This doesn't seem to be that popular of a story but that's alright because its all for you Katie! ^-^

Enjoy!

"So basically that's it. Just three weeks of you lolling around here." Harry said, careful not to look at Draco and instead fiddling with the things on his dresser. "If you have somewhere else to be you'd better just cancel on them. This is the least you owe to me anyways."

Hermione pinned the last of the bandages of Draco's ankle and analyzed his leg with a calculating eye. "Not bad for a mud blood if I do say so myself." She said haughtily. Draco wasn't listening. He was staring at Harry.

"That's a little evil, even for you Potter." He said. "You're going to keep me here against my own will all because I got hit down by a car?"

"And you still haven't told me how a muggle hating wizard such as yourself found his way into non-wizarding Britain." Harry said smugly, arching an eyebrow, turning to face Draco from where he was leaning against the bureau. "A story I'm sure will be fascinating."

"Don't try to be smooth Potter, it doesn't fit you. You haven't even managed to fix your hair in all these years." Draco smirked, propping himself up. "Haven't been able to keep that little red-head of yours either, by the looks of it."

Well at least one of Harry's questions had been answered. Draco? Change? Not allowed to be in the same sentence with each other.

Hermione rolled her eyes as she slid off the silicone gloves she had been wearing. "As much as your witty conversation skills amuse me, I really must be going." She said dryly. Everything she said when in a fight with Ron was either dry or sarcastic, or in severe cases, both. This was severe. "Apparently I'm the only one out of you charismatic testosterone-driven gentlemen that can keep a job." She continued. Noting the worried look on Harry's face, she softened a little.

"Take care." She said, planting a kiss to his cheek. Then she glanced at Draco, eyes suddenly ice-cold. "Malfoy."

"Granger…"

"Good day."

"Like wise."

With a small pop she was gone. They were alone.

Harry was suddenly extremely nervous. "So…do you have any family or work that you need to be at?" He said, still not looking at Draco.

A dry laugh.

"No." Draco said. "Neither."

"So this is gonna be a good thing for you." Harry said. "Free food, free stay. Com'n Malfoy…Draco, I've never asked you for anything before even though you made seven of my years on this earth utter crap."

"You've never asked me for anything before because we weren't friends." Draco sniffed haughtily. "And now you absobloodylutetly need me to keep this roof over your head. Doesn't sound like a fair trade-off."

"Do you really want me to remind you that I saved your life?" Harry said, leaning off of the bureau and going to stand in front of the bed. "I would think something like that would be just the sort of embarrassment you didn't want."

"This whole situation is all to cock." Draco said, shaking his head. "But whatever. I'll do it. Just three weeks, right?"

Harry's heart did a double back flip but he stayed calm on the exterior. "Cool." He said. "Oh, and there's the small matter of you havingtoactlikemyboyfriend, but we can always deal with details later. Get some sleep, bye!" He tried running for the door. It was too late.

"Wait, what??" Draco swung his right leg over the bed and stood, slightly shaky, but otherwise very firm. He walked towards Harry, who tried to inch out of the room, but couldn't. "Your boyfriend? You think I'm an arse-bandit, do you? Shouldn't listen to everything you hear Potter. I would think that you'd understand that, of all people."

"It's not that." Harry couldn't help but look at Draco now. He was right in front of him. "Its just…Ginny…she…" how could he put this in terms that he wouldn't be revealing his entire embarrassing personal life?

He couldn't.

"Ginny just left me…and this house is only applicable for two or more people. We signed in as partners…like dating partners and I know they'll be expecting a girl but you're what they're gonna get." Harry glanced at Draco, then at the floor. "We're not gonna have to do anything, you just stay here." He was blushing, why was he blushing? He wondered if Draco could tell. His face was on fire.

The surprise on Draco's face was obvious. "She left you? What the hell did you do?" He said, a smile tugging at the corner of his lip. "I didn't think that red-head would ever leave you. She was bonkers for you in school."

"She still is. I mean, its just a rough patch, but I don't want to be kicked out of the house for it." Harry said. "I'd tell her to come back but she probably would get irrational and ask me if the only reason I wanted her back was to keep the house, and then she'd really be pissed at me." Harry said, wondering why he wouldn't stop talking. Talking to Draco fascinated him, it was like talking to a parrot, or some other animal that could talk, but didn't have to. It was interesting.

"So after this time you'll be able to go back to whatever you were doing. You can stay in this room and I'll be in the next one, since you already have…slept here." Harry wondered why Draco wouldn't step back. He'd already gotten to be menacing, he'd made his point. He took the opportunity to look at Draco properly.

