Title: Thoughts of others

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: HP/DM

Rating: M for grown-up language and a teensy bit of violence

Warning: If this doesn't make any sense, that's because people often don't make sense. Also, because my writing is inadequate. Sorry. Don't be frustrated. I'm frustrated enough for the both of us.

Cheers to Fireaquila for a comment that is wonderfully tragic (because of what'll happen...), and to Eriru-chan170, angelforbesmarch and dcfg21 for fav'ing. Also, thanks to my followers - there are twelve of you now, so I totally could either become a wandering preacher and start a religion or make a football team with you. (The latter would be more fun, and I'd readily volunteer for substitute or cheerleader... goooOO READERS!) Seriously, thanks to all of you.

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-/Chapter 6/-

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Harry felt the room sway under his feet.

I want you.

The idea made his head spin in two directions at a time.

He's lying.

Might even be a press thing. How would I know?

I've wanted you for years.

He suppressed the urge to shake his head like a dog to make the thoughts stop. Instead, he braced himself, breathed in and forced a coherent, audible sentence out of his dry mouth.

I will not be mocked. Not by you.

"So... Preston Taylor was a boyfriend who you wanted to dump, so you decided to blast yourself out of his head?"

Malfoy gaped at him, wide-eyed, and then crumpled. He leaned back in his too-big chair with a defeated sigh and looked down onto his lap.

"I assume you then went to do the same with his mother and his two best friends? Everyone he introduced you to, to erase yourself from his life. That's..." He searched for a word. "That's insidious. Even for you-"

"Can you please at least acknowledge what I just said?!" Malfoy suddenly yelled at him with a fury he hadn't seen coming at all. Harry's right hand flew to his belt to grab his wand out of reflex.

Malfoy caught the movement and stood up from his chair. "Yes, draw that wand. Draw it! Point it at me. Do something. Put your hands round my throat and strangle me again, anything!" He took a step towards him, then another. "Show me that you heard me and that you understood-"

"I heard you!" he snapped back. His voice was threatening to do corkscrews. "Alright? I heard you. And I understood it's bullshit." Just admit it.

Malfoy froze in his tracks, then frowned at him. "What?"

"It's bullshit," he repeated. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"Feelings, Potter," Malfoy snarled at him with indignantly narrowed eyes. "I'm certain I'm talking about my actual feelings, in front of the person I'm having them for, even though it was a stupid bloody idea. I just thought this person would give a fuck."

Harry chose to ignore the fact that Malfoy actually looked hurt and barked "sit down" at him. He turned away and looked in the mirror again.

You're not serious. You cannot be. A bad joke. I cannot-

"It seems you're obsessed with the notion that you're attracted to me," he explained slowly, more to his own reflection than to Malfoy, and added "Not like you're the first." There was a bitter taste in his mouth. "And it all started with Zabini's party game. It's obvious that something went wrong with the spell."

"Potter, you're not implying that I feel like this because of a botched party spell years ago, are you?" Malfoy was incredulous. He had sat back down again, as if the assertion had caused his life energy to seep away all at once.

"It doesn't even have to be the direct effect of the spell. It could merely be an echo. Also, the spell could've come out utterly weird. Zabini was high as a kite when he cast it," Harry shrugged his shoulders. "Goyle didn't answer either-"

"That's because Goyle just so happens to be one of the few completely straight people on the planet." Harry could hear rather than see the rolling of the eye. "He has never had a gay thought in his life."

"You were drunk that night," Harry insisted after a pause. "Inebriation interfered with the spell and-"

"I was no such thing." The tone of his voice was resolute. "I had half an already watered-down butterbeer for the first toast and from then on I only drank nonalcoholics. I was very damn close to completely stone-cold sober. Not only for the coming-out which I planned to get over with as gracefully as possible – even though that ended up in conflict because I didn't manage without liquid courage – but I also needed to be sober for my-uhm, my driver's test the next morning." He added a small "which I passed with flying colours, by the way."

"A driver's test," Harry couldn't help but repeat and gave Malfoy a pointed look.

"Yes, a driver's test, Potter. You know, that Muggle qualification check, and when you pass it you get a piece of plastic and then you're legally allowed to drive a car? On a road?" Malfoy crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Yes, I own a car. And I can drive it. And it's fantastic. More fun, in fact, than apparating and flooing. Better than a broom for long distances, or in bad weather, or when you have luggage, or when you have a Muggle boyfriend to convince that you're Average Joe. I can't believe that I have to defend myself like this. This isn't magic, it's just me. Potter, I want you, and I mean it. I demand you believe me."

