Fairy Tale Men
One morning, normal as they come, he sat with his breakfast and the morning paper and ignored them both. He glanced at them and sneered a little at what he saw, but really only pretended to sneer, pretended to glance:
He was peering unobtrusively at the Gryffindors when Harry crumpled, pitching backwards off his seat and to the ground.
Draco watched for a moment and then opened the newspaper, raising pages two and three to hide his smile.
Harry was brought to the hospital wing. Draco went to Charms and learned to make glass animals dance across his palms. He broke the front legs off his Hippogriff when Flitwick wasn't looking and smiled at its stumbling steps. It danced a fool's dance.
He was delighted by it and kept it- to give to Harry that night. After hours he went out to the hospital wing and stood over Harry, who was silent, cold...his broken glasses stared fragmented and owl-eyed from the nightstand, next to a bitten apple whose white had already turned brown. Draco finished off the apple but left the glasses there, staring.
"Harry," he said, pulling back the apple skin with his teeth. He ate the brown and left the red, red skin like empty casing; he ate the good and let the poison lie.
Bad table manners, Father would have said.
"There is no one here to impress." The apple taste lingers in his mouth. Draco smiles. This time he smiles at Harry. Only this time.
This time he might as well pretend things had gone the way they were meant to. "No hard feelings, right, Harry?"
Harry would wake, squinting and rubbing his eyes. God Draco, he would say, You expect me to forgive you for feeding me poison?
"Of course. You always forgive me."
I'm dying.
"You still will."
And Harry would sigh. Unfortunately, you're right.
"You're not dying."
I guess I could forgive and forget. Then he would smile sleepily, his dark eyes nearly closed, and the matter would be closed.
That's how it would go. Draco sits at the end of Harry's bed, feet tucked beneath him, and places the Hippogriff where the sheets pool at his knees. It dances a fool's dance that will go on even as long as Harry's sleep.
"Harry?" Harry should have replied but he didn't. No, he couldn't. "Harry?"
'Harry'- it feels wrong to say that. But he makes himself say it every time.
Like the way they have forced themselves all of these long years, found roles and molded themselves to fit them, like pure fairy tale men; full of pure passion or pure villainy, driven by virtues that, they barely realize, don't exist. One offers the poisoned apple and one slays the dragon. One triumphs and one always, always-
-falls.
It feels wrong, and still he tries. Every time.
So when Harry wakes, squinting and rubbing his eyes, Draco will not hesitate to kiss him. He waits for that moment, forsaking his poisoned apples and these fool's steps he has danced, because, well.
That's how the fairy tale ends.