Chapter 36
Draco woke when the first daylight filtered through the window. The sharp contours of the room came into focus in the cold, hard colours of winter mornings. Every joint in his body ached. His legs were stiff. His right shoulder felt numb. Potter's arm lay limply across him. Draco pushed it off and sat up slowly, moving like a hundred-year-old man with brittle bones. He groaned. Potter made some muffled noise. Draco looked down at him.
His eyes were puffed from sleep and his hair was an impossible mess. The rough upholstery had left a pattern on his cheek and even though the cheap T-shirt hadn't creased like Draco's shirt had, it had slid up pretty far to reveal the dark skin of Potter's abdomen. On top of that, his socks didn't match. Draco was pretty sure one of them had snitches on it. Potter looked in every way like someone who had been out of bed all night, slept on a couch somewhere he wasn't supposed to and had shared the limited space of that couch with someone else. He also, Draco admitted, looked like more illicit things than sleep could have taken place on the couch as well.
Draco stood up and found his watch in the pocket of his robes.
"Potter," he said loudly. "You awake?"
Potter groaned and turned around so he had his back to Draco. They still had about forty minutes until breakfast. That meant their dorm mates would probably be awake, so they wouldn't be able to go back to bed and pretend they had never been away, but it was enough time that Potter could get back to Gryffindor tower and change into something more appropriate before students flooded the halls. Draco picked up his tie.
"Potter!" he said again. "Get up!"
He made some incomprehensible noise.
"If you don't get back to Gryffindor soon you will have singlehandedly exposed this little endeavour of ours less than four days after its outset."
Potter muttered something, and this time Draco was pretty sure it had contained words.
"What?" he asked.
Potter turned onto his back. He had an arm draped over his face to shield his eyes from the harsh reality of morning. Or something like that.
"I said: Who the hell talks like that this early in the morning?"
"I do. Now get up."
ø
Draco was one of the first students to show up for breakfast. He sat down at the empty Slytherin table and poured himself a cup of coffee. While he drank it, he watched the seats around him and at the other tables fill up. He kept an eye on the doors and watched who showed up. Sometimes he would check the seats at the Gryffindor table, just in case he had missed them.
Blaise showed up surrounded by his usual group of friends – most of whom used to be Draco's friends, but he hardly even cared anymore. Nott showed up alone. Both of them shot long looks in Draco's direction; neither of them sat down near him.
When the early breakfasters had left and the late ones had started to show, Potter arrived flanked by Weasley and Granger. He was in his school uniform and looked as presentable as ever – which didn't really say much when it came to Potter, but at least nothing was out of the ordinary. Draco drained his second cup of coffee and stood up. He needed to stop by his dormitory to pick up his books for Astronomy.