Well, sports fans, here we are, with the second of my "No Angel" shorts. I've been struck with more inspiration since the last time I typed, and the series is now going to be a quintet, rather than a quartet. However, I'm going to let you, my dear readers, find out about the other ones and their subjects as I post them, but here's the second. I've taken long enough to get this out already. Let there be no further delay. This fic is set to Dido's "Don't Think of Me," from the album No Angel.
As always, I most certainly do not own the characters of the Harry Potter universe. I am merely playing with them, and I am quite thankful that J. K. Rowling allows her fans to share their inventions with each other.
Don't Think of MeDraco slouched on the deep settee, a posture which his father would have caned him for, had the horrible man still lived. It had been years since the War, since he was forced to choose sides and finally followed his heart instead of his father for the first time in his life. And now, here he was, back in the awful Manor where he had been a child, sitting in his father's study, slowly consuming a fifth of brandy he'd found in the liquor cabinet as he stared into the fire and moped. This is what comes of following my heart, I guess. Misery.
So you're with her, and not with me.
I hope she's sweet, and so pretty.
I hear she cooks delightfully,
A little angel beside you.
His thoughts kept turning back to what was making him so miserable, what had been his reason for choosing the side of Hogwarts and the Light oh so many years ago. Harry. His Harry, or so he'd thought. They'd become lovers rather quickly after Harry found out that Draco had defied his family for him and him alone. Draco hadn't told him immediately the whole story of confronting Lucius that fateful day, but Harry had eventually wormed it out of him. Draco had calmly and concisely told his father that he would not follow a madman like Tom Riddle, especially not when said madman was obsessed with killing the one person that Draco loved—Harry Potter.
Of course, he'd told Harry, after the other man had practically begged to know what had so disturbed Lucius Malfoy that, a year after he and Draco parted for the last time, the Healers at St. Mungo's had tested a frothing, middle-aged blond man and declared him completely insane, his mind beyond recovery, and absolutely beyond any possible attempts at rehabilitation. In short, Lucius had been put down like a rabid animal, as there had been no chance whatsoever of him ever leading a normal life again.
Harry had practically worshipped him for a week after Draco told him the full tale, and the blond had more than enjoyed it. But now the ebon-haired wizard had shown his true colours; he'd left Draco seven months ago and immediately—as in within a week—married Ginevra Weasley. And the man had told him for years that he knew he was gay, that Draco would be the only person to hold Harry's heart. What an utter fool I was, to believe his lies for so long. A scowl creased the pale forehead.
The fucker had gone back on his word, betrayed Draco in every way possible, by taking up with the Weasley chit. The blond could just see them now; it was nearing dinner, and the chit would be in the kitchen, using the magics she'd learned from her mother, pots and pans swirling about the kitchen, the veg chopping themselves, a spoon stirring something mainly liquid on the stove, all without her actually touching them, while she worked on some delicate dessert that couldn't be made with magic because it would fall flat, or fall apart if not made with one's own hands.
When he and Harry had lived together in their little flat, meals had usually been either very simple—like sandwiches and maybe a gelatine dessert—or were take-out, if they didn't actually eat at the restaurant. Well, neither of them could cook that well, and Draco didn't particularly care for "home cooking" as most British thought of it. Harry had rather liked the eclectic variety of their dining, unless he'd faked that, too.
So you're with her, and not with me.
Oh, how lucky one man can be.
I hear your house is small and clean.
Oh, how lovely, with your homecoming queen.
Oh, how lovely it must be.
He'd been by the house where Harry and the chit lived now, once. A little cottage, with a small yard and a patch of veg on the side, and flowers everywhere. Apparently, they were an obsession of the chit's, though Draco knew that Harry had some slight pollen allergies. How the chit had gotten him to allow flowers all over when they made the other wizard miserable—he got quite a bit of sinus blockage from the pollen, plus a rather nasty cough if he was around too much for too long—was simply beyond the blond.
