A/N: Thank you to my one reviewer, who just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I think it's pathetic that I had to call a friend to get a single review, but whatever. I hope someone is reading this besides just me and you, imouto-chan. #sigh#. Well, here's chapter 3, as ordered. I'll be posting chapter 4 at the same time. Much love, and enjoy!
PS- Here's the shower scene! I told one of my betas that, and she looked all hopeful until she read it. I enjoy tormenting my betas. As is, I think it's still amusing. And anyway, I told you all there wouldn't be any sex yet, and there isn't. Just a little bit of naked!Draco, for all my lovely readers to enjoy. (And Mei-chan, I'm sorry for torturing you so. I love that you love my fic, and thanks for the beta reads! Oh, and Beth-chan, too, even though you don't like slash. You guys are the best!.)
Chapter III – A Different Sort of Morning
Draco woke the next morning to a loud pounding on Harry's bedroom door.
"Up! Get up, you! It's nearly eight! Up!" A shrill voice was yelling from the hallway, but the speaker (or shouter, Draco amended) didn't open the door. Draco turned his head slightly to see that Harry Potter, the Boy Who Would Not Die, was also apparently the Boy Who Would Not Wake Up. He was still snoring lightly, which Draco would have found heartwarming if he was the sort of person who found things like that heartwarming. Scowling, Draco shoved him rudely off the edge of the bed. He landed with a loud thump and a yelp.
"What was that?" The screech came again from the hallway. "You better not be up to any of your, your... tricks in there!" Harry yawned, then sat up and answered the screeching.
"No, Aunt Petunia. I just fell off the bed." Harry's voice sounded bored to Draco's ears. Almost... 'Resigned.' Draco decided, was definitely the word. But resigned to what, he had no idea.
"Well, get up then! You've got the breakfast to make, and the garden needs weeding! Up!" With one last thump on the door, the screecher outside left. Harry scowled up at Draco from his new position on the floor.
"What in the world did you have to knock me off the bed for?" He asked, running a hand through his more-tangled-than-usual hair and beginning a search for his glasses. Draco snorted.
"That ... banshee or whatever it was was pounding on the door, and you were still snoring." This time, it was Harry's turn to snort as he put on his glasses.
"That was my Aunt Petunia. And I'd get used to it if I were you. That's how she wakes me up every morning. She won't come in, though." Harry yawned again and stretched. "How do you feel?" He asked, moving on to less annoying subjects than his normal wake-up call.
Draco paused for a moment, evaluating his condition mentally. "Better, I think. Is there any way that I could take a shower?" Harry nodded, thinking silently to himself for a moment before speaking.
"Probably. But you might not like it." Draco gave him a "look". The "look" that said, 'start explaining, right now'. Harry did. Draco didn't like it.
Ten minutes later, Draco found himself being secreted down the hallway to the Dursleys' upstairs bathroom, leaning on alternatively on Harry or the walls for support. Once they were both inside, Harry shut the door and Draco sat down on the edge of the bathtub gratefully.. He grimaced at the sight of the room.
"I can't believe you can bathe in a room with such hideous wallpaper." He commented, wrinkling his nose at it. Harry fought down a laugh, privately deciding that Malfoy looked much more like a ferret with that expression.
"Well, you get to bathe here too, so, again, get used to it." Harry handed Draco a towel from the bathroom closet and then grabbed one for himself. "You can go first." Draco nodded, and began to remove the bandages that covered a large part of his torso. Some of the minor cuts were healing nicely, he was pleased to note. As he got to removing the dressings on the larger gashes however, he hissed audibly. They had already begun to scab, and pulling the bandages off was painful. Harry fixed him with a worried gaze, standing close by in case he was needed.
Draco thanked whoever had been watching out for him that there were only a few major wounds and bruises. The rest would heal fairly quickly, which was good, because he was getting sick of the other boy's constant attention. The blond boy finished with his stomach, chest and shoulders, then made a small noise and turned his back to Harry. He nodded to himself, getting the message. Silently and gently, he removed the bandages over the wounds on Draco's back, noting for future reference which ones would need more antiseptic and bandages, and which could be handled with the liquid skin. As with the front, there were mercifully few that would need bandaging. When he finished, he stepped back and turned around, facing the door as the blonde Slytherin removed what was left of his trousers and stepped into the shower.
