he had.
Harry's mistake was hurting him at all.
Hermione was right that he felt endlessly guilty over this incident. Because Harry had had the choice, to cast the spell or to comfort, and in the end he had casted the spell. And maybe it was just a reaction to hearing the beginnings of an Unforgiveable Curse, but that seems like a poor excuse, something he pulled out of thin air to make him feel as though what he had done was valid.
Talking never was their thing, though.
But the thing about Malfoy is that he closed himself off, shook the world away, and he grew so afraid of himself that Harry could see it in his trembling fists and his deep breaths of relief when the world turned their back on him. It's that he thought he was powerful, and then he knew he couldn't be powerful when everything he did that his family had conditioned him to believe would make him more powerful was too exerting, too painful. Too much.
And like a house of cards, he crumbled down.
Now, it's the way a boy across a battlefield looks so lost, wind blowing around him and ghosts shuffling through his eyes. It's the way a seventeen-year-old boy forgot who was and remembered, grey sparks igniting in his eyes, when he saw a hero on the other side.
It's the way he sticks out his hand when Harry approaches and says, "I'm sorry." It's the real, genuine apology in his voice.
It's the way he looks like he might cry when Harry asks, "What for?" and the way he shakes his head and says, "I think you know."
Harry does know, but there's something about Malfoy—about Draco that just . . . makes it okay.
"You saved my life," Harry reminds him, and watches closely to see the reaction.
It's a twitch in the hand and real tears. It's how he turns around, so clearly ashamed, and mumbles, "You saved mine."
It's the way his hand fits so flawlessly in Harry's when Harry lunges forward and grabs it, though it's cold right now, so cold, and shaking. It's the way he whirls around and pain clouds his face entirely. It's the way he swallows and looks down at their hands, tied together like the knots of destiny and Harry's struck with the thought that maybe this is what he's waited his entire life for.
And Harry thinks that maybe it will be his mouth feels, or the way his fingers will slide across Harry's skin, completely entrancing, completely amazing.
It's the way he looks up when Harry says, almost inaudibly, "I've loved you for so long" and the way he steps forward hesitantly to meet Harry halfway, the way his mouth molds perfectly with Harry's, the way his cautious fingers move along Harry's face, as if he's afraid that it will shatter if he's not careful enough.
It's the way he whispers, shaky and quiet and fragile, against Harry's lips, "Me too."