Disclaimer: I own none of the characters mentioned and make no profit from this story.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters/Pairing: Harry/Draco
Title: "Distraction"
Rating: PG-13
Note: Another one from LJ. You'll get a lot of those from me. The prompts this time were "Harry and Draco, slash, post-Hogwarts, in the summertime". 700 words. I have never written slash before. There is no sex in this story, but there is a lot of angst. Of course.
It was unbearably, sticky hot, and Ginny, huge and miserable in her eighth month of pregnancy, unceremoniously banished Harry from her sight. He went, fearing a Weasely meltdown of epic proportions.
So it was he ended up in Diagon Alley on a hot night in July, found himself stumbling into the Leaky Cauldron. Two butterbeers later and he was looking up into the startled blue eyes of Draco Malfoy. A new, ragged scar ran across his face, starting at the corner of his right cheek and extending across his mouth. It looked fresh, raw. What in Merlin's name had he been doing? The old feelings threatened to come back, the old concerns. Harry pushed them away.
"Sit," Harry said, when he could speak.
Malfoy sat. "Potter," he said, with a nod. Somehow a butterbeer was slapped down in front of him. He drank the entire thing in one gulp, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down, a gleam of sweat flowing down his throat.
Harry looked away. Malfoy smiled maliciously. "How's the wife?" he sneered.
Harry's green eyes snapped back to Malfoy's blue ones. "Shut up," he said. "I saved your life."
Malfoy snorted. "You left me."
"Did you think we were going to end up 'happily ever after'? That we were going to ride off into the sunset together? You were a distraction—"
"You bastard," Malfoy snarled, slamming his mug on the table. An elderly wizard the table over stared at them, but Malfoy took no mind. "Do you have any idea how jealous I was of you and your friends? Do you think I really wanted to be a Death Eater?"
"I don't know. You seemed to enjoy it."
"I had to pretend! Just like Snape. It destroyed me, Harry. My parents made me do those things. They made me. All I wanted was to be with you. I would see you in the halls, with Hermione and Ron, the looks of hate on their faces. You would look at me like that, too."
Harry could not look at him right now.
"But there were other looks, too, Harry—do you remember those? Do you remember the way you looked at me after the Tri-Wizard Tournament?"
"I was upset. Cedric had just died."
"Yes. But you needed me, Harry. You could have gone to your friends. But you didn't. You came to me. Do you know how you made me feel, Harry?"
Draco was staring at him, pleading with his eyes. Still, Harry would not look at him. Malfoy's hand was on the table, inches away from where Harry's own hand grasped his beer mug in a death-grip.
"You made me feel good, Harry—wanted. Like I was more than just a pawn in someone's game. Like a person, Harry, a good person. When you kissed me—"
Harry jumped up from the table so fast he knocked the chair over backward. He fled the room, his head spinning, from the butterbeer, and from the heat of the air and the heat of Draco's words.
He ran out the door, Malfoy at his heels. "Stop, Harry, please…"
"No, Draco," Harry said. He finally faced him. "You have to understand…"
"I do understand," Malfoy said, the pleading look still in his eyes. "You love her."
"Of course I love her!"
"But you loved me, once, too."
Harry looked away again, clenching his fists against his legs. Finally he looked at Malfoy again. "Yes, I loved you. Once."
Draco smiled, a grin made crooked by the jagged slash across his mouth. It did not lessen his petulant beauty, but to Harry's dismay, made him want to kiss away the hard anger and regret he saw in the man's features.
"That's all I needed to hear, Harry," he said, in a wavering voice. With one more nod, he turned slowly away into the simmering night.
Harry did not see him again for several years, until Albus' first trip to Hogwarts. He stood with his pretty, much younger wife and son, and nodded, just once, to Harry, before looking away.
"Ugh, Malfoy," Ron said.
"Stop it, Ron," Harry said, angrily. Ron looked away, hurt.
"Dad, what if I'm in Slytherin?" Albus Severus asked, worried.
"What if you are?" Harry said, with a smile. Perhaps Slytherins were not as bad as he had once thought.