Chapter 7

"Oh, fuck."

"Don't."

"You're – Merlin, you're really –?"

"Say another word and I'll seriously consider killing you."

"A word to you or to anyone else?"

The words filtered into Harry's dozing mind, weaving into the vague dream shrouding him. A part of him knew that they weren't really of his own making, that the words themselves came from somewhere else, but he was simply so relaxed. Warm, comfortable, and nothing if not disinclined to climb out of his languid stasis.

He would have been content to remain that way and ignore the slightly shrill almost-whisper from somewhere over his shoulder if Draco hadn't shifted beneath him. If the arm that had been hooked loosely around Harry's waist hadn't tensed, the fingers felt through his shirt digging in just enough to be noticeably different from a casual resting touch.

Stirring, Harry drew breath and released it in a heavy, reluctant sigh. He blinked his eyes open, squinting blurrily into the dark depths of the library beyond their quiet niche, and just as reluctantly lifted his chin from Draco's shoulder.

Sitting as he was had become just as habitual in the past few weeks as had been sitting in Draco's lap. Chest to chest, Harry's arms over Draco's shoulders and his legs draped over the sides of the chair alongside Draco's thighs, it was surprisingly comfortable. Not only for sitting – and sleeping, as he'd found himself doing more often than in his own bed – but for studying, too. Harry had worked out that, with the back of a second chair behind Draco's own to act as a prop, it was rather easy to read a textbook. Even to go so far as to write notes, though that took a balancing act that Harry found himself increasingly prepared to juggle. With so much time dedicated to studying for his NEWTs, it was a blessed discovery.

To be a bit closer to Draco, to his warmth and the solidity of his body, had become a steadying pillar in the past few months. Creeping rapidly up to Christmas as they were, Harry couldn't help but feel the need to abuse the strange agreement they'd undertaken, the unscheduled but similarly agreed upon meetups they undertook. The holiday break wasn't particularly long, but when Harry was barely sleeping away from the hours in Draco's company…

For the first time since he'd begun attending Hogwarts, Harry was reconsidering his enthusiasm for visiting the Burrow for Christmas that year. A foolish thought, but nonetheless real.

Scrubbing his eyes, nearly dislodging his glasses as he did so, Harry crawled back to proper wakefulness. He felt Draco tense beneath him. "What is it?" he asked.

"It's nothing," Draco said, short and sharp.

Harry frowned. "What?"

"It's nothing to worry about. Sorry we woke you."

We? Blinking again, shrugging aside the last of his grogginess, Harry twisted in Draco's lap just enough to glance over his shoulder. As he did, his stomach dropped to his feet. Oh, shit.

Pansy stood at the entrance of their study area, planted between the end of the two aisles with her hand resting forgotten on the bag slung over her shoulder. She didn't appear angry. Not upset, or outraged, or even amused. She didn't seem to be anything, for that matter. Instead, her face was a mask of utter blankness, much as it had consistently been that year. Much as Draco's used to be all the time before Harry somehow managed to peek beneath it.

Harry swallowed. He didn't know Pansy. He didn't speak to her like he did Draco, and though the icy derision they'd one held for one another had thawed, that particular bridge had never been crossed. Neither had it been attempted with Blaise, the only other person that Harry saw Draco spend any time with. When he and Draco were together, it was only the two of them. Their respective friends were outliers by further unspoken agreement.

"Potter," Pansy said in a flat monotone.

Harry's head jerked in an awkward nod of recognition. "Pansy."

Pansy's lips thinned, as though Harry had misspoken. She didn't eye him for long, however, shifting her attention back to Draco barely a moment later. "When did this start?" she asked, low enough that, even in the dark, echoing depths of the library, the words didn't carry.

"It's nothing," Draco said.

"Really? Because –"

"I said it's nothing, Pansy. Definitely not what you're thinking."

His fingers dug into Harry's back, the line of his fingernails just felt, but Harry didn't care. He barely registered it at all, gaze switching back and forth between Draco and Pansy as they volleyed between them. The hardness of Draco's tone, different to what he always used when they spoke these days, was unexpected in being directed towards Pansy. They were friends… weren't they? Or had Harry missed something.

"Come the fuck on, Draco," Pansy said, somehow still maintaining her monotony despite her curse. She folded her arms across her chest. "You can't take me for a blind fool."

