This is written for round seven of the International Wizarding Schools Championship. The following info is for judging purposes. Enjoy! :)

School & Theme: Beauxbatons - Write about a character not understanding their relationship with someone.

Mandatory Prompt: [Word] Dread

Additional Prompt: [Dialogue] "I'm offended you didn't get me to be your fake date."

Year: 2

Word Count: 2,686

Additional Info: Canon-compliant through Deathly Hallows, but ignores the epilogue (EWE). Some dialogue in this is taken directly from the Harry Potter novels—books one and seven.


.: Friend or Foe? :.

"Honeybee, could you imagine where our lives would lead? That silly ring, it wasn't meant to be. Luckily you saw in me, something I couldn't see." - Honeybee, The Head and the Heart

(1)

Harry Potter was on the train. Harry Potter! Draco marched down the carpeted corridor, peeking into each compartment for the boy with the lightning scar.

Father would expect him to befriend Harry, and Draco abhorred disappointing his father. He was already drafting his letter in his head: Harry shook my hand, Father, and he promised we could go flying together some time.

Draco wasn't a fidgety person—Malfoys didn't fidget—but he couldn't stop himself from tugging on his robes. Crabbe and Goyle thumped along behind him, and Draco wished they'd pick up their feet. Only lazy louts shuffled.

Finally, there, in the last train car, was…the boy from Madam Malkins? Excitement surged through Draco. He already knew him—had even spoken to him already—and if that wasn't a boon, Draco didn't know what was.

He didn't pause to take a breath; only cowards needed to stall. He slid open the compartment door and stepped over the threshold, his friends at his heels. Draco's gaze slid over the other boy in the compartment—A Weasley, he scoffed, it's good I'm here—before settling on Harry.

"Is it true?" Draco asked, though he knew it was. The scar was visible clear as day through the boy's messy black fringe. "They're saying all down the train that Harry Potter's in the compartment. So it's you, is it?"

"Yes," Harry replied, his green eyes slipping to Draco's friends.

Manners! he heard his mother scold.

"Oh, this is Crabbe and this is Goyle. And my name's Malfoy. Draco Malfoy." His father always said his last name first, and Draco liked how it rolled off his tongue.

The Weasley coughed and Draco's hackles rose immediately.

"Think my name's funny, do you? No need to ask who you are. My father told me all the Weasleys have red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford." Draco squared his shoulders and turned back to Harry. "You'll soon find out some wizarding families are much better than others, Potter. You don't want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there."

Draco stuck out his hand, but all Harry did was stare at it.

"I think I can tell who the wrong sort are for myself, thanks," he said coolly.

Draco dropped his hand, and it took every ounce of his self-control not to blush. He didn't think he succeeded—the curse of pale skin—but he gathered himself quickly. Mastered his surprise and unease.

He didn't like this, just like he didn't like most things he didn't understand. And he didn't want to think of how dreadful it'd be if he didn't have something to write home to his father about, so he borrowed into his indignation, squeezed past his embarrassment.

"I'd be careful if I were you, Potter," he warned. "Unless you're a bit politer, you'll go the same way as your parents. They didn't know what was good for them, either. You hang around with riff-raff like the Weasleys and that Hagrid, it'll rub off on you."

Potter and Weasley surged to their feet.

"Say that again," the Weasley snarled, his freckled face blotchy and burning.

"Oh, you're going to fight us, are you?" Draco taunted. Crabbe and Goyle brushed against his robes, and he felt powerful. Felt like his father.

"Unless you get out now," Potter threatened, his eyes flickering.

"But we don't feel like leaving, do we, boys?" Draco looked around, and he noticed the pile of unopened sweets first. "We've eaten all our food and you still seem to have some."

Goyle, unsurprisingly, was the first to reach for the Chocolate Frogs, and in a flurry of motion, he leapt back with a piercing yell. A rat hung off his friend's hand, and Draco pushed him away instinctively. He hated rats, and while Goyle was still howling, Draco rushed out of the compartment.

His friends followed a moment later, and Draco huffed as he walked back to his compartment, pushing a bushy-haired girl out of the way in his haste.

That, he mused, could have gone better.


(2)

Sometimes Draco said things without really hearing himself, without thinking about it. Spewing vitriol about the Weasley's and about Potter's parents was like second nature at this point. He liked the powerful rush that came with being mean and putting others in their place, and taunting Potter and his friends was a special kind of rush.

If Potter wasn't going to be his friend, it was of the utmost importance they be mortal enemies.

But as Draco lay on the Quidditch Pitch, nose bleeding and ribs smarting, he decided it was utterly exhausting being someone's enemy. A quick, cruel tongue had been bred into him before he was out of leading-strings, but at the ripe age of fifteen, he finally realized the high from the verbal victory never lasted long.

