Okay, okay. I just thought everyone should know that I have given this
story an immense amount of thought, and reached a conclusion. I WILL
continue writing it, it WILL end Draco/Harry and I have figured out how to
ease my need to write some Ginny action... so bear with me here. Because I'm
going to try this story again. I did go back and read over the first 7
chapters and made a couple very MINOR changes that you don't have to go
back and find, I just thought I would let you know. I didn't change
anything plot wise though. Okay. Here we go...
PREVIOSLY:
"Wait." Ginny stopped walking and turned to face him. "You didn't really talk about what's bothering you," she remembered, frowning. Harry ran his hands through his hair, causing it to appear even more disheveled that usual.
"I know. But I think its okay. I just have to tell Draco that I made a mistake, multiple mistakes." He sighed and looked at her. "Gods, Gin. How do I always get myself into such messes?"
"I dunno Buddy, I dunno." She smiled as she said this. "When are you going to tell him?"
"Today. Tonight. I have to."
"Yeah. You have too." The duo began their stroll back to the castle; Harry lost in thought about how he would tell Malfoy his revelation and Ginny confused as to why she suddenly felt nervous around Harry, one of her best friends.
Chapter 8:
Harry sat quietly in the common room that night, waiting for Draco to return from wherever he currently was. While he waited he worked on an essay for professor Sprout that was due the next morning. However, his mind was far from magical plants and all he could think about was what in the world he was going to tell Draco when he returned. He knew what to say, he just didn't know the words or how to make his mouth say them out loud. He lay his head down and fell into fitful sleep.
He awoke suddenly as the portrait swung open and Draco wandered in very late that night. The blonde dropped onto the couch with his legs hanging over the arm in a very ungraceful manner. Harry looked up.
"Uh, we need to talk." 'STUPID' he berated himself in his mind. 'Again with the bloody cliché phrases. God DAMMIT.'
"Yeah, I guess we do." Draco consented, grinning at Harry. A wave of guilt washed over Harry as he realized that he was about to ruin Draco's good mood. Along with the guilt came a sharp pain in his chest at the idea of causing this other person pain.
"I made a mistake" Harry began.
Draco snickered, but in a friendly, joking way. "Wishing you had fucked me after all? Even though I was drunk?" He smiled again.
Harry turned his eyes to the fire and stared past it. His fingers began to fidget in his lap and his eyebrows narrowed as he searched for the words. Finally he decided to just be blunt. "No. I shouldn't have kissed you; I shouldn't have taken you up to my room. I shouldn't have even thought about sleeping with you. None of it."
Draco's face fell as he heard the words coming from Harry's mouth. "Are you serious?" he asked, refusing to believe this. It was a cruel joke. A sick cruel one that was merely payback for every insult he had previously hurled at Harry. Any minute now Harry's face would crack into that adorable lopsided smile and he was laugh at Draco's distress. And they would kiss. He knew it. They would kiss tenderly, like lovers. That's what they were. That's what they would be. Lovers. But none of this was happening. Harry wasn't smiling. His face was empty but his eyes were shimmering slightly and he watched him swallow in an attempt to delay the tears. So far, Harry was managing to hold back his pain.
"I've never been more serious in my life" he finally said, refusing to meet Draco's eyes. "It was wrong." He swallowed again and pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead, hiding his famous scar from view. "Disgusting even."
Draco just stared at him. "What. Why?" His voice sounded innocent to an almost comical level. Draco was anything but innocent.
When he heard this question, this one word, 'why', Harry lost control. He didn't have an answer; he didn't KNOW why it was wrong. It just was, because he said so. Didn't Draco understand that? Why the fuck should he have to explain himself. Immediately his subconscious covered his uncertainty with anger.
"BLOODY HELL. BECAUSE I'M NOT GAY, MALFOY!" He seethed and clenched his fists tight at his sides. Later he would notice the tiny cuts that resulted from his nails digging into the soft skin.