Harry turned to his own reflection again and looked it in the eye. It grimly stared back at him and offered no advise as to how to get out of this situation. It also didn't know what to do or how to feel. His hands were trembling, even though he had clenched his fists and pressed them against his thighs.

/

/

Draco got out of his chair and walked up to him until they stood side by side an arm-length apart, both looking into the mirror. In the corner of his eye he could see dark, fuzzy shadows in the glass that reminded him of the people standing behind it but every time tried to catch them they seemed to slip away. Shadows of the past, he involuntarily thought.

"You don't want me to be attracted to you." He put his hands in his pockets and looked Potter's reflection in the face. "I can relate to that. People's attention can be unsettling. I got Pansy's attention once, for Merlin's sake, it was downright traumatizing." He grimaced, then was serious again. "But you. You don't just- don't want it. It's not just 'eww, no, thanks'. In fact, it scares you."

As if to prove the point, Potter flinched away from direct eye contact.

"Just like yesterday," Draco went on, not allowing Potter to protest, "on the lift, when you ran away. Why? Why did you do that?"

"I didn't run away." Potter interjected.

"No, you just wanted to say Hi to the guys from magical transport and had a really urgent question about the floo network, Mr Auror man," he couldn't help but tease. He reiterated emphatically "You ran away. From me. And it wasn't just embarrassment either."

This time, Potter didn't object. He took off his glasses and began cleaning them with his sleeve until they were spotless. And then he cleaned them some more.

Draco frowned, unsure of what this seething silence meant. He decided to continue with the softest voice at his disposal. "Please help me out here, Potter? The potential meaning of things is driving me completely insane."

"Potential meaning?" Potter had put his glasses back on. Behind them, his eyes were cold as stone. The look was piercing. Draco felt his stomach drop an inch.

"I just thought..." He trailed off.

"You just thought what, Malfoy?" Potter snapped at him. "That me running away, as you so succinctly put it, was a- a sign of sexual attraction in disguise? Of- of affinity?"

"I didn't-" Actually, I did.

"Where I am from, when people run away from you, it means they don't want anything to do with you."

He said it in a normal volume but Draco's ears were ringing as if he had shouted.

"And that is the only meaning behind my actions."

As if to observe the words sinking in, Potter stared at his face, angry and pale. His eyes were a red-rimmed testament to a long and wearing day. For a split second, Draco feared he would punch him.

"I am not like you," he said, every word like a crack of a whip. "I stepped out of the lift because I couldn't stand the closeness."

He didn't specify if he meant the general closeness of the cramped cabin, or the closeness to him. But if Draco were entirely true with himself, he knew which one he was talking about.

He also didn't elaborate what he meant by 'not like you', but Draco felt it as if he had taken a lungful of ice-cold air.

"If you want an apology for my affront, I could have one written by tomorrow afternoon and send it to you by owl. It would probably come in the same envelope as the invite for your court session."

With that, Potter turned and went to the table to collect the scattered papers one by one.

One moment to the next, Draco knew that he had lost. He didn't know how it had happened, exactly, because it had happened very fast, but it was definite.

"So- that's it?" Draco found himself asking Potter's back. He felt hollow. If someone stabbed him, he wouldn't bleed but deflate. Or burst, like a balloon.

"Yeah, that's it, Malfoy," Potter replied as he straightened the papers with a vigorous motion. "What else did you expect?"

"I'm not sure," he admitted after a pause. There was a lump in his throat that wouldn't go away when he swallowed. "Maybe I hoped that, if I laid it all on the line and were completely honest and truthful, then-"

"Truthful!" Potter suddenly burst out and glared at him. "Ask Preston here about truthfulness."

Draco was startled by the sudden change of topic and leaped to defend himself. "I was trying to be compassionate to him."

Once it was out of his mouth he wished he could unsay it. All at once he understood how Potter had felt yesterday in the lift.

"Your idea of compassion is about as accurate as your idea of 'potential meaning'," Potter seethed. "You thought you would just come waltzing in here, after what you did to these four innocent people, stage this drama – I'll only talk to Potter, I will not eat or sleep until I've talked to Potter,who the hell do you think you are, IRA? –, declare your- your feelings for me or whatever it is and expect that I'll, what? Be flattered and throw myself at you?!"

