Title: The Well 11/?
Author: eidheann
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~700 (~7,700 total)
Summary: Where there is a wish...
Warnings: angst.
A/N: Many thanks for the comments and support.
Draco spent a great deal of time reading and re-reading the letter. He considered burning it, putting Harry out of his mind as he'd been saying he had for the past year. He considered simply owling back and telling him no. Harry was right, after all. Their parting was sudden, a shock to the system Draco thought he would likely never get over. He wasn't eager to see Harry, to reopen wounds that weren't really healing anyway. In the end, he did nothing, and when Pansy told him Theo had agreed to come to the flat for dinner the next evening, he breathed a sigh of relief.
Pansy was not so sanguine. She sat with Draco in his study well into the evening, going over what-if's and what-should-she-do's until he was ready to pull his wand and stun her. Finally convinced at near midnight to take a Dreamless Sleep, she retired to the master bedroom, leaving him to make his way to the guest room and to sleep. An hour later, he was still lying in the unfamiliar bed and staring at the ceiling.
They had been doing well. He had been so certain of that at the time. Yes, they spent most of their time in Muggle London. That had as much to do with Harry's celebrity and desire for privacy in general as anything to do with the slowly-growing relationship between the two. Harry spent most of his time there or in Grimmauld Place anyway. No, they hadn't gotten around to telling their friends and families, but that was because things were too new, too precious to subject them to the harsh words of others. Granger had found out using her damnable powers of observation, and Pansy had by the Slytherin habit of snooping in his mail. Both had disapproved, begged them to think, to remember their pasts, and both had been denied.
Harry wouldn't have told Granger that he was certain unless he was. His Gryffindor honesty wouldn't allow him to lie to someone he considered a friend. Unless it was just to spare your feelings, the voice reminded him. You were sitting right there.
Draco rolled over and buried his head under a pillow, but it didn't shut out the thoughts. You don't know what Granger said after you left. She was still there, still self-righteous, still a know-it-all. She would do anything to protect her Golden Boy from the evil Slytherin plot you were most certainly hatching. You already know she doesn't think you capable of anything but the most selfish of acts. You saw how surprised she was that you were helping Pansy. She probably thinks you're doing it for future blackmail fodder or something. And surely with all that, she'd not think you deserving of an hour of his time, much less his love.
He rolled back onto his back and shoved the pillow out of his face. He couldn't blame her, not really. He had been horrible in Hogwarts, to her almost as much as to Harry. She had no reason to think differently, or even attempt to learn if he could change. He had watched Harry carefully at times, from the initial offer of a new start with the return of his wand, uncertain why he was deemed worthy of a second chance. It was no surprise to the small circle who knew of their friendship when Harry abruptly left for Romania.
The leaving was abrupt as well. Two days after Granger had spoken to them at Grimmauld, he had returned to find Harry in the midst of packing. He could only stand there, shoulders tense and eyes wide, while he heard all the things one thinks of being said in these situations. "It's not you, it's me" and "just not working out" and "I'll see you around," and all the other lies that cover... something.
He didn't even know where the lie was. Was it in the repeated "I love you's" whispered in the dark against his back, his chest, his lips? Or was it in the trying to make things work. It was certainly in the promise to see and to be seen. The Prophet and their fawning praise of his bravery was the only reason he knew that Romania was his ultimate destination. And shacking up with a Weasley, he heard repeated in a voice that sounded like Pansy's. Wouldn't that make them happy? If he's going to suck cock and not make a dozen ginger babies with the Weaselette, at least he's still in the family.
He wasn't certain when his weak laugh turned to tears, but it was a long time before he finally fell asleep and he awoke to a still-wet pillow.