"Oh get off it, you bloody git!" The familiar feeling of frustration mixed with annoyance flared up in his stomach. Harry took a minute to unclench his fists and lower the volume of his voice again.
"We don't have time to go through this every single time we meet. There are more important things to be doing." His command was steely, almost a whisper. He vented the last bit of his anger by pushing his hair moodily out of his eyes. Old habits, he thought both about his hair and about the young man standing before him, old habits are hard to break.
He and Draco Malfoy had disliked - hated - each other from the moment they had met. Harry could still remember standing next to the blonde-haired boy at Madam Malkin's, getting their Hogwarts robes for the first time. It was oddly amusing, actually, the large number of important experiences they had shared together; as if fate or destiny or something like that purposefully kept drawing them to each other, closer and closer. Harry couldn't help but smile warmly as he thought about the very first time he had ridden a broom - an event also tied directly to Draco.
The young man in question scowled more forcefully as Harry's expression became less agitated and more thoughtful.
"What?" He demanded, scraping together his well-practiced aristocratic aloof veneer. Seven years he had spent carefully keeping Harry as far away as possible; seven years, but being around him still made Draco uncomfortable. It was a twisty, shuddering feeling, that Draco couldn't control - and that was why it was so uncomfortable. Draco knew that nothing good came of being out-of-control. Not when that sort of thing would only earn you one of Mother's dark hexes as punishment, or worse, attract Father's…attention…
Now that they were out of Hogwarts, and Voldemort's armies finally on the run, the only time that Draco was ever around Harry was when the Order met. When the Order met, and he wasn't away on a mission.
Draco took a great deal of pride in his role for the Order. It hadn't been easy to join them at first; but it had been easy to forsake his domineering bastard father. Lucius Malfoy… Draco struggled briefly to keep his face from twisting in the sneer that always surfaced when he thought about his father. Too aloof to care, too full of his own pride and cowardice to actually be a father for his own son and heir; joining the Order was a decision made much, much easier once Draco had discovered that Severus Snape was part of it all. Snape… someone who actually noticed when you did something right; someone who actually taught Draco a thing or two. And now Draco had Snape's old job: the daring spy, living by his wits and cleverness alone.
"What?" Draco demanded again, but he had already lost the imperious edge from his voice. He could feel that their almost-ritual mock confrontation had already found its end; they were ending faster and faster recently, as if they only sparred when they first saw each other to remind themselves of their past - the seven years they had shared - and then move back to the pressing matters of the present.
And then Harry smiled, and Draco's stomach spun around wildly, his breath suddenly thin in his dry throat. In a flash of insight, Draco suddenly realized why Snape and Lupin gave each other the same sort of …space… that Harry and Draco tried in vain to give each other: hate, dislike, are much, much simpler emotions to digest than... this.
"What?" Draco whispered, his voice catching embarrassingly at the end of the word. Harry hadn't seemed to notice, which was Draco's only relief.
"I was just thinking…" Harry began, his voice equally throaty, "I was trying to pin point the exact moment when I stopped thinking of you as Malfoy, and started actually using your name in my head." He stumbled awkwardly over his sentence, adding quickly, "When I'm thinking."
Draco lifted an eyebrow quizzically; suddenly, Harry realized that his innards had turned to jelly, and he was shaking uncontrollably. For Merlin's sake, Harry thought furiously, I'm rambling like a bloody git! And he heard his voice saying:
"Maybe it was just only recently, since we've been working together for the Order. Maybe it's because you've been… doing so much… for us, for the Order. And it's much more dangerous, what you do. But then, I was thinking about how we met. That day - it was my birthday, you know - and about how I learned to fly a broomstick, and all those times that I would watch your face at the Slytherin table in the Great Hall, because it always mattered what you thought or felt about something. Of course, back then, it mattered if what I had done pissed you off or made you angry. But we were just kids then; you did the same to me. Like we needed to… I dunno…goad each other on. Motivate each other, or something. And so it was always Malfoy. Like I couldn't bear the thought that you were a real person. A real, flesh and blood…"
And Draco suddenly became very intensely aware of both flesh and blood; Harry so close now, they could almost feel each other's ragged breathing. Draco's mind had absolutely stopped working, he was sure of it. All he could do was listen to the sound of Harry's voice, rolling over the space between them, tickling down his skin. He couldn't identify his feelings, and wished desperately that it was hate, because he knew very well how to hate Harry Potter; he had been practicing it, acting it out, for seven years. Draco wasn't sure he would know how to do anything else.
And Harry was still speaking, "… I remember something Voldemort, well actually it was Quirrell, said to me. About Snape, and my father."
Draco's eyes glittered with interest, beautifully, at the mention of Snape. Harry nearly choked, blood rushing all over his body in strangely unsettling ways, "I had suspected Snape of dealing with Voldemort. And it was partly because he hated me so much. Quirrell said that was because he had also hated my father - they had loathed each other. Then Quirrell said that although Snape hated me, Snape never wanted me dead. And maybe I began to figure it out then, at that moment; that I didn't want you dead, no matter what else I thought I felt…"
"Harry." Draco murmured huskily, secretly appalled at what his mouth and his voice were doing against his better judgment. There was a brief pause, a delicious silence filled with electric energy.
"Draco?" Harry's lips curled possessively around each letter as they slipped away from his mouth, to hang in the air - hot and filled with the strangled catches of their breathing.
"Shut up." Draco's voice whispered just seconds before he pulled the electric air into his lungs, and silenced Harry's rambling by pulling his lips against his own.
They had, after all, learned how to hate each other in an instant; it was obvious that they could just as quickly learn how to love.