Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition - Round 5

Prompt: Write about a character holding anger and resentment towards someone they love.

A/N: Admittedly, the word count limit was a bit hard for this one. I may end up posting a longer version at some point. Loved this prompt though! P.S. If you got that the story description was a quote from The Hours, we should be friends!

And at springtide, when the apple-blossoms brush the burnished bosom of the dove,

Two young lovers lying in an orchard would have read the story of our love;

Would have read the legend of my passion, known the bitter secret of my heart,

Kissed as we have kissed, but never parted as we two are fated now to part.

-Oscar Wilde

2 May 1999

As far as Draco was concerned, there were only two types of people in the world: people who couldn't resist the things they loved, and people who couldn't resist the things they hated. The first was the type he'd never been able to understand — people who were ruled by sentiment. The second, however, he was intimately familiar with. It was why he was here tonight, at the alleged 'last great party of the century'.

He stood at the edge of the clearing, leaning idly against the trunk of an old apple tree, the smell of overripe fruit flooding his senses. A pyre was blazing not twenty metres away, and despite the evening's warmth, his old classmates drifted around it like moths.

Voldemort had been dead for a year, and they couldn't be happier.

There were very few Slytherins amongst them. Whether that was because they hadn't been invited, or simply hadn't come, Draco didn't know. He hadn't talked to most of them since graduation. He hadn't really talked to anyone.

"Malfoy!"

Draco's head jerked to the side, his whole body bristling as the familiar voice rang through his ears. He watched as Harry bloody Potter sauntered towards him, a bottle of Firewhiskey swinging from his hand, and a lopsided smile plastered on his face. Draco took a quick glance around, wondering who Potter might be smiling at.

Potter came to a stop far too close for comfort, and Draco found his hand slipping under his robes to wrap around his wand. "Hullo," Potter greeted.

"Hello," Draco replied, his voice stiffer than steel. He wasn't used to Potter greeting him with anything besides a hex or a fist.

Potter hiccuped, laughter practically pouring out of him. "You came!"

Draco stared at him and blinked. "You're drunk."

"I didn't think you'd come. Ron said that you wouldn't."

"Yes, well," Draco pinched his lips together, "here I am."

Potter hiccuped again and swayed dangerously. "Do you mind if we sit? I feel like I might bump into you." Without waiting for a reply Potter plopped down on the grass.

Draco stared down at him, feeling as if he'd just stepped into a very strange dream. He wondered if Potter was drunk enough to not be sure who he was talking to. "What's my name?"

Potter glanced up at him, his large eyes blinking behind his spectacles. "Why? Do you not remember it?"

Draco scowled. "Humor me."

"It's Draco Malfoy. Which is a bloody awful name by the way. Draco. Who names their kid that anyway?"

"It's Latin."

"Is your middle name just as awful?"

Draco wasn't quite sure whether he wanted to hex Potter's mouth shut or strangle him. Both sounded equally viable.

Potter squinted up at him. "Why do you keep making that face? Come on! Sit down!" Potter tugged at the hem of his robes like a petulant child.

"Why are you here, Potter?"

Potter's lower lip jutted out. "What do you mean?"

"Why are you over here talking to me? Shouldn't you be with Granger or one of the Weasleys? I swear if this is your idea of a joke—"

"Merlin, I'd forgotten how mean you are," Potter said, his voice even and deceptively sincere. With a furrowed brow, he turned his face towards the fire and took a long drink from his bottle of Firewhiskey. "Just bugger off then," he grumbled.

Draco stared down at him, still unsure of what exactly was happening. He didn't understand why Potter was sitting next to him, looking drunk and utterly miserable while his friends' laughter reverberated through the night air like chiming bells. "I was here first," he sneered. "You should be the one buggering off."

"Whatever." Again, Potter drank. "I can sit where I want."

Draco's hands balled into fists. "Well, I'm not moving."

"Fine."

"Fine!"

Huffing, Draco crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the tree, fury roiling in his stomach. He shouldn't have come tonight. He should've listened to his mother and stayed home. Despite what the Ministry proclaimed, nothing was going to change for people like him. Nothing ever changed.

"Why do you suppose they're laughing?"

Draco's jaw clenched so tight his teeth ached. He returned his gaze to Potter and tried not to notice the grim set of his mouth. "What?"

"Them," Potter gestured with a nod towards the fire. "They're all laughing. What in the world is there to laugh about?"

"I don't know. Isn't that what people do when they get drunk at a party?"

Potter looked at him, and for a moment, Draco was taken aback by how incandescently green his eyes were in the firelight. There was something unnatural about them. People weren't supposed to have eyes like that. "I'm drunk at a party," Potter replied. "You don't see me laughing."

"Yes, well you're an idiot."

"You're not laughing either. So what does that make you?"

Draco wondered if he could get sent to Azkaban for punching the Boy Who Lived. Somehow, he didn't doubt it. Rolling his shoulders back, Draco averted his gaze and tried to tame the insistent heat in his chest.