"I'm not."

"This," Pansy jerked a chin towards them both, though Harry was given the distinct impression she more pointed at himself specifically, "doesn't just happen for no reason. You didn't tell me you were –"

"Because it's not." Draco sliced across her words again. He was so still, so tense beneath Harry, that Harry felt the sudden urge to scoot away from him. The feeling hadn't struck him for a long time, and it felt somehow… hurtful. "Pansy, it's not."

"Draco –"

"I said, it's not."

"But you told me – at the start of term, you told me that –"

"Yes," Draco interrupted again, his hand curling into the back of Harry's shirt. "And I meant it. But it's not."

Pansy opened her mouth to retort, then paused. Her eyes narrowed. She glanced at Harry, back at Draco, then to Harry again. Something like understanding dawned, flicking aside the residues of her blank mask. "Oh. You've got to be kidding me."

"Pansy," Draco warned.

"He doesn't know." She scoffed. "You don't even know, do you, Potter?"

"Know?" Harry frowned. He turned to Draco, was met by his hard profile staring murder at Pansy, then back to Pansy herself. "What are you talking about?"

"This is so fucked up." Pansy scoffed again. Shaking her head, she half turned. When she jerked her head, it was to point at Draco this time. "I don't know how the fuck this even happened, but if he doesn't know… Draco, you're a fucking idiot."

"I know," Draco said. He sounded like he chewed each word before spitting them out.

"Tell him. You bloody idiot, just tell him." A third scoff, the curl of a derisive smile touching the corner of her lips. It didn't look like a happy sneer, nor even particularly amused. "Apparently Potter's not so far disinclined as you'd thought. News to me, but apparently not to you."

Without another word, she tossed her head, spun on her heel, and stalked away. The click of her shoes resounded more than her words had, though it was those words that echoed in Harry's head. Slowly, he turned back to Draco.

What it had all been about, he didn't know. Or at least he didn't think so. Pansy hadn't taken to cordiality quite as Harry and Draco had, but she wasn't outright antagonistic. Not anymore. But her words, the lash of her tongue that struck like a whip, were edged with real insult. Harry might not know her, might not be friends with her, but he knew when someone sincerely called another person an idiot. Pansy had meant it.

What she meant with everything else, though, he wasn't quite so sure. 'You don't know', she'd said of Harry, and he didn't. Just as he didn't know why, even after Pansy's departure, Draco sat as rigid and frozen as he'd been since she arrived. It could have been that they'd been found out, a kind of horror that was unexpectedly not as horrifying as Harry had thought it would be, but no. No, that wasn't it. Harry was almost sure of it.

"Draco?" he asked, lowly and almost tentatively. "What was that about?"

Draco didn't reply.

"What did she mean?"

Still no reply. Draco glared at the empty space Pansy had left as though staring long enough and hard enough might bring her back so he could properly murder her. He'd manage it easily, too, with the cold anger that Harry felt all but radiating from him. Draco was always been volatile, always ready with snapping retorts and sneering rebuttals – or he had been, years ago. But this was something else. This was foreign, and Harry couldn't help but shrink away from it slightly.

This wasn't comfortable. This wasn't normal. This was… There was something wrong.

Glancing down at himself, at their proximity that remained despite Pansy's intrusion, Harry felt the sudden urge to get away from it. If there was something wrong, something about what Pansy said that involved him, then they should talk about it. Not, however, in the blissful comfort that Harry always sought. It wasn't even there anymore – not at that moment.

Levering himself slowly, almost delicately, with the arms of the chair, Harry climbed to his feet. He couldn't look at Draco, glancing around himself to the table, to their textbooks, to the notes he'd barely started that day, and shifted between his feet. He chewed his lip, gnawing over the urge to slink in Pansy's wake. He should leave. If Draco was pissed off – about Pansy's intrusion, her discovery, that she would make his life hell from there on out – Harry would probably be the last person Draco wanted to see. Even had Harry been comfortable right where he'd been, he wouldn't force his company upon Draco. It didn't feel right to do so. Maybe once upon a time he would have rolled his eyes and called Draco out on being a tosser, would have made light of the situation or even revelled in his sour mood, but not now. Not anymore.