Draco didn't say anything. He didn't have to, his face told it all. Harry watched him bite his lower lip and look at the ground. If Harry hadn't lost all form of control already, he would have felt a stab of guilt through his chest. But he didn't. He couldn't. He was furious. Infuriated at himself, for being attracted to Draco, angry at Draco for bonding them and mostly, angry at himself for not knowing what to do.
Unable to come up with a better plan, he continued to yell. "I'm not gay. I don't find you attractive." Draco winced. "I never have. I don't know what the fuck was wrong with me last night." Harry laughed bitterly. "No, NO I KNOW WHY I DID IT. I know why I kissed you, why I touched you." He paused to gather his thoughts. "I kissed you because I felt bad for you. I pitied you. I pitied you because you're gay and because you answer to filth like Voldermort. But most of all I pitied you because you love me and I will NEVER ever love something like you. Never." His face was red with anger now and he was standing over the other boy.
Draco finally looked up at him. First, his face displayed open hurt and betrayal, but in an instant it was gone. Draco put up his infamous mask and sneered at Harry, he gave Harry the same degrading look he had given every day for the last six years. He stood too and cursed the fact that Harry was about an inch or so taller than him.
"Potter." His voice was cold now, icy and Harry shivered mentally, already regretting lying to Draco. "You disgust me." Draco didn't break eye contact once as he continued. "I'm gay. I accept that. And that says something. You're gay. And you CAN'T accept that. That's pathetic. When you finally come to bloody terms with yourself you will see how pathetic it was that I know more about your sexual preferences than you did. And when you finally admit it all, you won't have SOMETHING like me to run too." With that Draco spun and brushed past Harry and up the stairs. He didn't slam his bedroom door. He shut it quietly. That was Harry's first clue that he had fucked up beyond repair. Harry groaned. And then slowly, he turned and left the common room. He followed the familiar path to the Gryffindor common room.
Upon entering he collapsed onto one of the couches, spent from his mental exertion. It was past midnight now and he curled up on the couch and fell asleep. The lone students that were still in the common room ignored him completely. By one in the morning, the room was empty, save Harry.
Ginny and Dean wandered into the common room at two a.m. after having been in an empty classroom together. Ginny sucked in her breath as she saw Harry lying on the couch, sound asleep. In his slumber he looked innocent, childlike and frail. The mother hen in her came out with wings flapping and everything. She looked at Dean and he looked back.
"Well I don't know what to do." He said quietly.
"I figured you wouldn't."
"Do you need me?"
"No, I should probably talk to him myself. Clearly his conversation with Draco didn't go as planned, if he's sleeping here not in his room." Ginny had filled Dean in with the details from her and Harry's talk. She knew Harry wouldn't mind, and Dean was after all her boyfriend.
"Okay, then I'm going to bed." He kissed her gently but with passion and then disappeared up the stairs to his dorm. Ginny sighed and picked up a blanket and spread it on top of Harry's sleeping form. He stirred at the contact and Ginny smiled slightly as he sat down next to him. She brushed the hair back from his forehead and frowned when she saw his eyes bloodshot and puffy from crying. She sat there for several moments, smoothing his hair and watching him sleep. Slowly, his eyes opened and he took a moment to focus his vision on the redhead who was sitting next to him.
"Ginny?" he murmured, his speech slurred from having just woken up.
"Yeah, it's just me." She said quietly, her hand stilling on his head.
"No... Not just you. You."
"Harry, that makes no sense." She smiled softly.
"I know. I know." He sat up and wrapped his arms around her tiny shoulders, burying his face in her hair. He breathed in the scent of her shampoo and her perfume. Ginny's stomach flipped over at the contact and she tensed briefly before leaning into his embrace. Finally she broke the hug.
"What was that for?"