"Alright, Potter, you can turn around now." Draco commented tersely from the shower as he studied the fixtures with interest. There were fewer of them than he was used to, and they were much more rusty than the ones in his own 'anti-rust' spelled bathroom at the Manor (though not too rusty, as Petunia Dursley would not consent to keep a bathroom such a state. Harry was therefore forced to scrub it regularly, but Draco didn't know that). He watched as the shadow that he knew was Harry Potter closed the lid on the toilet and sat down on top of it. "Oi, Potter. How do you work this damn thing?" he threw the fixtures a glare. They were entirely different from his, upon close inspection. Harry chuckled.
"Turn the red one to add hot water, the blue to add cold. You have to play with it a bit to get the temperature right. And make sure you've pushed in the knob for the shower. It's in the middle there." Draco studied the handles with distaste. His own shower at home was spelled to always be the exact temperature that he liked. After checking to see that the middle knob was pushed in, he hesitantly turned the red handle a bit. A slow trickle of water came out of the shower head. He turned it a bit more. The water began coming out faster. Smiling at his success, Draco turned the handle several times, and was rewarded with an invigorating spray of water. 'That wasn't so ha-' Draco's thought was interrupted as the spray suddenly became blindingly hot.
"AHH!" Harry's head snapped up. "Potter! What the hell is wrong with this thing? Shut it off!" Sighing, Harry stood up, wishing briefly that he had cast a silencing charm on the room before starting this, despite the fact that it would have brought the Order crashing down on him in moments.
"What's wrong?" He asked calmly, struggling not to laugh at the fact that Draco Malfoy didn't have a clue how to work a shower.
"It's too bloody hot! I can't even shut the damn thing off!" Harry took a step and opened the shower curtain enough to shut off the water with a flick of his wrist. Draco was huddled at the back of the tub, looking rather put out and quite...
'Naked.' Harry realized, immediately turning an intense shade of red and looking away. It took Draco only another half a second to realize the source of Harry's embarrassment and blush as well.
"Um... We- well, look, this is h-how you do it." Harry stammered, pulling out the 'shower' knob and placing a hand under the spigot. "You just turn both of these bit by bit until the water is the right temperature. Here, just put your hand under here." Harry motioned to the flow of water, carefully not looking in Draco's direction. With a bit of a wince as he lowered himself, Draco did as directed. "Is it too hot, still?" Harry asked, still pointedly not looking at anything but the shower fixtures.
"No." Draco decided. "It's a bit too cold, actually." Harry nodded.
"Then you turn the red knob a bit more until it gets hot enough. Once you get it the right temperature, push the center one in again and it'll come out the shower instead." Draco nodded thoughtfully.
"That makes sense." He paused. "Thanks, Potter." Harry smiled, a rather pointless expression as he was still looking anywhere but at Draco.
"Don't mention it, Malfoy." Draco snorted.
"I don't plan to." He drawled. Harry just laughed, and eventually, Draco did as well.
A few minutes later, Draco shut off the water and grabbed his towel off the rack just outside the curtain. When Draco finally stepped out of the shower and allowed Harry to turn around, Harry couldn't help but gasp. In the morning light, Draco's black-and-blue torso looked even more wicked than it had the night before. He could also now see a matching set of bruises and cuts on the svelte boy's legs. Draco looked almost embarrassed at Harry's study of his body, and suddenly Harry did as well.
'I looked like I was checking him out or something!' He realized, flushing slightly and glancing away. Finally, Draco broke the awkward silence.
"I think a few of the cuts reopened." He said softly, almost apologetically. Harry swallowed his embarrassment and looked up at Draco, who was still standing nervously before him in his towel.
"That's alright. I can clean them up again in a few minutes. Just let me take my shower first." Neither boy would look the other in the eyes. "Do you think you can get back to my room?" Draco nodded. "Okay, then... just wait there for a few minutes. I'll be right back."
Draco slipped out the door without a word, scooping up the shreds of his once-clothing as he did so. Harry sighed as the door closed behind Draco as he exited. He quickly stripped out of his own pajamas and stepped into the shower. It was possibly the fastest shower he had ever taken. If he took too long in the bathroom, the Dursleys were bound to become, if not suspicious, at least annoyed at him. He wasn't sure which was worse.
When he finally arrived back in his room a few minutes later, he found Draco Malfoy sitting on his bed, wearing only a towel draped lazily across his lap, flipping through Harry's copy of "Quidditch Through the Ages". The sight was certainly an odd one, "Quidditch Through the Ages" aside. Harry couldn't imagine the amount of pain that had come with the injuries Draco had sustained, but here he was, only a few hours later, acting for all the world as if nothing had happened. Draco looked up as the door opened and Harry walked in, still clad in nothing but his own towel, and blushing like mad.