"A lot of people died so that they could laugh like that," Potter whispered so softly that the wind nearly carried the words away.

Something in Potter's voice sent a shudder down Draco's spine.

"I wish that I could forget the war like they have. I wish…" Potter trailed off, and Draco heard the distinct sound of liquid sloshing against glass.

Draco stared at the black silhouettes in the distance, the sounds of their gaiety rolling over him in waves. "Why are you here, Potter?"

"Why are you?"

Draco glared down at him. "Don't be coy."

Potter grimaced, his lenses flashing as he tilted his head. "I don't know how to laugh like that anymore." The words came out short and rushed, as if they'd been squeezed through too tight a space. "And I don't know how to be around them and not be able to laugh. It's like they all look at me and just expect me to be…okay. Like they think I can just forget about all the things that happened." Potter frowned. "So I came over here. Because you were the only one not laughing."

A lump had grown in Draco's throat that he couldn't seem to swallow down. "So are you not then?"

"Not what?"

"Okay?"

Again, Potter looked up at him. "Honestly, I'm not sure."

Draco drew in a deep breath and held it as he slid down the trunk of the tree to sit next to proclaimed savior of the wizarding world. He wished that he didn't understand the fragments of truth that Potter had thrown his way. He wished that he didn't understand what it felt like to be frayed and disconnected. But most of all, he wished that he didn't understand why it was so nice to hear that someone else felt that way too.

Slowly, Draco reached towards Potter, noting the way that Potter tensed as their fingers brushed. Draco pried the Firewhiskey bottle from Potter's hands and took a long drink, relishing in the burn that scorched down his throat. "Yeah, I'm not sure I'm okay either."

oOo

2 May 2000

"You came again," Potter said, casting an easy smile Draco's way as apple-blossoms folded beneath his trainers.

Draco noted the bottle of Firewhiskey dangling from Potter's hand, and the deep red that had already bloomed across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. "Malfoys aren't known for missing parties."

"Does coming to a party even count if all you do is stand by yourself?"

Draco shrugged. "Seems like you coming over here solved that problem."

Potter laughed, his white teeth gleaming in the evening light. There was something fractured about the sound. "Touché."

Draco frowned, unsure how he felt about the ease of the banter they'd just exchanged. Last year had been strange enough, and he wasn't entirely sure he was prepared to duplicate it.

"Care to sit?" Potter asked, still grinning. He always seemed to be grinning like that in the papers these days, though Draco couldn't put his finger on why that expression scared him more than any other he'd seen Potter wear.

For a moment, Draco tried to figure out a way to decline the offer. He knew that he should, and yet his brain refused to supply him with a single word other than, "Sure."

oOo

2 May 2001

"This is becoming something of a tradition for us, isn't it," Potter said, chuckling.

Draco took a sip from his bottle of Firewhiskey—he'd brought his own this time, to spare himself of the abhorrent concoction Potter always drank—and sighed, staring across the grass at the fire. It wasn't very big this year. "I suppose it is."

Potter shouldered him. "You seem down. What's wrong?"

Draco turned his head to glare at the other man, but found the expression dying before it fully formed. He couldn't muster the energy to glare at the other man anymore—not when he looked at him like that. Draco was certain now that he hated Potter's eyes more than anything else in the world. "Nothing's wrong."

"Tell me," Potter drew out the last vowel for a good five seconds. The git was positively incorrigible when he was drunk.

"You're a nosey little bastard, you know that?" And for some reason that nearly made Draco smile.

"Insults won't distract me, Malfoy. You should know better than that."

"Then maybe I should figure out what would distract you." Heat flooded into Draco's cheeks the moment the words hit open air. He shouldn't have drank so much.

Something dark and ineffably dangerous flickered across Potter's gaze, and Draco had to tear his eyes away to keep his heart from bursting out of his chest. Embarrassment crept across his skin in hot, rippling waves, making his hair stand on end and sweat trickle down the edges of his brow.

"Tell me," Potter said, his voice low and sharp.

Draco took another drink of Firewhiskey, pouring as much as he could down his throat and hoping it would drown whatever feeling was rising inside of him. "I got engaged, if you must know."

"Engaged?" Draco was sure that he had imagined the snarl in the back of Potter's throat. "To who?"

"Astoria Greengrass."

"And you're…unhappy about that?"

"It was arranged."

"Oh."

Draco took a quick breath, clenching his teeth together. "And I'm gay."

Silence stretched between them, so palpably thick that it seemed to stick to Draco's lungs.

"Do your parents not know?"

"I'm not sure," Draco replied stiffly. "But even if they did, it wouldn't matter to them. I have the family name to uphold—not that that means anything anymore. Not after…"

Out of his peripheral, Draco saw Potter nod and take a drink. "Well…sod Astoria Greengrass."

He said it so easily—with so much confidence—that Draco couldn't help but smirk. "Careful. That's my fiancé you're talking about."

Potter waved him off, a laugh bubbling up his throat and skittering across Draco's skin. "We should do this more often, don't you think?"

"Do what?"