Draco groaned and pushed himself into a sitting position, wearily watching Professor Umbridge punish Potter and the Weasley twins. Deservedly so, Draco thought, but his conviction was weak.

When the Gryffindors left the pitch, Draco wondered…if he and Potter weren't enemies, what else could they be?


(3)

Draco's lungs burned with every inhale, and tears tracked through the soot on his cheeks. He'd been so stupid. So ignorant and naive and cowardly and stupid.

Hand over hand, he hauled himself up the towering stack of forgotten things, Fiendfyre beasts nipping at his heels. Goyle had slowed down in his ascent, but Draco bellowed, "Keep climbing!" over the roar of the flames.

It wasn't meant to be, though, because at the next plateau, Goyle collapsed face-first and stopped moving. He nearly rolled off the small ledge, but Draco desperately clutched him. His arms barely wrapped around his friend's bulky frame, but Draco managed to stop him from plummeting to his death.

"We're not high enough!" he screamed, his voice cracking. Goyle remained limp, his eyes closed. "Goyle, wake up! Greg! We're not high enough, please!"

Dread curdled in Draco's gut. He could've left his friend and kept climbing, but the fire would reach him eventually anyway. And despite Goyle's flaws—of which there were many—they'd been friends since nappies, and Draco's self-preservation only went so far.

Then he saw him. Potter, swooping above the leaping flames and erupting from the haze of orange-tinged smoke like he was Merlin stepping out of the freaking mists of Avalon.

Why? Why would Potter come back for him? Draco knew it was in the do-gooder's nature to help everyone, but Crabbe and Goyle had quite literally tried to kill him only moments ago. Potter had a frightening lack of survival instincts, but Draco desperately reached for his hand, grateful.

He slipped through his fingers, and Draco cried out, hopeless.

"IF WE DIE FOR THEM, I'LL KILL YOU, HARRY!" Weasley roared.

Draco didn't blame him.

Weasley and Granger were pulling Goyle's unconscious body onto their broom, and Potter had looped back around. Draco scrambled onto the broom, hands grappling with Potter's clothes as he tried to get a good grip.

He held so tightly to Potter's ribs that his knuckles ached, but Potter just leaned over his broom and took off. Draco leant with him, and with a sick twist of Draco's insides, Potter made a hairpin turn and dove—dove deep into the churning mass of Fiendfyre.

"What are you doing, what are you doing, the door's that way!" Draco screeched, voice breaking. He buried his face in Potter's back and tried not to sob.

Draco didn't understand how he'd ended up here, how his life had spiraled so completely out of his control. And then he was in the castle corridor, rolling across the stone as he was tossed from the broom.

As he coughed and retched, as darkness spotted his vision and he swayed on his hands and knees, Draco tried to find a reason—any reason—why Potter would deign to save his pathetic life.


(4)

Draco curled his fingers around the end of his chair, his knuckles whitening against the black stone and his chains clinking a horrid reminder of his current predicament. The eyes of the Wizengamot members drilled into him, but the stare he felt most acutely came from a certain black-haired, green-eyed savior.

It made him itchy.

Why was Potter here? Hadn't Draco suffered enough without having to be subjected to the humiliation of Potter watching him take that final step into his grave? Draco deserved whatever sentence the Wizengamot bestowed upon him, but did Potter have to witness it?

"Before the Council deliberates," the reedy wizard overseeing his trial wheezed, "we open the floor to anyone wishing to give testimony regarding Draco Malfoy."

Potter lurched to his feet, and dread sluiced through Draco's veins. He was there to bury him—it all made sense now.

"I'd—er—like to speak," Potter croaked. He cleared his throat and picked at his collar. He looked disheveled and distinctly out of place, a jumper-clad beacon amongst a sea of plum-colored robes.

Draco spared a thought that Potter had always looked out of place—had always stood out and been separate from everyone else.

"Malfoy—er, Draco should be granted leniency."

Draco's brain had gone completely blank, his muscles locking up in shock. A ripple went through the crowd, and Potter looked annoyed at the sound. He straightened and spoke with a renewed vigor—spoke with all the confidence he'd always had when he felt he was right and everyone else was bat-shit.

"He didn't have a choice when he took the Mark. He was trying to protect himself and his family, and it's wrong to punish him for that."

The Chief Warlock's face went blotchy with indignation. "If we grant leniency to even one Death Eater, all the others will clamor for the chance—citing this as precedent."

"Those other 'Death Eaters'"—Draco could practically hear the quotes Potter placed on those words, and he had to hold in a snort. He had a Mark on his arm; ergo, he was a Death Eater—"didn't save my life."

"Be that as it may, Mr. Potter, he could have declined the Dark Mark."

"Oh, and I bet you were always declining the Dark Lord? Don't think I've forgotten Pius Thicknesse appointed you Chief Warlock. You did his bidding, no? Why didn't you decline?"