"Are you leaving?"

Twitching at short, flat words, Harry glanced up at him. Draco's face was as cool and smooth, as unremarkable and unemotional, as it had been at the beginning of the year, and it was disconcerting. Harry shifted between his feet once more, edging backwards until he butted against the table behind him. He didn't even notice that Draco had still held his shirt until his hand was pulled free. It fell loosely, almost limply, onto the wooden arm of his chair.

"I figured," Harry said slowly, "that you might want me to."

Draco blinked slowly. Finally, he turned from Pansy's absence towards Harry instead. "Why?"

"What – why? What do you mean why?"

"Why would I want you to leave?"

Harry frowned. He glanced after Pansy once more, then back to Draco. Draco regarded him with unerring expressionlessness, and Harry had never been good at reading people in the first place. He had no idea what was going on beneath the surface of Draco's dark gaze.

Absently scuffing the side of his head, Harry shrugged. "I don't know what's going on. I mean, I don't really understand what Pansy was talking about, but she clearly annoyed you. And it had something to do with me, so –"

"So, aren't you curious?"

Harry huffed. He settled back against the table, propping his hands on the edge. There wasn't much distance between him and Draco, only enough that their knees weren't quite touching, but he was more aware of it in that moment than he'd been in months. "Of course I bloody well am. But I'm not an asshole. You clearly don't want to talk about it."

"Clearly?"

"Come on, give me some credit. I'm not that slow."

Draco's lips thinned. A muscle in his cheek twitched. He stared up at Harry, and though he didn't frown, Harry was given the impression that he was being scowled at nonetheless. A long pause hung between them, the silence thick, and Harry's skin was crawling before it was alleviated. He'd never been a particularly patient person.

But Draco snapped first. Finally. Like ice abruptly fracturing, his cool façade shattered.

He pushed himself to his feet in a fluid motion. Harry jerked backwards, but Draco didn't lurch towards him. Instead, he swept from his seat and away, pacing the length of their small study area, and then back again. Across, and back again. He clicked his tongue, all but stamped his feet, and threw a fierce glare around himself as though really hoping that something might catch fire, if only to distract him from whatever thoughts were causing him such frustration.

Harry watched him. He could only watched, biting his tongue to hold his silence. Rather than feel the urge to take flight even more, however, Draco's agitation was somehow calming. This was more familiar. Harry could handle this. At least it was better than the wall of blank-faced nothingness.

"What the hell, Draco?" he asked as, taking another turn, Draco muttered something short and sharp beneath his breath that sounded like a curse.

"I'm thinking," Draco snapped.

"Okay. Good." They were getting somewhere, at least. Why it mattered, Harry wasn't quite sure, but he found he didn't like seeing Draco so unnerved. Not at all. That his dislike was so far juxtaposed to the previous pleasure he would have felt for the situation years ago didn't pass unnoticed, but it was negligible at that moment. "Thinking about what?"

"About how I'm going to bloody well say this." Draco's hands systematically bunched into fists and released at his sides as he took another turn. "I can't – I don't know how –"

"Just say it," Harry suggested, which earned him a glare that he easily shrugged off. "How bad can it be?"

"Appalling."

"Wonderful. Well, can you maybe do it without acting like a circling dragon? I'm kind of expecting you to start spitting fire any second now."

Draco ground to a halt. It was so sudden, such a jerking stop, that Harry almost heard the screech of breaks. His head whipped towards Harry, and for a moment all Harry could see was his flushed cheeks. His eyes unexpectedly blown wide. His forehead contorted into what wasn't quite a frown but something else. It was such a vast difference to barely moments before that Harry didn't know what to make of it. He could only stare as Draco stared back at him, concerned and –

"I like you."

- more than a little… confused. Harry frowned. "What?"

Draco's exhalation hissed through his teeth. He took a turn in place, muttered something, drew his eyes to the distant ceiling, then resettled them on Harry. "Of course you would be the type of person to be utterly oblivious."

"I'm – what?"

"I like you," Draco repeated, a little louder this time. "Fancy, if you prefer. Care, though that might be a little extreme. Not as casual as fond, but not quite as intense as enamoured, something in between that is foolish but I can't seem to help, and is more than a little horrifying when considering everything, and who you are, and who I am, and –"

"Wait, wait, wait." Harry held up a hand. He closed his eyes briefly, struggling for a moment, before opening them. "Are you serious?"

