Chapter 25: Can't Have it All
Draco sat with the boys on the train ride back to Hogsmeade, extremely grateful for some normalcy. Blaise complained about how many times he had to choose working on homework over doing something fun while in Italy. Crabbe and Goyle had family visiting from Odesa, so their older cousins had helped them with theirs.
Goyle's eyes were wide. "You wouldn't believe the sorts of things they teach at Durmstrang. And did you know you only have to be sixteen in Ukraine to use magic outside of school?"
"I can't wait for Lupin to read my essay," Crabbe said with a grin. "Galina told me that if I don't get a 'see me after class' comment, she didn't tell me all the right things."
"Is that the girl that was with you, on the station?" Blaise asked.
"That was our cousin Nina," Crabbe replied. "It's their Easter this weekend, so we had two over the holiday."
Groaning, Goyle rubbed his stomach. "We had second Easter dinner last night, and I'm still full."
The train arrived in Hogsmeade, and Draco breathed a sigh of relief. He'd fully expected Justin to track him down during the ride. At the same time. . .Justin hadn't sought Draco out. Maybe it was that easy for him to chock them up as belonging to the past. Maybe, because Draco hadn't had the sort of fun anticipated in Muggle London, Justin was happy he didn't have to deal with Draco anymore.
The girls caught up to them in the Great Hall. Pansy stood behind Draco and hugged him tightly around the shoulders before taking the seat beside him.
"I heard what happened," she said. "Are you all right?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Draco replied.
That didn't stop Pansy and the other girls from casting him sympathetic looks while the feast went underway. Tracey glanced up first when a folded note floated down toward Draco's plate. It barely missed his goblet of pumpkin juice.
As though he innately knew where Justin sat at the Hufflepuff table, Draco found him immediately. Justin looked back with a long face, one cheek rested in his hand as he leaned on the table.
There were only three words in his note: Can we talk?
Draco stared at it, mouth dry. His fingers trembled slightly. Now he was back at Hogwarts, it was so tempting to pretend that the Easter holidays had just been a horrible dream. Draco couldn't believe he had sat here two weeks ago, panicking about not seeing Justin during them.
Flint pulled Draco aside later in the common room.
"Heard a rumour," he told Draco. "You and your boyfriend broke up?"
Draco nodded, trying to look impassive rather than sad.
"You know my sympathies are with you, and all that, yeah?" Flint asked. "So I'm not trying to be a bellend by getting on you about the Quidditch match coming. I don't think either of us want this to affect the outcome. Right?"
"No," Draco said.
"I heard Potter telling his friends at the beginning of the holiday that he's never wanted to beat you so badly, because of that whole thing with the Hippogriff."
"Mmm." Draco tried not to show that his stomach flipped uncomfortably at that.
"I want you to lay low this week," Flint told him. "Come the match, just do what you do best. Keep above the game, keep an eye out for the Snitch, and catch it while the rest of us keep Potter preoccupied elsewhere."
Draco studied Flint with pressed lips. "You really think you can distract him like that? From me?"
"Hey, give me some credit." Flint amiably shoved Draco's shoulder. "I took into account the hard-on Potter has for you."
Draco thought about how to avoid Potter for an entire week on the way to breakfast the next morning. He didn't even want an altercation—
"Draco."
Draco glanced back automatically. Justin stood at the window, looking expectant but nervous. Feeling like a prat of the highest calibre, Draco snubbed Justin and carried on for the Great Hall.
He should have known that Justin wouldn't give up that easily. Justin waited outside the Charms classroom that afternoon, but didn't have much chance to pull Draco aside when he was flanked by Crabbe and Goyle. The same happened with Arithmancy and Defence on Tuesday. Come Quidditch practice that evening, Draco was annoyed with himself to be disappointed when only Crabbe and Goyle waited for him afterward.
"He was here," Crabbe said as they started for the castle. "We told him he shouldn't bother you."
"Nicely," Goyle elaborated, digging into his pocket. "He got why he shouldn't be putting any more stress on you. This Quidditch match is enough."
Draco pressed his lips together as Goyle held a small, folded piece of parchment out to him.
"He asked me to give this to you," Goyle told him.
Draco took it, but didn't open it until he was alone: You owe me closure. Meet me Thursday morning at 9:00 at the window. One conversation, and then I'll leave you alone.
Maybe because Draco was tired and sore, he teared up. Closure was a terrifying thing, since it meant fully shutting the door. Draco pretty much already had, sure, but at least with the way things were he could almost pretend that wasn't the case.
Justin was right, though. Draco did owe him closure—and maybe he deserved it too. For that, nervous and wishing he'd taken the chance to cry beforehand, Draco left the Slytherin common room on Thursday morning.
His stomach flipped when he saw Justin. Maybe because of Draco's footsteps (had Justin heard Draco approach enough times that he just knew what he sounded like?), Justin already looked in Draco's direction. He had one knee pulled up onto the windowsill with his elbow rested on it. He ran the pad of his thumb idly over his fingertips, and his hair had so many different shades of brown in the sun. Draco had to push away the thought of how absolutely kissable he looked.
"Hi," Justin quietly said.
"Hi."
Justin stood up. "Let's find somewhere more private."
They headed off together toward the southern tower. It felt weird and wrong all over again to not be holding Justin's hand, and Draco had to keep forcing his mind blank when they walked past the little nooks they had often snogged in.
Justin stepped them off into an empty corridor. He took up a backwards lean against the wall, and exhaled long through his nose as he regarded Draco.