It was almost like the twilight zone, seeing him without his henchmen. He was slightly taller, still as feminine as ever, and his hair was losing that weird sheen it always had as it hadn't been oiled for a while now. He was wearing some of Harry's clothes and was clean now. Almost the same as always. And yet somehow completely different.

"Well…that's enough talking for now..." Harry said in embarrassment. Draco was staring at him in a way that made him feel like fixing himself up. He felt like he was being analyzed and he wasn't going to get a good grade. "…I'm going to just...are you hungry?"

"Haven't eaten in hours. Got hit by a car and was unconscious. Lost half of my bodily fluids. Yeah, I'd say I could use some grub." Draco said dryly.

"Right, right." Harry fumbled nervously. He didn't know what to do. Draco was the enemy, Draco had been the enemy. How did he talk to him? Did he ask him questions about his life? Would that be too personal?

'Damn.'

Harry realized for the first time, that he didn't know how to deal with people that weren't bombarding him with questions about himself, that weren't fighting with each other to talk to him. He didn't know how to deal with people..that didn't love him.

Draco must've noticed his revelation look. "I can…help you." He said, stepping down on his ankle and yelping in pain. "What? No… you stay here, and I'll get you some…soup, or something." Harry said, trying to shake his head free of its confusion.

"Not sick Potter. My leg's mashed, but I'm perfectly healthy." Draco managed a smirk though he was gripping his leg in pain.

"Right." Harry said, turning and knocking himself into the wall. "…Right. Food. Downstairs. I'll be back." He walked down the stairs slowly. If Ginny came back then he wouldn't need Draco anymore. She probably would.

'She might even come today. No sweat, it's not permanent. Probably won't last three days. She can't stay away forever.'

'…Right?'

2.

Harry watched Draco eat with a bemused look on his face. It was priceless to see Draco scarping down his cooking. "Hungry?" He said, reaching out to support Draco's back. He looked like he might fall over with exertion.

Draco didn't look up. He had no time for witty rhetorical questions. 'This won't be that bad. Like having a pet that doesn't like you. A pet snake. A poisonous one.' Harry thought.

Draco sighed as he finished the last forkful, and then looked up at Harry expectantly. Harry sighed. "You can have mine. I guess…you're the guest or whatever." He pushed his untouched plate towards Draco and settled to watch him again. It defiantly was more entertaining than premium cable.

"So…how have the last four years treated you?" He asked, wondering why his voice cracked, and he sounded like an insecure 15 year old again.

Draco stopped eating for only a second.

"Look at my leg." He ordered.

Harry did, noting how huge his pants were on Draco. "What?" He said. "Its healing fine."

"That's what my life is like." Draco said, not bothering to cover his mouth. He pushed an annoying lock of white-blond hair out of his eyes. "Mashed."

Harry laughed and sat on the edge of the bed. "Well…I guess you can make the best of this then. It can be like stay away camp."

"My whole life has been stay away camp." Draco said curtly.

The room was silent and Harry let out a heavy breath he hadn't known he was holding. Talking to Draco was like walking on eggshells. But he was desperately eager to know what had been going on in Draco's life. He hadn't seen him in four years and out of the blue he'd just appeared at his doorsteps.

"Well," Harry let his eyes settle on Draco's ear, close to his face, but not staring directly into those shocking greys. "I meant, what you been up to? Where're you working? Do you live nearby?"

"Yes, you do sound like a stalker." Draco said coolly, dropping the fork to the plate. Harry felt his cheeks grow hot again. "Why does it matter anyways?" Draco added, though the tone was slightly diluted from the heavy acid base of before.

"I don't really keep in touch with my past. I mean, Ron and his family and Hermione and Ron are really all I have. I don't…know that much about the wizarding community. Me and Ginny really wanted to separate ourselves from it for a few years so I haven't really been involved, you know?" He tried to explain, though he knew he was coming off as clumsy and adolescent. "I was just curious."

It was Draco's turn to smirk condescendingly. "You haven't changed a bit Potter." He said. "And that's a fat lot more people than I keep in touch with anyways."

Harry knew Draco was baiting him to ask, but he took it anyways. "How many have you kept in touch with?" He asked, moving from Draco's right ear to his left with his eyes.

"None. I've been shunned by the entire wizarding community. No one wants a backstabbing traitor to work for them. It looked bad on my resume." Draco laughed, but he sounded bitter. "I've just been lolling around London trying to keep a job around these incompetent muggles."

Harry looked up at Draco. "You? In London? Here?" He grinned, trying not to laugh outright. "You've been living without magic?"

"In public, yes. It is possible for me you know. I have no family to depend on, no friends to back me up. I had to do it." Draco sniffed.