"Do I look like I'm fucking joking to you?" Draco said, voice rising even more.

"You – you actually liked me?"

Draco scoffed, a sound remarkably similar to that Pansy had made before she disappeared. He raised his eyes to the ceiling once more. "Of course I do. Why the bloody hell else would I have let you sit in my lap?"

"But you…" There are reasons, Harry rationalised in a very small part of his mind. I have reasons, other people would… they'd surely have them too, but… "You mean you seriously like me?"

"Dammit, Pott – no, Harry. Gods dammit, Harry. Do you honestly think I'm the sort of person who lets just anyone take up fucking residence in my lap? Do you?"

He didn't. Harry had to give him that. "But you – you never said –"

"Do you have any idea how fucking crazy I've been, trying to accept the fact that I like your fucking face and you're not as much of an asshole as I always thought you were? That you could actually be a decent person, and that you saved my life, and you spoke up at the trials of people that everyone knows you're supposed to hate, and you didn't ask for anything? How the fuck could I not think differently of you? And then you up and make it even harder for me with what by anyone's standards is incredibly unexpected and foreign by randomly just – just going and fucking sitting on me? What the hell am I supposed to do with that?"

When Draco stumbled to a halt, he was breathing heavily. There was a desperate cast to his expression, an edge that Harry had never seen before. It wasn't angry. It wasn't quite terrified, either, or at least not the kind of terror that Harry had seen before – in Draco, in his friends, or in every other person who'd been at the Battle of Hogwarts. This was something else, something more complicated, and Harry didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to say.

Draco… liked him.

No. Surely not. Not like that. But he'd said he did. They might tease and taunt one another, but there had never been a prank like this before. Not when they were younger and certainly not now. And Pansy… what Pansy had said… Harry found himself glancing towards the point she'd vacated. It kind of fit. He'd just –

Never would have thought that, a small, dumbfounded voice murmured in his head, and Harry could only agree just as dumbly.

"Um," was all he could manage, for what should he do? What should be –? "I don't know what to say."

"I know," Draco said harshly. He gave a sharp shake of his head, lowering his gaze. "And neither do I, because I can't help feeling utterly stupid things, and you can't help that you don't."

Without another word, he strode from the alcove. His robes flared behind him for the speed of his steps, and Harry could have sworn there was a gust of wind to aid his flight. The silent, stagnant emptiness he left behind struck Harry with an unprecedented ferocity; in a state of utter confusion, it was all he could do to fold his arms around himself and sink into the seat Draco had left coldly empty.

The hubbub of the entire student body was a buzzing storm of voices rebounding throughout the Entrance Hall. Walking alongside Ron and Hermione, Harry glanced at it only briefly as they descended the stairs. Travel pack slung over his shoulder with little more than the bare necessities packed, he was barely aware of where his feet took him or what either of his friends were saying. Just as it had been for the last week, his mind was decidedly elsewhere. Decidedly fixed upon someone else.

He still couldn't believe it. Not really. It felt so impossible, so unbelievable. Draco Malfoy liked him? Actually liked him, and as more than a throw rug to stave off the chill of the library, or a delivery boy to bring him meals when he didn't want to fetch them for himself? More than an annoyance to be tolerated who increasingly crowded his space and used him as a misshapen mattress?

Impossible. And yet, time and again as Harry had spent sleepless night after sleepless night lost in thought, he kept hearing Draco's words. He kept seeing his expression, wrought into a picture of frustration and agitation, so far removed from his usual cool composure. Draco seemed to let his guard down a little more around Harry these days, but not that much. Certainly not that much.

Because he likes me, Harry thought. He actually seriously likes me.

It wasn't only because Draco was who he was. It was as much because of who Harry was – not only an ex-Gryffindor, someone on the opposite side of the war, but also a boy. Boys didn't fancy boys were Harry came from. He was almost sure that any one of the Dursley's would have spluttered in horror before attempting to beat him black and blue for even considering it. If they'd thought he was, that there was any chance he was…

Am I?

