Characters © J.K. Rowling.
Plot © Sami-Lee 2000 - 2004.
Harry intended to spend Sunday morning cleaning his room. He put one of his favourite albums on, Switchfoot – The Beautiful Letdown, of course, and continued to clean his room whilst dancing around like a moron. His music was in fact so loud, that it wasn't until the break between tracks that he actually heard the phone ringing, he scrambled to turn the volume down and grabbed the phone.
"'Allo?" He mumbled into the receiver.
"Hey Harry, it's me, what are you doing today?" Draco's voice responded and Harry smiled broadly.
"I'm cleaning my room, come over, we can bum here."
"Ok, see you in about 45 minutes." Draco hung up the phone. Harry hung up and placed the receiver back in its holder. He looked at his room; it was still far from clean. With 45 minutes, he decided he might as well do a proper job; he went to the kitchen and fetched some plastic bags then returned to his room. He rolled up his sleeves.
42 minutes later, Harry's bed was in the middle of the room under the window, having been pulled away from the wall, his TV was against the wall at the foot of his bed, next to the door and wardrobe and his desk was where his bed had been. Five large plastic bags full of rubbish were sitting outside his door. He wiped the dust that collected on his jeans away, then went and changed the CD over. He didn't really know what else to put on so he put on one of his compilation CDs, which he'd made himself on his computer, it had a whole bunch of crappy old-school music on it, but Harry couldn't be bothered changing it again.
Draco arrived just as Harry was throwing the bags into the bin out the front. They headed up to Harry's room. Harry shut and locked the door behind him and collapsed on the bed, Draco sat on the end.
"Where are your parents?" Draco asked, kicking his shoes off and crawling up to lay next to Harry. Harry kissed him on the forehead before answering.
"I dunno, out, said they'd be home late." He shrugged, causing Draco's head to bounce as he did so. Draco nodded and without warning, kissed Harry. Harry kissed back and smiled when Draco broke the kiss. Without hesitation the two boys moved back together, kissing each other desperately, clinging onto one another like they never wanted to let go. Harry removed his shirt, and then Draco's...
On Monday morning, Harry sat on the bus, in his usual seat, with his headphones blaring his annoyingly loud music into his ears. He stared out the window until the bus pulled up at Seamus' stop and he bounded up to where Harry was sitting and sat in the seat in front of him. "Heya, Harry. How was your weekend?"
Harry pulled his headphones out and looked at Seamus quizzically, Seamus repeated his question, playfully knocking Harry on the head.
"Oh, it was good, we went to Wonderland, ask Draco to show you the photos." He laughed, remembering the photo of Draco on the Demon. Seamus gave him a weird look for laughing to himself. "Anyway, how was yours?"
"You're not well, Harry. And how could you go to wonderland without me!? I'm insulted. I feel neglected. Oh, well, you can go with me in the holidays." Harry agreed, nodding. "Anyway, I didn't do much on the weekend, went to the movies with Dean and what not, kinda boring actually, but then you weren't there." He laughed, ruffling Harry's hair. Harry laughed too.
The two boys stopped for breakfast at McDonalds, and Harry told Seamus about his weekend in a little more detail, including that he'd slept with Draco. Seamus congratulated him, but too soon, Draco was standing at the top of the stairs, staring at them in absolute horror.
"Draco, what's wrong?" Seamus asked. But Harry knew. Draco had always been one for secrecy, and Harry had just told Seamus something that he knew Draco certainly didn't want him telling anyone, regardless of how much Harry trusted them. His heart sank as Draco's expression turned to a glare.
"Draco, wait..." Harry called, as the blonde turned and walked back down the stairs, out the door, halfway down Pitt street and sat down on a chair in the middle of the mall, bawling his eyes out. Harry had taken a moment to grab his school bag before following him at a run. He reached Draco, breathless. "Draco... I – "
"Don't bother, Harry." Draco started, sobbing heavily. "Just don't. I can't believe you told him that, why? That's our private stuff, Harry, that's... it's... private... not... "He started crying again, and Harry sat beside him. "Don't Harry." He said again, shrugging Harry's hand off of his shoulder. "Just... leave me alone. For a while, ok?" Harry sighed and nodded, standing up.
"I'm sorry, but you know we can trust Seamus. He's my best friend. I wont keep secrets from him. I'm sorry." And with that Harry slung his bag over his shoulder and walked away. He didn't want to, but he did.
Harry walked to school slowly, he felt utterly miserable. Seamus caught up to him just before they reached the school. He didn't say anything, but placed his hand on Harry's shoulder and mouthed the words 'I'm sorry'. Harry laughed and shook his head, the tears becoming evermore threatening. He blinked hard to try and stop them from falling, it didn't work.
"Hey, do you wanna skip school? We can go down to the harbour, I'll make you feel better, I promise." Seamus suggested. Harry smiled sincerely and nodded, then followed Seamus past the school and down toward Darling Harbour.
They decided to get something to eat, Harry had claimed he was feeling sick, and settled for KFC, Seamus' shout. They sat down by the water, watching the boats mil around, the people walking along busily, rushing to get to where-ever it was they were going. There wasn't really anyone around the spot where they were sitting, so Harry took the opportunity to speak openly with him.
