Previously: ["Your… face!" he manages. And Draco scowls.]

.

Draco wipes the humour right off Harry's face as his next shot travels right between the arrows where he aims it and curls back in a beautiful arc, contacting just between the centre pin and the one to the right of it. A domino effect takes out every pin, leaving none standing.

He cannot help the smug expression as he turns back around to see Harry staring, wide-eyed.

After a moment, though, Harry waves his hand and says dismissively, "Beginner's luck." He leans over, grabs a towel from his bag, and picks up the scarlet and gold swirled ball. He towels off the ball, stating as he does so that the less oil collected on it, the more it will curve.

"And more curve is better?"

"Not necessarily. But I like to towel mine so that it's consistent curve, see, because otherwise the oil builds up over the course of a game, even as the oil on the lane breaks down."

At Draco's confused look, he waves a hand again and says, "Not important."

He lines up — his feet are just a bit left of last time, Draco notes — and he is that same picture of coiled intensity that Draco finds incredibly distracting, and he wonders if Harry does everything else the way he bowls, so entirely deliberately, so controlled, and he rather thinks the answer to that is no. Not from what he's seen. And he wonders why this is different, why this is what Harry has chosen to be precise and deliberate about.

The same deep lunge, the same arm extension and then curl, the same angle toward the gutter, the same curve. This time, the ball impacts in nearly the same place as Draco's, but it must not be exactly the same place because after all the pins have stopped rolling, the one on the furthest right is still standing.

Harry scowls at the pin as though it has personally offended him and lines up on the left of the lane, his hip almost touching the ball return.

This shot is different — his feet are angled toward the standing pin, his steps a diagonal across the lane, and his arm doesn't curl at the end. Instead, his wrist comes up flat. The ball rolls at a straight shot toward the pin. Draco waits for it to curl away, but it doesn't; it stays on course and picks the pin off.

Harry's lips curl in satisfaction, but Draco is full of curiosity. "How did you do that? Why was that different?"

Initially, he asks because he is curious. But as a part of his mind listens to and absorbs Harry's answer, a much bigger part is distracted by the expression in Harry's eyes, the intensity, the joy. He looks utterly happy, and Draco can't figure if it's the act of bowling itself, the act of explaining bowling to someone else, or the mere fact that Draco actually seems to care.

No matter what the reason, Draco finds that it isn't an expression he wants to go away.

Draco replicates his first shot, replicating the results as well. Harry scowls, but there's a grin playing on his lips underneath it.

On his third attempt, Harry finally gets all of the pins to fall in one shot. Draco throws a third shot that falls a little to the right of where he intends but comes back in a bit harder, landing it in the same spot. Harry says something about Draco being lucky it's a "house shot" and doesn't bother to explain whatever that might mean. The scoreboard reads, Harry: 39, Draco: 60.

Harry attempts to explain the scoring to Draco as Draco stares at him like he's grown a second head.

"In what universe did someone decide all of that made sense?"

Harry laughs. "No one really knows. We all just sort of go with it."

Draco raises an eyebrow at him in disdain, and Harry laughs again.

"You aren't allowed to beat me, you know," Harry says after throwing a second strike and watching Draco throw his fourth. 49 to 90.

"I'm not?"

A small huff of air that's almost a laugh. "No. I'm supposed to be teaching you; you aren't allowed to win."

And this time Draco understands that this is a joke, not an inherent requirement of the game. He grins. "I've never liked being told what to do," he says breezily. Harry chuckles.

"Surprise, surprise," he murmurs. A small smile plays at the corner of Draco's lips in response.

.

In the end, Harry piles up a few strikes. Draco leaves a pin for the first time in his fifth frame and fouls up his second shot so badly it's nowhere near where he intends it to go. His sixth and seventh frame aren't much of an improvement and by the time he regains his method in the eighth he's lost his lead. Harry wins, scraping by a mere few pins ahead of Draco, and when Harry glances at him, Draco finds that stupid, soppy, sentimental part of him — the part he's tried so hard to keep locked away — wishing Harry would never look away, because there is a something akin to pleased pride in his gaze and Draco's not really sure anyone has ever looked at him like that before.

"That was… yeah. That was really good, Draco."

And this time it's Draco waving a hand dismissively and saying, "It's just mathematics."

But Harry shakes his head. "No, it's execution. You can know as much as you want about mathematics, as much as you want about the theory of the game, but if you can't put the ball where you want it to go, then theory doesn't do you a bit of good." He smiles, shaking his head fondly. "I shouldn't be surprised, really. You're always so controlled with everything."

Draco isn't entirely sure how to take that, which Harry seems to sense. "It's a good thing," he adds. "…Usually."

Draco isn't really sure how to take that either.

"Another game, or…? There's this great place for Italian food around the corner, if you like? Or… we could… y'know, just, go… er, home." Harry is suddenly very awkward, very out of place, and Draco notes that he felt entirely comfortable when he had direction, and now that he isn't sure what to do next he is entirely nervous.

"Italian sounds good," Draco says, not nearly as awkwardly as Harry but perhaps not as smoothly as he'd like. He's had quite enough bowling, but he's not quite ready to go home.

They round up all of their equipment and put it back where they found it. Draco slips his feet back into his own shoes with great relief — though not before throughly scourgifying his socks, of course.

Harry places the shoes on the counter and waits a moment for the man from before to come over.

"Thanks, Greg," he says, pushing the shoes over. The man grins and takes them, putting them in little cubbies under the counter.

"Any time, Harry." And then, as Harry starts to take out his wallet, Greg waves his hand. "No, no." His grin spreads. "This one's on me, Harry. S'worth it to see you smile like that."

Almost involuntarily, it seems, Harry turns his head up and over his shoulder to look at Draco, a small smile across his lips. As soon as he is conscious of the movement, he blushes and ducks his head, before raising it again moments later to meet Greg's eyes again.

Greg seems to see a question in Harry's eyes, because he nods and Harry's smile turns grateful and he says, "Thank you," in that very sincere way of his where everyone can tell that, for Harry, it isn't just a meaningless platitude that he says because it's what he's supposed to say; he is genuinely thankful.

And as soon as they are outside and the doors close behind them, Draco asks, "Exactly how much do you tell the man who runs your bowling alley about your personal life?"

Harry goes red and stutters out something about Greg being a nice guy and Draco is momentarily stunned by the fact that the person Harry talks to is a man at a bowling alley. Intuitively, Draco knows that this probably means Harry doesn't talk to his friends about it, and Draco wonders if Harry is really that unsure about their friendship to think it wouldn't survive this.

Not that Draco has told anyone that he is out on a date with Harry Potter. Not that Draco has exactly even told anyone that he is gay — though he rather suspects he doesn't actually have to tell his mother because this is the sort of thing that she just knows. But Draco hasn't told anyone because… because he doesn't like anyone enough to confide in them, and he doesn't know anyone who would care. Not because he doesn't believe that the people he knows would still hold him in high esteem if he told them.

It's a bit… disorienting.

And he wants to tell Harry that they wouldn't care but the fact is that he doesn't know, that there are hidden layers of Harry so who's to say there aren't hidden layers of Weasel and Granger too? He can't presume to know.

So he says nothing, merely walks in silence at Harry's side.