- I really hate coffee.
Harry sighed deeply, pushing the cup as far away as he could. The taste of coffee still remained on his tongue, and he tried to banish it by taking another bite of the pastry that was served with the mug.
It was still raining outside as if the world was about to end. Harry had walked into the small Muggle coffee shop trying to escape the pouring rain, assuming that at some point it would let up and he could continue on his way to the Leaky Cauldron. But it had been a while and it only seemed to get worse, and he had finished reading that gossip magazine.
He was seriously considering paying for his coffee, going to the bathroom and vanishing when the door opened in front of him at the same time as the sky was lit up by a bolt of lightning. Harry looked up and what at first looked like the dark silhouette of a man, as the sky faded he became someone quite familiar. He quickly pulled the magazine as high as he could, hiding behind it, and was grateful to be in a far corner of the café. Not half a second later, he dared a glance just as the sound of lightning echoed throughout the place.
Draco Malfoy ran his hand through his hair, dripping with water, and hung his equally soaked coat on the hanger at the entrance. The waitress quickly approached him, offering a dry towel as she guided him to one of the free tables. The blond forced a smile as she sat down, and ordered something that Harry failed to hear. As soon as the waitress left, he huffed and ran his hand through his hair again.
Harry had lost all desire to leave. It took him no effort at all to stare at his former partner, trying not to get caught. Luckily for him, Draco didn't seem to be in the mood to stare around the place, and busyed himself with a book he had brought with him.
It had been years since the last time Harry saw him. He had heard about his situation through Skeeter, who published what she called 'Malfoy's Escape' a few months after the end of the war. Narcissa and Draco, unpunished thanks to Harry's testimony, fled to France, apparently not willing to return. That had been four years ago, and many people were grateful for their 'escape'.
But not Harry. Because of the trials he had to spend several weeks seeing Draco, even getting to exchange a few words with him, and that feeling that the blond had always aroused in him, grew again. With him gone, he resigned himself to think he'd lost him.
But those ocean eyes never really left. They visited him in dreams, in all the different shades he had watched them change, and with them came their owner. Who was now absently glancing at a book a few feet away.
Harry so wanted him to raise his eyes and look at him. He had been watching Draco Malfoy for quite some time, always from afar, for better or for worse reasons. But there was always one common point: no matter how angry he was at the moment, those eyes never left him indifferent. He was unable to count the number of times he had been lost in his thoughts through his gaze, unable to stop staring at those ocean eyes.
And he wanted, damn it, he desperately wanted them to look directly at him for once, like they used to in the past. It was the most amazing duality he had ever wanted to watch them ignite again, as if they hosted burning cities and napal skies. Draco's eyes, even though they were like the ocean, seemed to be pure fire.
'Bloody hell, it's not fair' he angrily cursed as he went back hiding behind the magazine. He seemed to be doomed to watch them from the distance.
He remembered the first time those eyes shook him from head to toe, and he had to look back many, many years. They were eleven years old, and Hagrid had ordered them to look together for the unicorn in the Forbidden Forest. Up until that point, to Harry, Draco had been the arrogant, spoiled rich child who made fun of his friends unfairly, but when that figure appeared before them and Draco looked up at him terrified, the dark-haired's little world trembled for the first time. Those ocean eyes stared at him with such intensity that Harry swore he could feel everything Draco felt in his veins, to the point of wanting to cry and scream alongside him.
That event was to be followed by many, many others over the years at Hogwarts, but Harry remembered the most important ones with total clarity.
Like that time in third year when, moments before the incident with Buckbeack, Draco looked at him like that way again. As he approached him, ready to reply his challenge, and biting his lower lip, Draco's eyes burned again with an intensity that frightened Harry to the point of paralysis. But there was no more fear: those ocean eyes now burned with pure arrogance and cockiness as only Draco Malfoy knew. The pull in his stomach he felt gave him the sensation of falling from a very high place, and at the time he thought it was because of the hate he felt for the blond.
But it was never that. Those eyes, and their owner, made him fall for another reason.
Overwhelmed by memories, he moved in his seat as he took another look around. Draco was now staring at a muggle couple seated at a near table, his expression looking so longing.
Could Draco have someone in his life? After the war, practically everyone had turned their backs on the family, and while he wanted to assume that his old friends in Slytherin were still by his side, he couldn't know for sure either.
He turned a page, snorting and frowning deeply. He had been walking through a world gone blind with hate. Harry loved the magical world, but he also held it so much contempt for being so filled with rage, fear, and resentment. No one was able to forgive Draco and his mother, and it made them live such a miserable life that, despite all they could offer, ended up repudiated in France. Harry wasn't perfect, he knew what it was like to blindly hate someone. But the anger and resentment he held against the many people who had run his life became a careful creature he managed to be friends with time. If he, who had lived it all by first hand, knew how to forgive, why couldn't the others? And why did they seem to take it all out on the owner of those eyes?
His lower lip trembled slightly as another memory invaded his mind. This was the one he was trying to avoid the most.
Draco, soaked from head to toe, lying on the bathroom floor as he bled to death because of him. In all the middle of that horror, as he tried to find the words to apologise or to find a spell who could save him, those ocean eyes found him and looked deep into his own. That extremely relieved look, which seemed to be happy in waiting for death and telling him not to worry, finally destroyed any remaining strength he had after that year full of fears and nightmares. He never felt so devastated as when he saw himself reflected in those eyes.
He sighed deeply, pushing aside that stupid magazine. Those memories, together with the full awareness that his maker was in the same room as him, made him take what he considered to be the stupidest decision of his entire life.
If he wanted those eyes to look at him, he should not hide. You can't expect to feel the breeze and to see the brightness of the ocean if you kept looking it through a window.
Harry looked away from the table slowly, and turned his eyes directly to where the boy with the ocean eyes stood. His heart skipped two beats when he realised that he was already being observed, with the kind of intensity he had only ever experienced years ago, nowwith a different nuance. As Draco Malfoy stood up and made his way to his table, his hair still wet and the corners of his lips turned up in a tender smile, the fire in his eyes seemed to be adoring what consumed his sight.
- Has anyone ever told you that you think out loud? - Draco commented as he sat down next to Harry, almost holding back a laugh.
Harry quickly turned his gaze away as he mentally beat himself - where was his bravery supposed to be?
- I guess a good Legilimens and a terrible Occlumens are a bad combination - whispered, trying to mimic the blond's tone. He still didn't know if the blond was trying to laugh at him or just hex him.
He heard a giggle a few inches away, and thought that any human ear could hear his heartbeat at that moment.
- Harry, look at me.
It was instantaneous. He looked up and sank into that ocean, which greeted Harry as if it had been waiting for him for a long time. After that, Harry never swam against the current again.