That little whitewashed cottage was actually smaller than the penthouse apartment Harry and Draco had shared, and they'd had an absolutely brilliant view of London from their deck. They had had a large area to plant in, too, where Harry grew his veg and Draco some of the herbs he used most in his potions experiments. He had been, and was still, helping Severus as the older man tried desperately to find a cure for lycanthropy, or at least something that alleviated the most deadly side effect: accelerated, and often painful, aging. Gods, but I loved that apartment. No bad memories of my family there, and more Muggle technology than I could shake a stick at. But it was gone, now. With the way the Ministry had mucked about with the family vaults after the War, on top of the massive amounts that his father had funnelled to the Death Eaters before he had been found and sent to St. Mungo's, there was barely enough to pay for Draco's minimum clothing and materiel needs. Food and some of his potions needs were easily supplied by the Manor grounds; the place had been self-sufficient, almost, but no one in Wiltshire made clothing anymore, let alone robes, and Draco knew better than to try himself. His only artistic ability lay in the potions he was so adept with.
They'd had good times in the penthouse apartment… Nights of debauchery, sometimes, that tended to stretch into the days after. Never with anyone else, of course. Harry and Draco had shared an exclusive relationship, and neither admittedly shared well. But now they were all gone, and the memories were tinged with bitterness. How much was he faking? Draco would think. Was any of it real?
When you see her sweet smile, baby,
Don't think of me.
When she lays in your warm arms,
Don't think of me.
He could see them in his mind's eye, every evening as he went to his cold, lonely bed. He could see them wrapped together in a bed smaller than the king-sized four-poster in his room, the chit as close to Harry as she could possibly get without being inside the wizard's skin. It always made him angry, but there was no way to stop the vision coming every night, not even by drinking himself into a stupor. Occlumency didn't work, either, and Draco knew that it wasn't his own imagination supplying the images.
So you're with her, and not with me.
I know she spreads sweet honey.
In fact, your best friend, I heard,
He spent last night with her.
Now how do you feel?
He'd heard rumours about the chit, too. Apparently, she wasn't as faithful to Harry as Draco had always been. While he'd never slept with anyone else, not even before he'd admitted his feelings to himself, the chit had a reputation for sleeping around. In fact, the reputation had started sometime during her fourth year, when she had begun bouncing from one bloke to another. Then, just yesterday, there had been the kick in the pants.
Draco, on a rare run to Diagon Alley for a few necessities and some fresh ingredients from the apothecary, had practically run into a morose-looking Seamus Finnegan. The Irish wizard's expression alone had been disconcerting. When Seamus had mentioned that his apartment, shared with Dean Thomas and Neville Longbottom, had become absolutely unliveable, Draco had been curious to why and asked.
"Dean's about to go for Neville's throat, is why. The blighter was out all day yesterday, and didn't come back until near six this morning, and Dean swears up and down that he reeked of Ginny's perfume until he showered. Not that I blame Dean for wanting to kill him; after all, Harry's our best friend, for all three of us, and for Nev to be cuckolding him… It's not right, not at all, and I don't know why Nev's doing it. For that matter, I don't know why Ginny's cheating on Harry. He's the best husband a gel could want, and she's practically throwing it in his face."
Draco had seen red, and almost turned to find the chit and hex her into next year. Seamus' gentle hand on his arm stopped him, though.
"Don't get involved, please. I remember what you and Harry had. He was happier with you than I've ever seen him, and I don't want him mad at you." The blond had relented with a huge sigh of regret.
"Don't tell anyone, but… I miss him. I miss us, together, and I don't know if I can ever be happy for him and… her, you know?" He hadn't been able to say her name since she tore up his relationship with Harry, and he couldn't think it without a snarl. Did she know what she'd done to him, what she'd done to a beautiful relationship?
When you see her sweet smile, baby,
Don't think of me.
When she lays in your warm arms,
Don't think of me.
And it's too late, and it's too bad,
Don't think of me.
And it's too late, and it's too bad,
Don't think of me.
Ironically, though Draco wanted to put Harry and their past as a couple completely out of his mind, he couldn't. It was impossible, and he had tried. A Pensieve didn't even help. He was tormented by bittersweet memories all the time, even when he looked at the most innocent of objects. And as he lay in bed at night, trying to sleep, he fervently hoped that Harry was suffering just as he was.
Does it bother you now, all the mess I made?