"Meet. Sometime other than this miserable anniversary."

Draco stared at him, wishing that he didn't recognize the fluttering in his chest for what it was. "Okay."

oOo

2 May 2002

"Shut up!" Harry laughed, throwing a handful of apple-blossoms at him. "You did not kiss Neville Longbottom!"

Draco allowed the side of his mouth to creep up. "I don't know why you're so astonished. Have you seen him lately? He's definitely not the troll he once was. But, alas, his looks were where the differences ended."

Harry made a face at him. "What do you mean? Was he…bad?"

"It was like kissing a troll, only wetter."

Laughter rolled off of Harry, pouring itself into Draco's stomach until it was so full that he couldn't help but echo the sound. "That's insane," Harry wheezed between fits of laughter. "Remind me to never miss another one of Luna's Christmas parties."

"Why? Are you hoping I'll catch you under the mistletoe instead?"

Harry's laughter died in his throat, trailing off in an uneven hum. He turned to face the fire, pressing the bottle of Firewhiskey against his lips and taking a long drink. Draco sighed, trying not to stare at his Adam's apple as it bobbed between swallows.

Draco tore his eyes away and tipped his head back to stare up at the night sky. The evening was quiet and serene, unburdened by the ceaseless commotion it usually held. They were the only two who'd come this year.

"You're not anywhere near trollish yourself, you know," Harry said softly.

Draco looked at him, smirking. "Was that supposed to be a compliment?"

"What?" Harry shrugged and chuckled. "Have you never been told you're attractive before?"

Draco had, in fact, been told many times, but never with so much conviction and so little finesse. He would've blamed the Firewhiskey, had he not known Harry as well as he did. Sometimes, he hated that he knew Harry that well.

"All I'm saying is that…" Harry rolled the heel of the bottle against his thigh, his eyes following the movement as if it was the most interesting thing in the world, "I wouldn't gag or anything if I found myself under some mistletoe with you."

Draco swallowed. He hated how easily Harry said the words. He hated how hard it was not to fall to pieces beneath the weight of them. And he hated how completely and unreasonably edible Harry's lips looked when he spoke. "What about now? If I kissed you now..." Draco couldn't finish — he could barely even breathe.

Harry looked at him, his eyes alight from the flames and liquor. Almost imperceptibly, he leaned in closer. "Why don't you try it and find out?"

So Draco did.

oOo

2 May 2003

Draco paced back and forth, his stomach churning from the mixture of nerves and the smell of rotting fruit. He was going to fix things. He had to. Harry had agreed to come for a reason and he couldn't —

"Draco…"

Every nerve in his body stood on end, heat building at the backs of Draco's eyes as he spun on his heel and saw Harry standing before him. His black hair was a wild, windswept mess, and his shirt was disheveled and stained. He was the most beautiful thing Draco had ever seen.

Without thinking, Draco closed the space between them, his hands finding the warmth of Harry's neck as he pressed their lips together. For a moment everything went still, and all Draco knew was the taste of citrus and wind.

Harry's hands went flat against Draco's chest and pushed him back. "Draco…I can't."

"Harry, please. Things can be different. I can be different. I shouldn't have — I can break things off with Astoria. Whatever my father says about it, I don't care anymore."

Harry shook his head, the muscles in his jaw tensing even as his eyes gleamed in the moonlight.

"Harry." Draco's grip on Harry tightened, as if he could pull the things that were splitting apart between them back together. "Harry…please. I love you."

Tears spilled over Harry's cheeks as he ripped himself from Draco's hold. "Why do you always make everything so hard?"

"Harry…"

"Why'd you have to tell me that you love me?" Harry's voice was hoarse and cracked around the edges. "Merlin, you're such a selfish prick! You can't just put something like that on me when I came here to — when I came here to — " Harry broke off, burying both of his hands into his hair and pressing his eyes shut.

The air between them felt so fragile that Draco didn't dare disturb it. "What's happened?"

Harry shook his head. "I can't — I wish you had told be before I…"

"What? Before you what?"

Harry opened his eyes, and Draco had never hated anything more than the pain he saw pouring from them. "Draco…Ginny's pregnant."

oOo

2 May 2017

Draco picked up a handful of dried apple-blossoms, crushing the creamy petals in his fist and watching them fall back to the grass like snow. He hated apple-blossoms more than any other flower in the world. They were nothing but a reminder of what had happened here — fleeting and beautiful for but a moment before falling into decay.

Potter never came anymore, of course. Why would he now that he had a wife and three little brats? Idiot Potter with his antiquated principles and his abhorrent family, who'd left him with nothing but scraps of the life he'd once had.

There was nothing about this place that didn't remind Draco of him. Every rustle of the wind was Potter's footsteps bringing him closer — taking him away again. Every crackle of the fire was the sound of his laughter and of his sobs. Every breath was the smell of his skin and the tears that stained it.

He hated everything about it.

Maybe that was why he couldn't keep himself from coming back here every year. After all, he'd never been able to resist the things he hated most.