Warnings: Slash, m/m. Don't like don't read. Angst.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Harry was even more eager than usual to get back to Hogwarts this year, and the reason was Draco Malfoy. Draco had warned him not to write, citing his father's wrath if he recognized Harry's owl or handwriting. Draco had written to Harry a couple of times, but the letters hadn't been frequent, and Harry had heard nothing in the last two weeks. He was, therefore, understandably eager to get back to school and see the boy he was beginning to think he really loved.
So when Harry first saw Draco Malfoy, it was only the people around them that stopped him from running up to hug and kiss the other boy.
Then Draco spoke, and tempered Harry's enthusiasm a bit. He hated listening to the fake Draco, the mask, especially when it was directed at his friends. He felt almost guilty on Draco's behalf for saying things like that to Hermione, and on his own behalf for not telling her that none of it was meant.
He wanted to shout at Madame Malkin when she reached for Draco's sleeves—she would expose his scars! And he wanted to hold Draco in comfort when the blonde jerked his arm away before she could.
Seeing Draco again was something like how Harry imagined it would be to quit smoking for a summer and then have another cigarette. Part of him was singing, "Yes! Home! Yes!" even as the guilty part made itself heard, and he was hooked again in an instant.
Throughout the afternoon, he had to stop himself looking over his shoulder, hungry for another glimpse of Draco, and when he appeared again! it was impossible not to follow. Draco was alone now, and Harry cursed that Ron and Hermione were with him, or he would have left without the Invisibility Cloak, would have made himself known and walked beside Draco. But the best he could do was to voice the genuine curiosity he felt, and take Ron and Hermione with him under the Cloak.
Harry had to work not to gape when Draco rolled up his sleeve in front of Borgin—why was he showing off his cuts? Even a twinge of betrayal—Harry had been sure he was the only one to know about them. He reminded himself that if Draco could come to terms with the marks, it probably meant he could come to terms with the pain that caused him to make them. But it didn't add up with Borgin's reaction. Not for the first time, he regretted having promised Draco not to tell Ron and Hermione, as their input might have helped him stop going in circles.
Over the next few days, Harry realized that he was beginning to reveal his obsession with Draco. The part of his mind that warned him to back off was outnumbered by the part that wanted answers and the part that was trying to drop hints to Ron and Hermione.
Perhaps it was knowing the existence of the scars, or his love for Draco, that blinded him for amazingly long to the obvious confusion. Or maybe not, since neither Ron nor Hermione believed that Draco could be a Death Eater. Harry had trouble believing it himself, at first. His Draco? But it was the only thing that made sense.
When Harry followed Zabini into the Slytherins' compartment on the Hogwarts Express, it was mostly because he wanted to test his theory. Could it be true? And if it was, if the boy he loved had turned traitor, Harry felt he had a right to know. That, and the overwhelming urge to see Draco again.
Every word he heard made him more and more uncertain. This was the mask Draco wore for his housemates and his family, the mask Harry had learned not to believe. But he knew that the best actor in the world could not fool Voldemort into giving a task to a man on the other side, unless perhaps that man was an incredible Occlumens. But Harry did not think that Draco knew Occlumency, as Draco would then have known at once what Harry and Snape were doing that time he walked in on their lesson. Draco had questioned Harry in private, expressing concern that his Potions record had apparently dropped so low again, even with Draco's help. Harry had wanted to tell him, but knew what a secret it was, and who the people were that Draco was around the most, and had, painfully, decided that Voldemort and the intricacies of their relationship was a topic not to be discussed with Draco. It had never caused any other problems, as it wasn't a topic Draco seemed to want to pursue, either.
Harry leaned out over the luggage rack as the other Slytherins departed. He wanted to reveal himself, to enter one of those beautiful moments where they were alone together, when Draco was Draco, instead of Malfoy. But uncertainty held him back. If he could see, just see what Draco was looking at, before Draco knew he was there…Perhaps, afterwards, he could still reveal himself…and then Draco was standing over him, and Harry was paralyzed on the floor, unable to believe it.