There had been such an uproar when the public found out they were together. It had been in the papers every day for a month. And that wasn't the only mess associated with their relationship. Draco couldn't keep a room tidy if his life depended on it. At the penthouse, there had been little bits of clothing scattered all over from snogging sessions gone out of control. Draco's CDs were never in their cases, nor even in one room, unlike Harry's, as the younger man kept his neat in a rack he'd bought. The kitchen area had usually had some strange substance dried somewhere, often more than one substance in more than one place, as that was where Draco had worked on his potions. The bed was never made, no matter what time it was or who was coming over. Yes, he'd made a mess in Harry's life, but the other wizard seemed to like having messes to clean up.
Does it bother you now, the clothes you told me not to wear?
Gods, Harry's thing about clothes. Everything Harry wore, unless someone else had bought it for him and it suited the occasion in Harry's mind, was simply huge. Baggy, shapeless clothes that completely hid the lithe frame, the broad shoulders, the tight, delectable arse that Draco loved. And Harry was just as prudish about Draco showing off his own physique. One particular incident was rather vivid in Draco's memories; they'd been getting ready to go out with Seamus, Dean, Blaise Zabini, and Theo Nott. Draco had known that they were going to a nightclub, and had tried to tell that to Harry when he went to change, but the dark-haired wizard was not going to let Draco dress him in anything, not even a better looking pair of trousers than the huge jeans, or a smaller shirt than the XXL tee he was wearing. And then Draco had come out of the bedroom after he'd finished getting dressed. Harry had thrown an absolute fit over the nearly transparent silver silk shirt, with its slit from the neckline halfway to the navel. Draco had been sure that Harry had nearly had an aneurysm over the pants, too. Nice black leather, lacing up the sides, that was just a bit small so that the laces showed flesh all the way up, and not hiding the fact that he didn't have on a single scrap underneath them. It had turned into a huge fight that only stopped when their friends arrived. Harry had sat at a table in the club all night, watching Draco hungrily as the blond danced alone. Oh, people had tried to dance with him more than once, but Draco had snarled at them every time and then shot a glance at Harry out of the corner of his eye, wishing that he'd listened to him just once and changed into something nice. Wishing that Harry would dance with him, too, and drive away all the pests for the evening. But no matter how many clubs they went to, how many hours Draco danced, Harry would never wear anything better, and he would never get up and join Draco on the dance floor.
Does it bother you no, all the angry games we played?
They'd had quite a few fights, in fact, usually either over what Draco wore to a club, or purposely started by Draco with a stinging remark or biting insult. The blond did it on purpose, after the first few times, because he found that he liked when Harry was aggressive with him. Afterwards, Draco would proudly sport the bruises, love bites, and the tracks of Harry's nails, allowing them all to heal without magic. They declared to all the world that he belonged to Harry Potter and no one else, thank you very much. Despite telling Harry how much he enjoyed such play, the other man was always chagrined afterwards, once his temper had cooled. Draco had hoped that he could eventually get his lover to accept the games as just that, but the hope had been dashed when Harry left.
Does it bother you now, when I'm not there?
He avoided Harry like the plague now. It was more for Harry's safety than anything else; he didn't know what he'd do if he saw his harry and the chit together, but it would probably involve blood and pain, and not his own, so he avoided the possibility. He rarely left the Manor anymore, either, for the same reason. He hurt, and he didn't want to show the whole world. He'd rather just mope by himself, thank you very much.
When you see her sweet smile, baby,
Don't think of me.
When she lays in your warm arms,
Don't think of me.
And it's too late, and it's too bad,
Don't think of me.
Oh, it's too late, and it's too bad,
Don't think of me.
I think I have a little more ending to this one, but I'm going to wait and see what your reactions are to this before I put it up. Obviously, Draco is very much Harry-sexual in this, rather than simply homosexual. I don't know who coined the term, but I originally saw it as someone called Harry Draco-sexual, and I really like the way it expresses feelings: loving only one person, and just not wanting anyone else at all. So this Draco is very much Harry-sexual, and he's very angry for good reason, in my mind. Please let me know what you think, and if you want the additional bit of ending I'm thinking of. After all, fanfiction writers live on reviews, and I am no different. Thanks for reading!
Beth Weasley