But the serious moment had been lost. Harry sniggered and then he was full out laughing. The bed shook and he fell against the pillow. His sides hurt. He could imagine Draco working at a local Burger King and the image just wouldn't go away.

Draco picked the pillow up from underneath him and hit Harry with it. "Shut the fuck up." He sounded annoyed. Harry tried sitting up, but the combination of his never ending laughter and Draco smacking him with a pound of feathers kept him down. He rolled over, hitting into Draco's waist. "Who would've thought?" He mumbled. His next sentence was forgotten. Draco smelt delicious. He drew in deep draughts of him. It smelt like Ginny somehow, faintly, but entirely different.

He suddenly felt like crying.

"Stop it! That…irritates me." Draco said, irritate being the code word for tickle in his screwed up language. "Don't…"He tried squirming away but Harry slipped an arm around his waist and continued smelling. He missed Ginny…

He didn't know how long he sat there; inhaling Draco like there was no tomorrow. Long enough for Draco to relax and start dozing off from painkillers and a full stomach, and long enough for him to do the same…

3.

Morning again. Harry opened one eye lazily before closing it again. Ginny felt soft against him, inviting. He leaned into her more, tightened his arm around her and settled to fall back asleep.

He didn't ask himself why Ginny had a penis.

He didn't ask himself why Ginny had an erection.

'Damn.'

Harry shot up. He'd fallen asleep the night before snuggled up against Draco. Fucking. Malfoy. He grimaced his disgust; glad Draco was sleeping and tried slipping his arm from around him before he could wake. Too late. Draco stirred.

'Damn!'

Draco hunched his shoulders backwards in a sort of half stretch before looking at Harry. He had the decency to flush bright red and look away. The silence was absolutely unbearable. "Tired…I suppose." Draco said, needing to break the quiet, regardless of whether his sentence made sense or not.

Harry smirked. The awkward broke. Draco pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth before bringing it down again. "Disgusting." He said. "I need to brush."

"Oh, right." Harry said, pulling away completely now. He got off of the bed and walked into the bathroom. His toothbrush. Ginny's toothbrush. Ginny's hairbrush. Ginny's perfume. Ginny's various vanilla scented body washes and lotions. Harry felt his lip convulsively tremble. Why wouldn't she just come back?

He couldn't cry though, he could hear Draco stirring in the adjacent room. He had to keep up appearances, not let it be known that he felt like breaking down. Reaching above the sink, he opened to cabinet for extra toothbrushes. None. Ginny's deodorant. Ginny's makeup.

Harry ambled back into the bedroom, where Draco was struggling to get out of bed without his ankle seething in pain. It was obvious by the bewildered look on his face that he wasn't used to, and just didn't understand how to deal with continuous pain. It was almost…cute, for lack of a better word, to see Draco all-powerful Malfoy struggling, vulnerable.

Harry helped him get both feet planted firmly on the ground, and then helped him stand shakily. Words of gratitude couldn't get past Draco's lips before Harry spoke. "We're going shopping." He said. The sentence made him shiver.

The first stop had been to get Draco fitted for a pair of crutches, which took up quite a bit of the day as he fussed about having to use them in the first place. It didn't help that it took him a while to get used to them either. He didn't like that.

"It's one of those stupid muggle contraptions." Draco said, as he finally managed to swing himself around properly. "Of course I can use it. I can use anything they can use, only better." Harry did not mention that most 10 year old children could handle crutches better than Draco. He let Draco have his little moment of self-satisfied smugness in preparation for the torture they were about to go through.

As soon as they got to the store, however, Draco took over, like an impatient mother teaching her child how to do things. Harry was glad for it. He'd gone shopping a grand total of three times by himself. And never to stock the entire house.

"We have to make it look like you've been living with me for the past 6 weeks." Harry explained as Draco dropped obscure items into the trolley cart. "And like…like we're dating." Those words never failed to make him blush and the toothpaste on the shelf suddenly looked more than interesting.

As he picked it up and began reading the labeling as if it was the cure to his life-threatening disease, Draco smirked. "Right." He said. "We're lovers."

Harry felt himself go three shades darker, as if someone were flipping through one of those little color booklets at a paint store.

Draco's eyes scanned the shelves purposefully, and he finally picked up a small white tube. "Then I guess we'll be needing this." He said.

"Baby toothpaste?" Harry was clueless.

"Its lubrication." Draco said. Then in response to Harry's continuously blank stare he added. "You know, lube?"

Harry blanched. "You mean, that thing fags…queers…gay guys use?"