"That was for being you. For listening to me." Harry spoke honestly and as he watched her face he could truly agree with Draco, no, Malfoy's opinion. She was hot. Her face was creamy and dotted with cinnamon colored freckles. Her eyes were light brown with shimmers of gold and yellow. Her dark red lips were currently parted slightly and stood out against her complexion. Her body. As he moved on with his appraisal, he smiled. She was the epitome of a petite girl. She was in perfect proportion, her chest, her hips, he slim legs, everything about her complimented her. She was thin. Very thin. Harry briefly entertained the thought that she might have been too thin. Her collarbone, dusted with light freckles, jutted out and her face had lost all the baby fat it had sported when he first met her. Harry supposed that if she were to lift her shirt, you could count the ribs. She wasn't wearing her school robes, just a ribbed black tank top and her uniform skirt. He noticed that the skirt, which had once fit her perfectly, hung slightly loose on her hips now and her pelvic bones were defined and prominent right above the hem of her skirt. Her legs were creamy colored too and it was clear when she stood that her thighs no longer touched. Harry frowned. This wasn't right. This wasn't right at all.
Ginny laughed at him quietly. "Why are you frowning?" she asked. She was well aware that he had been checking her out, but opted not to point it out.
"Gin, do you eat anymore?"
She paled slightly, but it was barely noticeable. "What are you talking about? Of course I do. I see you every day in the Great Hall. You see me eat. Don't be ridiculous." She laughed again and made it clear the subject was closed.
Harry tried to think back to meals with her and he was ashamed to admit that he couldn't remember if she had been eating or not, just that she had been there. He made a mental note to watch that more closely. There was something wrong.
"Did you tell Draco?"
"Yeah..."
"And I'm assuming it didn't go very well?"
"Not at all. I got mad. I yelled, and I told him I did it out of pity and that he was disgusting and that I wasn't gay."
"Wow."
"Yeah. Wow."
"Well did you mean it?" she asked.
"Well, parts of it. He's not disgusting, if I didn't hate him already coming into this, well we could be friends. But I'm not gay. That wasn't a lie."
"Ah" Ginny acknowledged.
"Ah?"
"Just 'Ah'" They both laughed at this bizarre conversation. "It's late." Ginny said. "You should go to bed."
"Where? I cant go back to the common room, I don't have a bed up in the dorms anymore."
"Well you were sleeping on the couch, you could do that." She paused, as if thinking for a better solution. "No, I know" she said slowly. "You can come upstairs and you can sleep in my bed."
"Uh, Gin. The stairs. They won't let me up, you know that."
"For another cliché statement, where there's a will, there's a way. Follow me." She stood and he followed. When they got to the bottom of the stairs she instructed him to wait. She walked up the stairs and took out her wand. She counted the floor boards on the top landing and lifted the fifth one from the right. Under the board was a red dot. She pressed the tip on her wand to the dot and the stairs glowed for a moment and then returned to their normal state. "Come on" she said.
Cautiously, Harry took a step. The slide did not appear and there was no ear splitting scream. He sighed in relief and continued up. Ginny led him into her dorm where three other sixth years were fast asleep. She pointed to the furthest bed on the left. He went to it and sat. Ginny cast a silencing charm over them so as not to wake the triplets she roomed with.
"Close your eyes" she said. He did as he was told and Ginny slipped out of her skirt and into a pair of hand me down red pajama pants that had once been Bill's. She rolled the waistband several times to make the legs shorter and then used a hair band to tighten the waist. She turned around and told Harry he could open his eyes. He did and laughed quietly at Ginny, who was practically drowning in the oversized pants. She glared at him jokingly and climbed into her bed. "You can sleep in your boxers and shirt" she informed him with her face muffled into the pillow. Harry laughed.
"Aye aye." Ginny had once again managed to better his mood and make him smile when he thought he could never smile again. He slid into her bed too and whispered goodnight. He got a sleepy response before he drifted off to sleep again.
Back in his and Draco's tower, Draco lay dejectedly on top of his made bed. His face was pale and his eyes were blank. He had stopped crying long ago and now he was just confused beyond belief.