The Chief Warlock gaped, opened and closed his mouth a few times, but ultimately said nothing more.

Fifteen minutes later, Draco's chains slithered off his arms like Nagini used to slither over his dining room table. Draco got to his feet slowly, sure that someone was going to jump out and yell, "Just kidding!" and sweep his newfound freedom out from under him.

But no one approached him as the Wizengamot filed out of the courtroom, murmuring amongst themselves. And no one approached him as he left through the large oak doors or walked down the hallway. Was this real? Uncertainty churned through him.

Potter stood at the lift, and Draco debated jumping behind a pillar like the coward he was. But he squared his shoulders and approached. Potter spared him a glance when Draco stepped up next to him, but they waited for the lift in silence. When they boarded the car, Potter cranked the dial for the Ministry's Atrium, and they both clutched the hand-pulleys without a word.

Swaying back and forth with the lift's stomach-rolling movements, Draco whispered, "Thank you."

"I didn't do it for you," Potter replied, equally as quiet.

Draco didn't know what that meant.


(5)

"You did not!" Pansy screeched, drawing the attention of the other party goers. She had leaned almost all the way across the cocktail table, and her red-painted talons dug into the skin of his forearm. "Why on Earth would you ask him to this? I'm offended you didn't get me to be your fake date. I'm much better company."

Draco didn't quite agree, but he'd learned ages ago when to keep his opinion to himself.

"We're here as friends, Pans," Draco reminded. "It's not a date."

"Semantics." Pansy waved her hand, blessedly releasing his arm. "You are here together at the Christmas Gala where the old pricks in the Ministry show off their trophies—ahem—I mean their wives. It's a date."

Nope. The day Draco went on a date with Harry freaking Potter was the day the sun rose in the west. He was flabbergasted as it was, with Potter being his friend. He'd thought this to be an utter impossibility, but a chance meeting at the Quidditch Supplies store five months ago had resulted in a long-awaited handshake, a trip to the pub, and way too much drinking. He'd woken up on Potter's couch the next morning, and here he was all these months later, still sleeping on that couch three nights a week and drinking way too much.

Draco gulped down the rest of his apple ale.

"Are you wearing your French robes?" Pansy asked, looking him over. She grabbed his shoulder and twisted him to the side, gave him another once over. He didn't really want to know where her mind was.

"I don't know. Why?"

"They make you look extra fit," she stated. "The French sure know how to design clothes—your arse is going to be the talk of the society wives."

"Will you quit it?" he hissed, cheeks dreadfully red. He quickly looked around at the 'Ministry pricks' to see if any of them were watching.

"The only thing I've ever quit is the violin." Pansy sipped her martini and pulled an olive from the pick. "It was horrible on my neck."

Draco thumped his head on the table.

Pansy's teasing made him doubt himself. It wasn't a date—neither one of them had said it was—but the more he thought about it, he realized they hadn't said it wasn't a date, either.

This was absolutely horrible information because he had no clue how to handle it.

"Look alive, darling, boy-wonder's on his way over," Pansy drawled.

Draco straightened immediately, and the way his stomach flipped made him nauseous.

Potter weaved through the crowd, side-stepping a few eager-looking gentlemen with a wave of his hand and a quirk of his brow. There was a glint in his green eyes that Draco wasn't quite sure what to do with, and when Harry stepped up to his and Pansy's table, Draco wasn't quite sure what to say.

What were they?


(+1)

Flurries of snow drifted to the pavement, and it sat on the houses like little white hats. It also clung to Harry's inky hair, to his long, dark eyelashes, and it made something in Draco's chest twist.

He couldn't decide if the sensation was painful or not.

What he did know, was Harry's gloved hand kept brushing his, and their shoulders bumped every few steps. It had been months since that Christmas gala date-not-date, and for one of the first times in his life, something tangible and sure had settled in Draco's bones.

He tangled his fingers with Harry's and smiled when he saw Harry's lips quirk and his cheeks flush (though that could've just been the cold). The street was quiet when they climbed the front stoop to Grimmauld Place. They paused on the landing and faced each other.

Harry's green eyes shone in the low, warm streetlights, and Draco stepped into his space, wrapped his arms around his waist. Harry swayed into him, leaning into his embrace as if it was the most natural thing he'd ever done.

Harry's lips were chapped from the wind, but Draco didn't care one bit. He just kissed him harder, pulled him closer.

"Do you want to come inside?" Harry asked, voice husky. His breath ghosted across Draco's lips, warm and minty, and he had to take a moment to gather his senses. Harry completely overwhelmed him, almost every second they were together.

He pressed his forehead into Harry's, brushed their noses. Finally, after all these years, Draco knew for sure what was between them. "Yes."


thank you for reading!