As Draco spoke, Harry realized with a growing certainty that he didn't know the other boy anymore at all. Malfoy stomped on his face, and Harry realized with a jolt of guilty horror that he had never talked to Draco about his father after the Ministry incident. He had been so swept up in his own grief for Sirius that he had only been annoyed that Draco had not come to comfort him. He had not at all thought about the torrent of emotions that losing his father to prison, because of Harry, must have caused his boyfriend. He knew, of course, that Draco hated Lucius. But he had allowed himself to forget that Draco also loved him. That if hatred had been the only emotion Draco directed toward his father, indeed, if Lucius had been the only person Draco hated, those scars would not have been on Draco's wrists. Draco hated himself for hating his father. The summer without him had clearly only worsened the grief, the rage, and the blame.
As the blood flowed from his nose, some of it traveled back to his throat. Harry felt momentarily panicked. He couldn't swallow, couldn't even choke. He would drown there, in his own blood. Malfoy seemed to realize the same thing, and he hauled Harry into a sitting position, leaving him very confused.
"Now you won't breathe it in," said Malfoy quietly. "I don't want you to die, Potter. But if you're at Hogwarts, you'll try to stop me. To help me. And you can't. I can't even rely on you anymore. "
His face softened, and he kissed Harry's paralyzed lips roughly. "I did love you, you know." Then it twisted again, into an ugly frightened grimace. "But you can't save me. It just wasn't enough."
Harry's heart broke as he felt the tread of Malfoy's shoe on his hand.
Over the next weeks and months, love, out of self-preservation, masked itself in hate. For Draco, the mask had become reality. Draco had become Malfoy. What wasn't he capable of?
Yet it was love, it was only love, and deep down Harry knew it, that made him follow Malfoy, that made him watch the Marauder's Map for him, that made him go to the prefect's bathroom nights where he couldn't sleep—though he never told anyone about this last. It was for this reason that he worked furiously to get into the Room of Requirement.
Harry knew it was Malfoy's fault that Katie Bell landed in the hospital, and it caused pity and revulsion in him at once. Voldemort could make you do terrible things. Yet, how he could have loved a person who would do such things? This, combined with a deep, primal need for comfort that mere friends cannot give, were, in the end, what drove his subconscious to Ginny. Ginny had always loved him; it never once occurred to him that she might not still. Ron was the only problem, and, one day, Harry stopped letting himself care about even that. As it was, Ron was okay with him dating Ginny. The only obstacle remaining was that he did not love Ginny, but even Harry didn't know that. He transferred all the affection he longed to give Draco onto her.
Somewhere in the middle of this, one day in particular stood out in both their minds for years afterward. That day in the bathroom.
Draco was staring into the sink, tears gushing down his face. The Harry of fifth year rose up inside the Harry of now and longed to comfort him, hold him while he cried, make it better, the way he had before. Then, Draco looked up.
He turned, slowly, to face Harry.
"I told you," he said, "not to do this."
"We can help you," said Harry wildly. "You don't have to be a Death Eater. Talk to Dumbledore. What's he want you to do?"
But, far from being comforted, Malfoy's face contorted again. "I told you, Potter, you can't help me. You aren't my lover anymore. You're nothing." And, as if to prove it, he drew his wand.
Was it really so surprising, after that fiasco, that Harry threw himself wholeheartedly into Ginny? That it was returning from one of Snape's resulting detentions that he finally threw care and caution, for Ron and for Draco, to the wind and kissed her? He took a certain pleasure in being with Ginny in front of Malfoy. He ran from the pain, ran from the suffering, because Ginny had already loved him and would never hurt him.
And if every time he saw Draco after that, at Malfoy Manor, in the Room of Requirement, at Platform 9 ¾ twenty years later, married with three children, he wondered if Draco remembered how good they were together, isn't that what everyone wonders when they see an old lover?