'If that's the way he wants it,' Draco thought. 'That's how it will be.' After that final thought he rolled onto his side and fell asleep, with his shoes still on and the bed curtains still open.
REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW!!!!!!!!!!!!
Have no fear, I have a plan.
All my love,
Katie
PREVIOSLY:
"Wait." Ginny stopped walking and turned to face him. "You didn't really talk about what's bothering you," she remembered, frowning. Harry ran his hands through his hair, causing it to appear even more disheveled that usual.
"I know. But I think its okay. I just have to tell Draco that I made a mistake, multiple mistakes." He sighed and looked at her. "Gods, Gin. How do I always get myself into such messes?"
"I dunno Buddy, I dunno." She smiled as she said this. "When are you going to tell him?"
"Today. Tonight. I have to."
"Yeah. You have too." The duo began their stroll back to the castle; Harry lost in thought about how he would tell Malfoy his revelation and Ginny confused as to why she suddenly felt nervous around Harry, one of her best friends.
Chapter 8:
Harry sat quietly in the common room that night, waiting for Draco to return from wherever he currently was. While he waited he worked on an essay for professor Sprout that was due the next morning. However, his mind was far from magical plants and all he could think about was what in the world he was going to tell Draco when he returned. He knew what to say, he just didn't know the words or how to make his mouth say them out loud. He lay his head down and fell into fitful sleep.
He awoke suddenly as the portrait swung open and Draco wandered in very late that night. The blonde dropped onto the couch with his legs hanging over the arm in a very ungraceful manner. Harry looked up.
"Uh, we need to talk." 'STUPID' he berated himself in his mind. 'Again with the bloody cliché phrases. God DAMMIT.'
"Yeah, I guess we do." Draco consented, grinning at Harry. A wave of guilt washed over Harry as he realized that he was about to ruin Draco's good mood. Along with the guilt came a sharp pain in his chest at the idea of causing this other person pain.
"I made a mistake" Harry began.
Draco snickered, but in a friendly, joking way. "Wishing you had fucked me after all? Even though I was drunk?" He smiled again.
Harry turned his eyes to the fire and stared past it. His fingers began to fidget in his lap and his eyebrows narrowed as he searched for the words. Finally he decided to just be blunt. "No. I shouldn't have kissed you; I shouldn't have taken you up to my room. I shouldn't have even thought about sleeping with you. None of it."
Draco's face fell as he heard the words coming from Harry's mouth. "Are you serious?" he asked, refusing to believe this. It was a cruel joke. A sick cruel one that was merely payback for every insult he had previously hurled at Harry. Any minute now Harry's face would crack into that adorable lopsided smile and he was laugh at Draco's distress. And they would kiss. He knew it. They would kiss tenderly, like lovers. That's what they were. That's what they would be. Lovers. But none of this was happening. Harry wasn't smiling. His face was empty but his eyes were shimmering slightly and he watched him swallow in an attempt to delay the tears. So far, Harry was managing to hold back his pain.
"I've never been more serious in my life" he finally said, refusing to meet Draco's eyes. "It was wrong." He swallowed again and pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead, hiding his famous scar from view. "Disgusting even."
Draco just stared at him. "What. Why?" His voice sounded innocent to an almost comical level. Draco was anything but innocent.
When he heard this question, this one word, 'why', Harry lost control. He didn't have an answer; he didn't KNOW why it was wrong. It just was, because he said so. Didn't Draco understand that? Why the fuck should he have to explain himself. Immediately his subconscious covered his uncertainty with anger.
"BLOODY HELL. BECAUSE I'M NOT GAY, MALFOY!" He seethed and clenched his fists tight at his sides. Later he would notice the tiny cuts that resulted from his nails digging into the soft skin.
Draco didn't say anything. He didn't have to, his face told it all. Harry watched him bite his lower lip and look at the ground. If Harry hadn't lost all form of control already, he would have felt a stab of guilt through his chest. But he didn't. He couldn't. He was furious. Infuriated at himself, for being attracted to Draco, angry at Draco for bonding them and mostly, angry at himself for not knowing what to do.