"Well you did say we were 'dating'." Draco said, slightly impatient. "Don't you think we'd be fucking too?"

Harry felt lightheaded suddenly. Embarrassed wasn't the right word anymore. He needed a new word for how Draco could make him feel. It was just ridiculous the power words from that pair of pink pouty lips had over him. What was worse was, for a split second the image of himself…doing Draco, Draco Malfoy, jumped into his head. He felt his eyes widen.

Draco smiled devilishly, reading Harry like a quill. "Naughty naughty, Potter. Not till we get home are you allowed to be frisky."

Harry pulled his jacket zipper a little higher, refusing to look at Draco. "You're enjoying yourself aren't you?" He said, feeling his voice crack. Draco made him feel like an unsure 17 year old again by just looking at him. He didn't like it.

But he let Draco put it in. He wasn't going this far for the plan to fall apart. If a little bottle of lube kept it together, then screw it.

'Damn.'

The image had just zoomed into his head again.

By the time they got home it was dark, and Harry had to take in everything alone. Draco had begun wavering for about an hour now and certainly couldn't lug a houseful of packages into the house. Harry helped him upstairs first, roughly stocked the bathroom with supplement's to let him shower, and helped him into bed.

Draco was asleep by the time he got upstairs the second time, mouth curved like an infants, pale cheeks stained red. His hair was now completely void of gel, and was allowed to fall over his face, soft and natural. Harry stopped and stared, feeling a smile tug at his lip.

'Maybe not a poisonous snake.'

4.

"The living room is obviously most important because that's where he'll be spending most of his time." Harry said, scrutinizing the room. A combination of a tiny photo shoot that morning and the switching spell had gotten all the pictures of him and Ginny in the house to be of him and Draco instead.

He'd had a small panic attack when he had thought about what Ginny would say if she saw, but decided that she would laugh, be proud even, of his efforts to keep their house for the both of them.

"The kitchen is important as well though." Draco said. "And any other room that can be seen from the living room. The kitchen is a little too tidy for a home to two males, however homosexual." He explained. "It could lead to awkward questions."

Harry nodded. "But then again, we should probably learn more about each other anyways. Awkward questions do manage to sneak their ways into interviews."

Draco sighed. "If only they had interviewed you about your favorite meals and if you liked dogs or not in school."He said, shaking his head and pouting.

"Shut up." Harry said, though he was getting used to Draco's wit.

Draco ignored him and threw his crutches unto the floor before sinking into the nearest sofa. "You want 2 kids but I want 3." He said thoughtfully, leaning against the pillow. "You want a dog, but I detest animals. Apart from my leg, which I wish you would just let me fix, neither of us have any disabilities."

"I can't let you fix it. You'd leave." Harry said logically.

Draco heaved another worldly sigh. "I don't hate you, you know. You saved my life three times. In one year. And I switched to the Harry Potter fan club campaign, didn't I? It's not like I have any friends to go to. This is actually a good break for me, which should give you a clue as to how well my life has been going."

Harry didn't say anything, not wanting to break the chain. Draco opening up to him. Very rare. "Anyways, you don't have to be such a stiff around me. We're not friends, not even acquaintances, but for the longest time we were enemies, which is one of the closest relationships you can have if you think about it." Draco continued. "So…let's just get through this…thing, ok?"

He glanced at Harry, who bit his lip. "Ok." He said. "Maybe…we could be acquaintances then, put the past behind us?"

Draco's eyes were calculating, but otherwise gave absolutely no clue as to what he was thinking. He was good at that, hiding his thoughts, and it was beginning to get to Harry. "Acquaintances…it could be profitable." He said eventually.

Harry's lips slid into a smirk. "Profitable…"

"Maybe…it could be nice…" Draco looked down, his eyes flickered a moment of truth.

Harry nodded. "Maybe it would be better for you not to be alone anymore." He said.

Draco shook his head. "I will always be alone." He said. "I've learnt…to trust no one. To love no one. Because I won't be hurt again."

Harry sat up." That's no way to live." He said vehemently. "If you don't love, you might as well die!"

"I did." Draco said, voice remaining leveled. "I did love, and it put me through hell for all of my life. It was only when I stopped that I started healing."

"Just because your parents…"

"It's not just them and you know that!" It was Draco's turn to snap passionately. "It was everyone that I ever loved or trusted or any of those shitty morals." He looked at Harry and his eyes shone pain, crystallized by years of hiding. Harry stared into them, taken completely aback.

"I know what I'm doing." Draco continued, voice darkening. "I'm doing it alone and I'm going to make it fine."

Harry opened his mouth, but Draco shot him a look that made him close it again. His time had expired.