That was the crux of it. The most confusing part, somehow even more confounding than Draco's admission. Harry had been raised in a world where he wasn't explicitly told that such feelings were wrong, but it had been assumed knowledge nonetheless. Boys were born, grew up energetic and frequently meat-headed, dated a pretty girl, and as often as not ended up marrying them. There was no room for another boy in the timeline but as a friend, a classmate, a colleague. Harry knew that.

But when it came to Draco… No, he hadn't considered it, but it didn't feel bad. Not in the least.

Maybe it was because he'd been in the Wizarding world for too long, a world that couldn't give a rats arse about such insignificant characteristics of a relationship. Maybe it was because of what he'd seen in those around him, what had blossomed between friends and classmates, what he witnessed evolve first hand yet only fully form that year between Seamus and Dean. It could even be because of what hints from Mrs. Weasley and the likes had him thinking of Sirius. It didn't feel bad. Not wrong.

The problem was that Harry didn't know how to feel. He didn't know what he was supposed to feel, nor what truly lay beneath the mess of his jumbled thoughts. What was between himself and Draco had been a matter of convenience, of comfort from simple contact but otherwise detached and unemotional. At what point it had begun to become something else, Harry didn't rightly know, except that he knew it had. He could realise that now.

It could have been when Draco had first lent him an offhanded word of advice about what to study. Maybe the first time that Harry had thought to grab an extra sandwich at lunch. It could have been when they'd made their agreement in the first place, voicing it aloud, or even before that, when Harry had deliberately sought Draco's company. He simply didn't know.

But that distinct difference existed. He was certain of that. He just wasn't sure whether what he felt was the reliance of comfort, the tentative compassion towards a tentative friend, or… something else. It was baffling, and was a significant – if far from being the only – reason he'd barely slept a wink in days.

"… zoning out again, right? Harry?"

Blinking up from where he'd been watching his walking feet, Harry glanced around himself for a moment before latching onto Ron's expectant face. "What?" he asked, shoving aside his distraction.

Ron smiled a little, though he didn't seem particularly amused. More concerned than anything else. "You right there, mate?"

Harry stared at him, then glanced towards Hermione, frowning at Ron's side. They'd paused at the edge of the Entrance Hall, alongside the door to wait for the professors to give them their go-ahead to leave for the carriages, and Harry hadn't even noticed.

"I'm fine," Harry said, raising his voice slightly to make it over the noise around them. "But sorry, I missed that. What did you say?"

"Nothing important," Hermione said, frown deepening, but Ron spoke over the top of her. "Just that you're zoning out again. You've been doing that a lot lately, but even more the past couple of days. Are you sleeping badly again?"

At what stage had he even been sleeping well? Harry considered for a moment, then shook his head a little ruefully. With Draco. When he'd been with Draco and using him as a pillow as much as a seat. It shouldn't have been as comfortable as it was, but – yes, it was definitely comfortable. Or it had been.

"Yeah, not too great." Harry drew his gaze across the sea of chattering students, avoiding his friends' keen eyeballing. "But it's fine. Probably just bogged down with schoolwork."

"You're really throwing everything into it this year, huh?" Ron's scoff wasn't scornful, but it still carried the weight of incredulity. "It almost seems unbelievable that we used to skimp out of homework, right?"

"Not that I don't commend you both for studying more," Hermione said, "but maybe you do need to slow down a bit, Harry. Take a break every now and again."

"I'm fine," Harry said, gaze drifting.

"I mean it. You disappear every afternoon to the library, and… I know you say you study better outside of the common room and away from people, even if it's nothing that we're doing wrong or to annoy you, but –"

"Hold that thought for a second, Hermione," Harry interrupted. He spared her a glance, long enough to catch her with her mouth hanging open but momentarily paused, before ducking quickly into the crowd. Dodging around students, weaving through juniors and all but stepping over first years, he hastened towards the opposite stairwell, all but running as he neared the bottom step.

"Draco," he called when he was close enough to be heard.

Draco glanced up from where he'd lowered his small case to his side. Pansy and Blaise stood on either side of him, but as Harry approached, as if they understood the bid for privacy he silently asked for, they slipped away to just out of hearing range. Draco didn't even watch them go.

"Harry," he said, nodding his head shortly. It was more formal than he'd treated Harry all year, even if he did still use his proper name.