Unable to come up with a better plan, he continued to yell. "I'm not gay. I don't find you attractive." Draco winced. "I never have. I don't know what the fuck was wrong with me last night." Harry laughed bitterly. "No, NO I KNOW WHY I DID IT. I know why I kissed you, why I touched you." He paused to gather his thoughts. "I kissed you because I felt bad for you. I pitied you. I pitied you because you're gay and because you answer to filth like Voldermort. But most of all I pitied you because you love me and I will NEVER ever love something like you. Never." His face was red with anger now and he was standing over the other boy.
Draco finally looked up at him. First, his face displayed open hurt and betrayal, but in an instant it was gone. Draco put up his infamous mask and sneered at Harry, he gave Harry the same degrading look he had given every day for the last six years. He stood too and cursed the fact that Harry was about an inch or so taller than him.
"Potter." His voice was cold now, icy and Harry shivered mentally, already regretting lying to Draco. "You disgust me." Draco didn't break eye contact once as he continued. "I'm gay. I accept that. And that says something. You're gay. And you CAN'T accept that. That's pathetic. When you finally come to bloody terms with yourself you will see how pathetic it was that I know more about your sexual preferences than you did. And when you finally admit it all, you won't have SOMETHING like me to run too." With that Draco spun and brushed past Harry and up the stairs. He didn't slam his bedroom door. He shut it quietly. That was Harry's first clue that he had fucked up beyond repair. Harry groaned. And then slowly, he turned and left the common room. He followed the familiar path to the Gryffindor common room.
Upon entering he collapsed onto one of the couches, spent from his mental exertion. It was past midnight now and he curled up on the couch and fell asleep. The lone students that were still in the common room ignored him completely. By one in the morning, the room was empty, save Harry.
Ginny and Dean wandered into the common room at two a.m. after having been in an empty classroom together. Ginny sucked in her breath as she saw Harry lying on the couch, sound asleep. In his slumber he looked innocent, childlike and frail. The mother hen in her came out with wings flapping and everything. She looked at Dean and he looked back.
"Well I don't know what to do." He said quietly.
"I figured you wouldn't."
"Do you need me?"
"No, I should probably talk to him myself. Clearly his conversation with Draco didn't go as planned, if he's sleeping here not in his room." Ginny had filled Dean in with the details from her and Harry's talk. She knew Harry wouldn't mind, and Dean was after all her boyfriend.
"Okay, then I'm going to bed." He kissed her gently but with passion and then disappeared up the stairs to his dorm. Ginny sighed and picked up a blanket and spread it on top of Harry's sleeping form. He stirred at the contact and Ginny smiled slightly as he sat down next to him. She brushed the hair back from his forehead and frowned when she saw his eyes bloodshot and puffy from crying. She sat there for several moments, smoothing his hair and watching him sleep. Slowly, his eyes opened and he took a moment to focus his vision on the redhead who was sitting next to him.
"Ginny?" he murmured, his speech slurred from having just woken up.
"Yeah, it's just me." She said quietly, her hand stilling on his head.
"No... Not just you. You."
"Harry, that makes no sense." She smiled softly.
"I know. I know." He sat up and wrapped his arms around her tiny shoulders, burying his face in her hair. He breathed in the scent of her shampoo and her perfume. Ginny's stomach flipped over at the contact and she tensed briefly before leaning into his embrace. Finally she broke the hug.
"What was that for?"
