Dedicated to my betas and Connie for helping me realise and confront something that I've been avoiding for a long time. Even if she didn't know that she did.
I do not own Harry Potter or the other characters. I own the plot however, so to quote Ron, bugger off.
"Straighten that shirt!" he hissed, pulling on the smooth cotton violently.
It was no secret to anybody that Draco Malfoy did not care for messiness. His hatred of anything that was out of place was well known
throughout the school. He had a complete and utter detestation for scruffy shoes and crumpled robes.
So it was a surprise to everyone who knew him to know that he was dating Harry Potter.
Until, of course, he opened his mouth at the examination hall.
"Didn't you brush your hair this morning?" Pale fingers jerked on a strand of hair, vainly trying to tame the wild mane. Harry winced at the pain –the rest of the school winced in sympathy.
"Draco, it's just an exam."
"Just an exam!" Draco said, his hands stopping temporarily. "Harry! You have to keep up your image! You'll be in front of a hundred people!" He said, ignoring –for now– the careless way Harry had knotted his tie. "How can you say it's 'just an exam'?"
Brushing away the 'easily' Harry had muttered, he continued to smoothen the little crinkles at the end of his boyfriend's shirt.
"You can't let yourself down like this! You've got a reputation to uphold!" He looked up briefly, then looked down again at his work –missing the slight look of sadness on Harry's face.
"There," he said, satisfied. "All done!" He looked up, at Harry's somewhat-strange expression. "Is anything the matter?"
"No, nothing," Harry replied. "Come on, let's go in."
And they did.
But the next time, there was criticism of Harry's buttons. "They aren't white enough!" And the next, of Harry's cloak. "Look at that stain!"
And so it went on, with Harry's appearance in the exams –and any other important event– growing steadily better, each time even more impeccable than before.
And just as steadily, Harry's smile would grow more forced, as artificial as the clothes he seemed to wear come June.
Until the sixth year.
"There will be no exams this year. All exams have been cancelled." McGonagall voice reverberated throughout the room.
Until the war.
Draco, as expected from him, had veered towards the Light Side. Many of the Slytherins had followed in his footsteps –after all, if Draco deemed it unsafe, it was doubted that the Dark side would win.
The final battle had been fierce. Throughout the entire scene, Draco had remained by Harry's side, determined to fight it out with his lover. He'd fallen unconscious after a particularly bad injury whilst fighting Theodore Nott –one of the only Slytherins to turn towards the Dark.
He'd woken up in a bed, snug and delicious. And had immediately started worrying about where the hell he was.
When he heard a familiar voice.
"Is he awake yet?"
Draco relaxed. If Harry was there, that meant the war had been won –he wouldn't have rested otherwise.
"No, not yet."
Draco tensed. It was the Weasley voice –Ron's voice.
Ron, although accepting of the relationship, had not been supportive of it. In other words, comfortable with the fact that someone was making Harry happy –just not singing with joy that it was Malfoy.
"Harry, as long as we're here, I –I want to ask you a few things."
Draco listened on, his eyes tightly shut.
"Do you love him?"
Draco's heartbeat stopped.
"Yes," came the soft answer. Draco's heartbeat revived itself.
"But, but he's so...eugh!"
Draco frowned bitterly. He knew he was a mess. Nott had practically tackled him, his blows almost resembling that of a constant bludger.
His disappointment grew as he realized that Harry had not replied.
"How can you love him, Harry? He's, he's Malfoy! A ferret! Look at him! All muddy and, and disgusting." Ron said, hopelessly trying to persuade his friend.
Draco resisted the urge to cringe, using all his strength to fight the moisture building behind his eyelids instead.
Smooth fingers brushed his cheek, as calloused fingers wiped the mud off from underneath an eye. Desperately, he tried to keep his eyes closed.
He was disgusting. He knew it. Forlornly, he wondered if his tears would wash away some of the dirt on his face. He couldn't understand why Harry still liked him. He probably had scars everywhere. Throw that in with a Deatheater father...
Now he knew he was going to cry.
He waited dully for his rejection.
"What do you mean?"
Vaguely, Draco heard Ron's puff of exasperation –Harry was smoothening his forehead.
"He's beautiful."
It took him a few seconds before the words fully registered in his fogged-up brain, and even then, they circled around a few times before settling down.
If Draco hadn't been previously trained to control his emotions –since he was born, in fact –he'd probably have let his jaw slack and eyes snap open. As it was, he had been previously trained in his emotions, and so he didn't even blink.
Harry thought he was beautiful.
Harry thought he was beautiful.
He thought he could cry. Or grin. Or laugh. He had mussed up hair, dirty with grass stains and soil on his trousers. There was dirt on his skin, smeared thickly across the once-pale surface.
And Harry thought he was beautiful.
A warm, loving feeling rose up within him, surprising, yet not totally rejected. In fact, it was almost –welcomed. Faintly, he heard the myriad of voices move away from him, and dimly, he sensed the removal of Harry's hand and body heat from his person.