"I'm sorry I ran out on you this morning." He hung his head and looked at his sneakers, noting to himself that it was about time he got some new ones. Seamus placed his hand once more on Harry's shoulder.
"Look, don't worry about it, I understand where you were coming from, you didn't want him to be mad at you. But you do understand that he might need some time to cool down, don't you? He did seem pretty upset after all. I know that I would be if it was my first time and I heard someone relaying it to their friend in all the gory details." Seamus pulled a half-smile. Harry smiled back.
"Yea, you're right... Wait a minute; did you say it was his first time? Do you just mean with another guy?" Harry stared at Seamus. Seamus looked at Harry with incredulity.
"You didn't know he was a virgin?" Seamus gaped at Harry. Harry went slightly red.
"Well, no, I didn't... I mean, he's the best looking guy in school, how can he still be a virgin?" Harry stuttered; he seriously didn't believe it.
"Well, I would say that's a matter of opinion, Draco being the best looking guy in school, I mean. Personally, I'd say you were. But you better believe he's a virgin, Harry. And accept it, and make it all better. You'll need to talk to him, but I'd give him some time, you know, to calm down and forgive you for telling me all about it. He met Hermione this morning, I think she spoke to him she would have stuck up for you." Seamus patted Harry on the back.
"You're right. Well, I'll give him some time then. In the meantime, what do you want to do?" Harry smiled, visibly cheered, Seamus smiled back and both boys headed over to the Imax theatre, and bought tickets for the latest snowboarding film, receiving many weird looks due to their school uniforms.
As they left the cinema, they were talking excitedly about snowboarding. About how they would go to the snow together in winter and learn how to do it, and buy all their own gear and it would be so cool. They laughed for a while as they headed back up towards the school. Harry suddenly realised that they would have called his mother when he hadn't shown up for homeroom. He cringed, realising that he'd need to find some legitimate reason to give his mother for his skipping school.
The two boys walked past the school and up to Elizabeth Street to the bus stop. Seamus perched himself on the wall and Harry hopped up next to him, and lay down on his side, like an obnoxious underwear model. "Seamus," He said in a deep, mock-sexy voice. "Do you think I'm sexy?" Seamus took one look at Harry and cracked up laughing, falling backward onto the grass as he did. Harry toppled down after him and they lay in the grass laughing and being stupid.
It was about 3:15 pm, the same time they would normally be catching the bus after school, as they rolled around on the grass play fighting like a couple of idiots. Other St. Patrick's students started arriving at the bus stop. Harry and Seamus paid no attention, and continued their feigned frolicking. A few of the girls giggled when they spotted them. After a while, Harry got bored and sat up, brushing his hair off his face. As he did so, he noticed a mop of very familiar blonde hair, standing on the other side of the wall.
"Draco?" He asked. Draco was indeed standing there, watching Harry and Seamus. His arms were folded across his chest and though he still looked fairly upset, he now seemed slightly angrier. Harry tried exasperatingly to fix his hair. "Draco, I... Well, you know that this isn't what it looks like. You know me and Seamus."
"Do I, Harry? I thought I did. But maybe, just maybe, I was wrong." He turned his back to leave, but before he could take a step Seamus had jumped over the wall and was standing in front of him.
"It's not how it looks, Draco. You should at least know me better than that." He spat. Harry had noticed a couple of the girls watching them and took a couple of steps over to them.
"Who do you think'll throw the first punch?" He whispered, and the girls giggled, one of them pointed at Seamus, another one said Draco. Harry winked at them and jumped down off the wall. Draco and Seamus were now yelling at each other, almost inaudibly, and Harry thanked god no one could hear them screaming about which one of them Harry wanted to be with.
"Will you two stop already? Dray, you're taking this way too far, you know Seamus isn't like that." Draco stopped and looked at Harry, then he did something Harry certainly didn't expect. He punched him square in the jaw.
Harry took several small steps backward as he regained his balance. He felt his jaw with his hand and then looked up at Draco. He didn't honour him with a witty come back, he didn't bother to take a swing of his own. Instead he stared at Draco and said, "Come on, Seamus. Lets go."
"You got it, Harry." Seamus said, following him over to the stairs. Draco stood at the bus stop, staring at the ground. Seamus turned back and faced him for a moment. "Now you're even, Draco. You've hurt each other, though in different ways. Harry did try and apologise, he gave you space so you could calm down, so he wouldn't be in the way, and this is how you repay him? He felt like crap, and I was trying to cheer him up and all you can do is jump to your stupid conclusions. I hope you realise what you want sooner or later and then you find a way to talk to him about it." He said it calmly, sympathetically almost. Then he turned and jogged to catch up to Harry who'd stormed off across Hyde Park towards Oxford Street.
Seamus didn't say anything to Harry. He knew him well enough to know that Harry wouldn't want to talk about it yet, and when he did, he would let Seamus know. He followed him across the park and down Oxford Street to one of Harry's favourite stores. As they entered the art supplies store, Seamus noticed Harry pulling out his wallet, and checking to see how much money he had. Like most of the people in their grade, Harry and Seamus didn't have part time jobs. Draco worked at the supermarket down the road from him, and Lavender worked at McDonalds, but most of the others got their money from their parents, like Harry; sometimes, even Draco gave Harry money.