No. No, only a lunatic would've thought that.

"What else could I have done?" Draco wouldn't have admitted how close he suddenly was to tears. Everything was going so wrong. "How could I have got through to you? You and I share nothing except a shitty history. I don't know why my attentions fixed themselves on you, of all people, it doesn't make a lick of sense. And- and it's not like I haven't tried to change that. Repeatedly. Without success. Despite the fact that you hate me and almost offed me once, and the fact that I loathe you, I still... bloody... want you."

He raked through his hair with both hands in frustration. Potter looked on with that angry crease between his eyebrows deepening.

"What can I do? For you to give me a single- measly chance, Potter." The lump seemed to have expanded. It was becoming difficult to talk around it. Horribly, his voice rose a note or three and became brittle. "Tell me. I'll do it. I'll do it all. I'll literally do anything to convince you that the feelings I just confessed to you are real. Stupid, misguided and obviously unwelcome, but very, very real. Please." With that he had run out of words to say.

He closed his hands to fists until the nails bit into his palms to keep from reaching out to him. Like a drowning man wanted to breathe he suddenly wanted to touch him. He constantly wanted to do that, ever since Potter had lodged himself inside of his chest the way he had, but for some reason this urge had chosen this very moment to abruptly triple in strength.

Potter took the bunch of papers under his arm and stepped close to him until they were face to face. Just like the last time, Draco could smell coffee on his breath again and couldn't help but wonder whether his mouth would taste like coffee if they-

"Stay the fuck away from me and out of my life."

Potter had drawn his wand and poked him in the ribs. He might as well have drawn a knife and plunged it into his stomach.

"We'll go upstairs to sign your confession now and get the paperwork done. And if I never see you again, it'll be too soon."

Without another word they went to the process department.

There, Potter had a short but friendly chat with a stocky witch – apparently the only person still on duty – whom he called Missus Braithwaite although she insisted, with a snaggle-toothed, lipsticky grin, he call her Gabby, "laik aye told yoo, sugarbritches!" Draco wondered if Gabby could see how forced his smile was, if she noticed the slope of his shoulders that indicated fatigue, or the way he glanced at the clock on the wall behind her over and over.

He was quite sure that she did not. He wished he hadn't.

Five minutes of one-sided, graceless flirting later, Potter left. Draco knew that Potter didn't look back as he walked through the door, so he didn't watch him leave either.

The next hour he signed papers, supplied personal information, and pretended to listen to Gabby as she read him his rights or something of the sort.

His heart had never felt so grey and tired.

/

/

After coming home, Harry smoked two cigarettes, one of them while lying in the bathtub even though it went soggy and gross. He called a pizza place and ordered a pizza, but when the guy came around he found that he didn't have enough Muggle money in the house to pay for it. So he made himself a tuna sandwich with tuna from a can he had opened four or five days ago. It smelled a bit off. He chewed and swallowed mechanically as he sat down in front of the television and tuned in to a rerun of Blackadder.

Eventually he got up, fetched a hammer from the toolbox under the sink, took his old laptop – the one with cyber-traces of Justin still all over it – and started beating it to pieces. He hacked and bashed furiously with his mouth torn wide open although no sound came out. Bits of plastic and metal rained onto and skidded over the kitchen floor while the laugh track from the telly blared in the background. The cracking, splintering sounds were satisfying.

It was three in the morning before Harry finally went to bed. Lying there, he felt good at first but the later the hour got, the more it seemed that he had battered himself and not the computer with that hammer. Especially his head and his chest seemed thrashed.

He cradled his skull with his hands and arms and breathed in and out. In and out. Until sleep finally overcame him.

In his dreams, he was in a small, badly lit room. He was there with another man – Justin. Justin, he was sure. Maybe to say goodbye for the last time. He had such soft blond hair. Justin held on to him desperately like to a lifeline and Harry pressed his face into the curve of his neck, lost in the idea of how a strong embrace would feel like.

Justin told him that he had 'kind of wanted to see' him.

When he woke up, he remembered the things they had done on a big table.

I am not like you.

He went to the bathroom and threw up the tuna sandwich.

/

/TBC (tomorrow)