"That was for being you. For listening to me." Harry spoke honestly and as he watched her face he could truly agree with Draco, no, Malfoy's opinion. She was hot. Her face was creamy and dotted with cinnamon colored freckles. Her eyes were light brown with shimmers of gold and yellow. Her dark red lips were currently parted slightly and stood out against her complexion. Her body. As he moved on with his appraisal, he smiled. She was the epitome of a petite girl. She was in perfect proportion, her chest, her hips, he slim legs, everything about her complimented her. She was thin. Very thin. Harry briefly entertained the thought that she might have been too thin. Her collarbone, dusted with light freckles, jutted out and her face had lost all the baby fat it had sported when he first met her. Harry supposed that if she were to lift her shirt, you could count the ribs. She wasn't wearing her school robes, just a ribbed black tank top and her uniform skirt. He noticed that the skirt, which had once fit her perfectly, hung slightly loose on her hips now and her pelvic bones were defined and prominent right above the hem of her skirt. Her legs were creamy colored too and it was clear when she stood that her thighs no longer touched. Harry frowned. This wasn't right. This wasn't right at all.
Ginny laughed at him quietly. "Why are you frowning?" she asked. She was well aware that he had been checking her out, but opted not to point it out.
"Gin, do you eat anymore?"
She paled slightly, but it was barely noticeable. "What are you talking about? Of course I do. I see you every day in the Great Hall. You see me eat. Don't be ridiculous." She laughed again and made it clear the subject was closed.
Harry tried to think back to meals with her and he was ashamed to admit that he couldn't remember if she had been eating or not, just that she had been there. He made a mental note to watch that more closely. There was something wrong.
"Did you tell Draco?"
"Yeah..."
"And I'm assuming it didn't go very well?"
"Not at all. I got mad. I yelled, and I told him I did it out of pity and that he was disgusting and that I wasn't gay."
"Wow."
"Yeah. Wow."
"Well did you mean it?" she asked.
"Well, parts of it. He's not disgusting, if I didn't hate him already coming into this, well we could be friends. But I'm not gay. That wasn't a lie."
"Ah" Ginny acknowledged.
"Ah?"
"Just 'Ah'" They both laughed at this bizarre conversation. "It's late." Ginny said. "You should go to bed."
"Where? I cant go back to the common room, I don't have a bed up in the dorms anymore."
"Well you were sleeping on the couch, you could do that." She paused, as if thinking for a better solution. "No, I know" she said slowly. "You can come upstairs and you can sleep in my bed."
"Uh, Gin. The stairs. They won't let me up, you know that."
"For another cliché statement, where there's a will, there's a way. Follow me." She stood and he followed. When they got to the bottom of the stairs she instructed him to wait. She walked up the stairs and took out her wand. She counted the floor boards on the top landing and lifted the fifth one from the right. Under the board was a red dot. She pressed the tip on her wand to the dot and the stairs glowed for a moment and then returned to their normal state. "Come on" she said.
Cautiously, Harry took a step. The slide did not appear and there was no ear splitting scream. He sighed in relief and continued up. Ginny led him into her dorm where three other sixth years were fast asleep. She pointed to the furthest bed on the left. He went to it and sat. Ginny cast a silencing charm over them so as not to wake the triplets she roomed with.
"Close your eyes" she said. He did as he was told and Ginny slipped out of her skirt and into a pair of hand me down red pajama pants that had once been Bill's. She rolled the waistband several times to make the legs shorter and then used a hair band to tighten the waist. She turned around and told Harry he could open his eyes. He did and laughed quietly at Ginny, who was practically drowning in the oversized pants. She glared at him jokingly and climbed into her bed. "You can sleep in your boxers and shirt" she informed him with her face muffled into the pillow. Harry laughed.
"Aye aye." Ginny had once again managed to better his mood and make him smile when he thought he could never smile again. He slid into her bed too and whispered goodnight. He got a sleepy response before he drifted off to sleep again.
Back in his and Draco's tower, Draco lay dejectedly on top of his made bed. His face was pale and his eyes were blank. He had stopped crying long ago and now he was just confused beyond belief.
'If that's the way he wants it,' Draco thought. 'That's how it will be.' After that final thought he rolled onto his side and fell asleep, with his shoes still on and the bed curtains still open.
REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW!!!!!!!!!!!!
Have no fear, I have a plan.
All my love,
Katie