Harry seemed to be content with the amount of money he had and strode over to the section of the store where the canvases were. He pulled out four A3 sized ones and then proceeded over to the paints section. He grabbed a large bottle of black paint and several smaller bottles of colours, grabbed a couple of new paintbrushes and then headed over to the counter. Seamus knew that when Harry was angry, upset or depressed he painted. He knew that once he left Harry on the bus, Harry would be ok once he let all his frustration out on the canvas. Seamus often wondered why Harry didn't do art, and he always said it was because he didn't need his emotional life being judged. He made a good point.
One hundred and ninety three dollars later, the woman at the counter handed Harry a couple of bags and his change and the boys left the store. They didn't have to wait long for a bus, and were glad to see that there were no St. Patrick's students aboard it when they climbed on and dipped their bus passes. They took a seat towards the back.
"You ok, Harry?" Seamus asked. Harry nodded and smiled to let Seamus know that he really was ok. Seamus smiled back and nodded knowingly. He was sure that Harry and Draco would sort it out, after all, it was coming up to their 6-month anniversary.
Funnily enough, his mother didn't say anything to Harry when he got home. She greeted him normally and he went straight to his room, telling her he wasn't hungry and wouldn't be having dinner. He came to the conclusion that they hadn't called her yet. He got changed and locked his door, pulling his sketchbook off his desk.
Harry sat on his bed, the last rays of the afternoon sun filtering through his window onto his sketchbook where he was drawing some designs to put on his canvases. He was wearing his old jeans, which already had a fair few paint splats on them from when he'd painted his room the year before, and one of his old t-shirts, the rips in it showing off his recently attained tan. He'd designed some similar canvases a little while ago, and had pulled out his old designs, some of the idea's he'd chosen to use again, but some of them reminded him too much of his time with Ron. He'd ripped out a few pages and hurled them across the room.
Most of his designs involved images that meant something to him – Dragons, large cats, hell, any cats, Vampires, Magic – basically anything that didn't really exist. He'd drawn some extremely detailed sketches and some scribbles. Once he'd chosen which images he was going to use in his backgrounds, he was going to splat paint all over the top – not for any particular reason, but just because he could.
He sighed and opened his sketchbook back to his first design. He'd drawn a picture of a large black cat, with icy baby-blue eyes, just like Draco's, standing on a large boulder, proud and in charge. He spent hours alone on the cat, his attention to detail ridiculous. His jeans were now spattered all over with black and blue paint. Once he had finished the cat, which he painted in oils and watercolours, he left it to dry and moved on to the second design. The second design consisted of a baby Dragon, her scales pearly pastel blue and pink, her eyes gold. Harry loved her because she was beautiful but dangerous, something he had once been told he himself was. She sat in a field of pastel green grass that glistened with dew and was littered with lavender wild flowers. He painted her in metallic-pearl acrylic and watercolour, with glitter littered over her hide and tiny glue splats over the grass to create the dew. Harry wondered for a moment if he was totally gay, but shook his head when he looked at the wall and still found all the girls attractive.
The third canvas Harry had a different idea for. He took a bunch of old photos, most of them of himself with Draco, Draco on his own and all his other friends. He ripped them all up randomly and stuck them as a huge collage over the canvas. The last canvas he left blank. He figured it could represent the future, whether he saw it empty, or he just didn't know what was there he wasn't sure, but either way, it seemed to fit.
He spread a couple of old sheets over his floor and moved all his equipment to the floor, then he pulled out the paint. He poured the black and each colour into a separate bowl, and then pulled out his paintbrush. He had grabbed more colours than he remembered doing – bright blue, hot pink, sunny orange, forest green, charcoal grey, warm yellow and violet.
He dipped his paintbrush in the black paint and splashed a few lines above the cat, on the top of the canvas where it was blank. He then sprinkled silver glitter over the thick streaks of paint, it very closely resembled a night sky; Harry smiled to himself as he dropped the brush into the glass of water by his feet. Next, he took some green paint and splashed it up towards the cat from the bottom of the canvas; it now looked like the Panther was peering out from behind long blades of grass. Finally, he took a much smaller brush and dipped it in the yellow, he then flick it down over the canvas from the top left corner, creating an effect that looked like moonlight filtering down. He was impressed. He set the canvas up by his desk to dry, and took the next one.
The little Dragon winked up at him from her spot on the grass. Harry took the same pearly paints he had used for her scales and mixed them up with some white paint and water, after completing the sky in the same fashion as he had done for the first canvas, he then took the watered-down pearly paint and splattered it in spirals over the picture, he finished with more silver glitter over the spirals.
The picture with the photos received a few random streaks of black and colour and the final canvas became a mass of swirling colour, spirals, slashes, streaks and blobs, random splotches of glitter littered the canvas. It was the void of the unknown.
Harry sat and stared at his canvases, leaning against his desk to dry. He smiled again before stripping off his t-shirt and jeans, jumping in the shower and hopping into bed.