"I forgot to bring my clothes." He mumbled, digging into a drawer for the necessary items. He straightened, then looked at Draco questioningly. The Slytherin merely huffed and turned to face the wall. Harry rolled his eyes and dressed as fast as he possibly could. It didn't seem to have helped at all.
"Nice arse, Potter." Draco commented slyly, smirking from his position on the bed. Harry was tempted to hex him for looking, but found himself instead replying with a rather snarky
"Glad you enjoyed the view."
Years later, when Harry was having a particularly bad day, he would look back on this moment, remember Draco's face, and have a quiet laugh.
"Well, now that you're done admiring my arse, we need to treat those." Harry pointed at Draco's cuts, some of which had indeed reopened and were bleeding sluggishly. Draco took another moment to gape at Harry, then offered his back to be abused by the peroxide again.
"There. That's the last one. I can't really do anything about the bruises, though. I guess you'll just have to wait for them to fade on their own." Harry shrugged as he closed the first aid kit. Draco looked down at his chest and abdomen and grimaced.
"I don't think my skin has ever had this much... color..." He mumbled, obviously to himself, but Harry heard and let out a small giggle. Draco looked up at him and pinned him with a sly gaze. Harry flushed, realizing that he had just giggled like a little girl in front of his worst rival, and Draco chuckled. It was an odd noise to Harry's ears, but a decided improvement on the usual sardonic laughter that he had come to expect.
"I have to go make breakfast. They'll probably keep me working most of the day, so I probably won't be back for a while." Harry seemed embarrassed by this, glancing down at the word 'working' and not looking up until he had finished the sentence. "If you need anything to eat, you can look under the floorboard." Harry showed Draco how the hollow space could be accessed. "It's got a preserving charm on it, so don't worry about if the food's any good. It's a good idea to avoid Hagrid's rock cakes, unless you've decided that you don't like your teeth." Harry grinned up at him, and Draco smiled back, chuckling again. He was finding that Harry Potter was quite different than the image he had built up in his mind, but he couldn't decide which one he liked better. Well, he liked this one better, actually, but it was so much easier, the way it had been. Now, he was beginning to realize, it was going to be rather difficult to keep up the simple hatred that had existed too long.
'Know thy enemy... dangerous words.' Draco decided, and then wondered whether Harry Potter counted as his 'enemy' any longer. They sure weren't acting like enemies, but perhaps it was a special case. Draco decided to ponder it a bit more later. He would, it appeared, have most of the day to himself.
Harry stood up and dusted off his jeans. "It's probably better if those cuts air out for a while, but if you want to borrow some clothes, they're in that drawer." He gestured to the drawer he'd been rummaging in earlier. "I saw that you already found the Quidditch books, so you can look through those if you want." He shrugged. "Sorry I don't have more to keep you occupied."
Draco shrugged, wincing as he jarred a rib. "It's fine." Harry nodded, then seemed to realize something.
"Oh! Ah... I don't think my aunt or uncle will come in, and I know Dudley won't, so you shouldn't have to worry about that Don't worry, if they see you they'll probably run out of the room screaming." Harry laughed wickedly, and Draco decided that yes, he did have distinctly Slytherin tendencies at times. Even so, he couldn't help but send his own wicked grin right back. "Alright. I'll be back later." Harry exited the room, closing the door with a soft click.
Draco looked at the door blankly for a few seconds after Harry left, then sighed. All in all, he figured, it was a good thing that he had been so readily welcomed by the other boy. If he hadn't, he could just imagine the state that he would have been in. Nowhere to go, broken and bloody and wandering about the London suburbs at night, an easy target for any Death Eaters who might have followed him. He shuddered. Yes, it was a very good thing that Harry was letting him stay. 'Potter.' He corrected himself suddenly. 'His name is Potter. You do not call him Harry, he does not call you Draco.' He nodded, as if reassuring himself of this fact. Yes, it was much easier that way. It drew the line at 'temporary truce'. He was absolutely not going to allow himself to become friends with Harry Potter.
'But isn't that what you wanted?' His subconscious piped up, in its usual annoying manner. 'All those years ago? Isn't that what you wanted?'
He quickly told himself to shut up, then went back to intently studying "Quidditch Through the Ages", and steadfastly not remembering how hurt his eleven-year-old self had been, when that boy with the wild, dark hair and green eyes had refused to take his hand. No, he wouldn't remember that at all.
A/N: Please review! I'm really worried that no one likes this! #sniffle#