Words died on Harry's tongue. He hadn't even known what he was going to say, but any sense of intelligibility fled from him before Draco's cool, composed façade. It had been a while since he'd worn that before Harry. It was never completely gone – never except for that brief conversation a week before – but it hadn't been entirely complete, either. Harry almost flinched to see it reimposed.

"You've been avoiding me," blurted out before Harry had the good sense to withhold it.

Draco blinked. The hint of a frown touched his brow before smoothing away almost immediately. "I was under the impression that was the desired outcome of our conversation."

"What the bloody hell gave you that impression?"

This time, Draco's frown returned and stayed. "What do you mean?"

"When did I ever give any indication that I didn't want to hang out with you?"

"Hang out -?"

"Because I don't remember saying anything about that." Harry pursed his lips, folding his arms across his chest. "Actually, I pretty distinctly remember you getting up and leaving before I could properly say anything back to you."

Draco's frown sat so low it shadowed his eyes. His jaw visibly clenched, a muscle bulging slightly before releasing. "It would be the logical assumption and subsequent reaction," he said slowly, as though speaking to someone particularly dim-witted. "I just professed that I had feelings for you, while you've been using me as a well-padded and insulated seat for the past several months –"

"A fucking what?"

Harry snapped angrily before he could help himself. As soon as the words burst forth, he realised just how confused and frustrated he was. The latter was certainly a feeling he hadn't experienced with such heat of late, but yes, he was frustrated. Really frustrated, and maybe even a little bit pissed off. It wasn't just about their agreement either, or that Draco had swept it aside without question on the basis of his own assumption and expectation.

Exhaling in a huff, Harry raked a hand through his hair. He drew a deep breath and released that one too before attempting a proper reply. In that time, Draco only stared at him, still frowning, still tense.

"Look, Draco," Harry began, caught himself from snapping about Draco being a fucking idiot, and continued. "Can we just talk about this, maybe? You buggered off before I could say anything, so I didn't even get to give you a proper answer."

"A proper answer?" Draco echoed, almost faintly.

Harry nodded. "Yeah. That."

"You… what do you…?"

"Just – can you just give me till after Christmas?" Harry hoped it didn't sound as much like a faintly desperate compromise as he thought it did. "Then we can properly talk, okay?"

It took a long, frozen moment, but eventually Draco gave a hesitant nod. "Alright," he said slowly. "Are you…?"

Harry deliberately lowered his hand from his head before he started raking his hair out of his scalp. "Am I what?"

Draco shook his head slightly, though it looked more to jostle himself from his stillness. "How are you sleeping?"

Harry almost laughed. Eyeing Draco, he raised his eyebrows pointedly. Draco might have been wearing nothing but a smoothly composed mask earlier, but it wasn't enough to hide the shadows under his eyes. "About as well as you are, I'm guessing."

Draco's face worked in a series of twitches before he managed to smooth it once more. Nodding curtly, he lifted his chin. "Alright, then. Until after Christmas."

"Keep an ear out," Harry said, then turned on his heel and dove back into the riot of students. He fought the urge to glance over his shoulder as he made his way back to his friends to be met by their open surprise. In Ron's case, it was open-mouthed surprise.

"Since when have you been all buddy-buddy with Mal – Draco?" Ron asked, correcting himself at the last moment to Hermione's slight nod of approval.

Harry shrugged, unnecessarily hitching the strap of his pack higher onto his shoulder. "He's been helping me, is all."

"What, with the potions study?"

Harry almost laughed again. It felt a little hysterical this time, and not at all removed from the prickle of warmth flushing up his throat. God, if it was only that it would be so much easier to wrap my head around. Glancing over his shoulder one final time, Harry caught a glimpse of Draco's pale head, his gaze lowered and expression blank. "Yeah," he said. "That."

Ron said something else, and Hermione replied with a touch of bright enthusiasm, but Harry barely heard them. He might not know his own thoughts or feelings, or what he was going to tell Draco on the other side of Christmas, but he felt better with a hint of direction. Steadied, like a boat in a tumultuous sea abruptly lent a beaming light from a lighthouse.

Giving a mental nod, Harry fell into step with his friends as, following a distant professor's instruction, the tide of students began to peel through the doorway. If nothing else, he would have a lot to think about that Christmas.