He knew he had a lot to think about.
Sighing desolately, Harry put on his best white shirt, it's immaculate buttons shining pearl in the sunlight. Trousers –coal black, matched his hair –were already on, the straight lines of the cutting emphasizing the length of his legs. Hairspray fixed his hair –but only enough to keep it in place, rather than to give the strands an unnatural look.
Slowly, he walked down the stairs, wondering why he bothered. There was bound to be something that he'd missed. Something that Draco would spot.
Secretly, he admitted that the reason why he still put on the get-up was to please Draco. It was one of the only reasons.
Actually, it was the one and only reason.
He descended the stairs. Where he bumped into the school's medi-witch.
"Mr. Potter!" Pomfrey pounced on him. "Just the person I wanted to see!" She started pulling on his arm. "I need a steady arm to hold the buckets steady, and maybe help me with restraining that Fletcher boy in his bed."
Harry, panicking, tried extracting the mentioned arm from the witch's -surprisingly- strong grip.
"Madame Pomfrey," he pleaded. "I have an exam!"
The school nurse clucked her tongue disapprovingly. "Nonsense, there's an hour! I won't even keep you for that long!" She started to drag him bodily towards her office.
Sighing for the second time in the day, he trotted after her obediently.
Half an hour later, his hairstyle had gone even messier than usual, his snow-white shirt had been splattered with slime and even a few specks of goo. His shoes had been completely demolished, with one shoe completely covered in red -vermilion red- paint.
And now he'd finally found out that his watch was wrong, so that he had five minutes to clean himself up and arrive at the examination hall.
Running through the corridors, he took a few hurried minutes in the bathroom before racing full-speed towards the examination hall.
There were numerous exclamations, as he skidded to a stop. Ron and Hermione looked at each other and expression of foreboding on their faces. Ron had long since accepted and supported Harry's decision on his relationship with Draco and had honestly tried to remain on civilized terms with the blonde.
For now, however, that didn't matter. Nervously, Harry walked the few steps to the one person whose opinion really truly mattered.
The blonde head turned.Slate eyes scanned down the once-flawless shirt, the tainted trousers and mismatched shoes.
"Well?"
Harry stuttered. "I -I got caught up with Madame Pomfrey, and I had to help her with a fewpatients."
Draco looked at him a few moments.
"Okay."
Then he turned around.
The whole school looked on in shock. Then, a high-pitched voice pierced the air. "But, Draco, have you seen his shirt?" The tone was sneering, condescending, the perfect essence of Pansy's snobby nature.
He walked ahead, and without so much as turning to look at her, he answered. "Yes."
Determined not to skip out on a humiliation session of her rival –not that Draco would even consider her as a girlfriend, he didn't even swing that way- she kept on valiantly. "His trousers? His hair? His socks?"
Draco stopped and veered slightly to the left. He hadn't noticed that Harry's socks were different. He looked at them. Apparently the red paint had not only gone on to one of Harry's shoes, but blue paint decorated one of his socks as well.
He shrugged, then continued moving.
Pansy ran up to him, her eyes wild with fear and despair. "Draco, look at his shoes!" She grabbed his arm, jerking him to a stop, forcing him to look at his boyfriend a second time.
Cool grey eyes surveyed his boyfriend once more. The way Harry's face looked down in shame, in misery. The way his back seemed to slump. For the first time, Draco didn't concentrate on the actual green stains on the shirt adorning his boyfriend's body. He concentrated on the effort to clean them, the action reaching out and touching him in his heart.
"What do you mean?"
He paused, the entire school waiting, Harry holding his breath.
"He's beautiful."
The whole school gasped; Harry choosing only to inhale sharply.
Draco turned to look at his lover, his expression almost as if the whole scene was one he acted every year. Harry looked into his eyes, almost in wonder.
They were soft, affectionate, and almost pleading for the forgiveness that Harry had given long ago. But above all, his eyes reflected what Harry's voice had shown almost exactly one year ago.
Harry grinned. No, smiled. A genuine, happy smile.
"Shall we go in?" Draco's drawl echoed across the silent audience's ears.
Harry grabbed his lover's hand in his own, grasping it gently. "Yes, I think we should," he said, answering. His eyes were glowing, Draco noted, his own eyes absently forgetting to notice the utterly grotesque way a particularly unruly curl was hanging next to his Harry's collar.
For of course, it was his Harry, now.
"Then, I suppose we should," he said, looking up into deep, deep emerald green. He smiled.
And so they did.
This is what I believe love to be. To see not just the outside, but the inside, and to love everything about the person no matter what or who they are. And to see the little effects of that love everyday, and not just in some sappy paragraph where there's a declaration of love and roses are spilt everwhere. I love those too, but the small acts are the proofs of love, not the rings and the vows and mushy stuff (although we all love those once in a while).