Draco's voice already sounded wet when he spoke. "I'm sorry."
"Me too."
"I really didn't expect things to go like this."
"I didn't mean to get you in trouble."
Guilt prickled up and down Draco's insides, making him fidget. "It wasn't your fault."
"I'm the one that said you should come to the film."
"I wanted to go."
"It wasn't even worth it." Justin laughed a little, not at all mirthlessly. "All that, and you didn't even have fun."
More guilt. "I did, thinking back later."
Justin gave Draco a shrewd look for that, softened yet tentative.
"I liked the Coke," Draco said, and one end of Justin's mouth twitched toward a smile. "And—you were right. It isn't like we were hurt by the film, even if I hated watching those kids be hunted by the velociraptors."
Justin snorted weakly. "You noticed that literally everyone in the cinema was stressed out about that, right?"
Thought of Ernie's 'nooo' made Draco grin. For just a second, everything felt all right. Then, the muscles in Draco's face grew heavy with self-reminder that he and Justin were broken up. This trip into Muggle London—whether or not Draco thrilled about it later in the throes of wistfulness—was the catalyst for that coming about. He and Justin reminding themselves of better times would only make walking away at the end of this conversation more painful.
"I wanted a chance to explain why I thought you would like that film." Justin spoke a little faster, toying with his hands in front of him. "I was pretty cocked up when I went home last summer, after everything with the Basilisk."
Draco nodded slowly. He'd wondered how Justin could possibly enjoy that film when he actually had been hunted by something that looked like one of those dinosaurs.
"My parents took me to a therapist." Justin toed the flagstone. "One of the things he suggested was something called immersion therapy, since I was going to come back to Hogwarts. I didn't want to panic every time I turned a corner in the castle corridors, you know?"
"Right." Draco didn't fully know what Justin meant by therapy, but he thought he might understand by context.
"So Matt took me to Jurassic Park." Justin shrugged. "I felt the same way you did, the first time I saw it. Matt and I kept going to see it, and then it was just fun by the end of summer. I kept doing the same sort of thing when I came back to school. I'd walk around the castle alone when it was empty in the mornings. It helped me. I thought maybe that sort of thing would help you too, after the Hippogriff."
Draco ran his fingers down his right forearm. He could feel the raised scars through the thin fabric of his shirt. "The dinosaurs were just animals doing what animals do, like that one bloke said. Why does that make you feel better about the Basilisk? It was just an animal too."
"The Basilisk is dead," Justin said. "Animals are animals, but humans are humans too. If an animal is dangerous and hurts someone, we do something about it. The Basilisk was put down. That Hippogriff of Hagrid's will be. The scientists in Jurassic Park had a plan for how the dinosaurs would die if they escaped."
"They also had a plan for how the dinosaurs wouldn't breed," Draco flatly replied. "And then they found hatched eggs."
"'Life finds a way'," Justin quoted, and the two of them snorted again.
Draco stopped short, like halting a sneeze, at yet another reminder that this was supposed to be him and Justin saying a proper goodbye.
"Anyway," Justin said quietly as he too seemed to remember that. "I didn't want you thinking that I was trying to be a prat. I'm sorry about what I said in the cemetery, about you being scared. That wasn't fair."
"Thank you."
"And, erm. . ." With his hands behind him, Justin bounced his upper back idly off the wall as he regarded Draco. "I wish I hadn't been stupid about kissing you goodbye. I didn't realize it would be. . .you know. Goodbye."
Draco's throat clenched, for that was one of the many things he too dwelled on. "Me too."
"But. . ." Justin sighed. "If you were caught or whatever, maybe us being seen doing that would have made things worse."
"Maybe." Draco had no choice to agree.
Justin's brow wrinkled. "They weren't too mean, were they? I mean, obviously you had a complete dressing down about the entire thing. But they didn't hit you or anything?"
"No," Draco said quickly. "My parents aren't like that. They've never hit me."
"That's good." Justin's shoulders relaxed, and Draco wished he was currently running his hands over them. "You didn't look beat up or cowed or anything, but—you know. If you're used to it or know how to hide it. . ."
"No," Draco repeated. "Your parents never found out, right?"
Justin shook his head.
"Okay."
"I was thinking, though." Justin shifted, standing straighter. "Maybe there'll come a day when things are different. You know—for both of us."
Draco tried to imagine it ever being all right for him to see a Muggle-born, and couldn't picture telling Father about all this without being met with disappointment, frustration, or—potentially worst of all—disgust. However, Justin looked so hopeful that Draco didn't want to contradict him. "It would be nice, wouldn't it?"
Justin's chin trembled as he nodded. He pressed his lips as he looked down. When his gaze came back up, his eyes glistened.
"It's not right," he said in a whisper.
"No." Draco was no louder.
Justin pushed himself out of his lean. Draco eyed him a little warily as he crossed the corridor.
"Seeing as this isn't exactly something we decided. . ." Justin slowly said. "I think maybe it wouldn't be strange if we did get to kiss goodbye."
Draco's heart hurt from how badly he wanted that. "Should we, for how horrible this already is?"
"Am I that bad at it?"
The jest caught Draco off-guard, making him snort again. He ducked his chin, eyes cracked just enough to see Justin slip a hand into his. Draco squeezed back, as did his throat.
"You aren't bad at it." Draco glanced at Justin's mouth as he moved close enough for their shirts to brush. "Not at all."
Everything that had happened since they'd met up in London seemed to evaporate along with the space between them. As Justin's nose nestled against Draco's, Draco could almost convince himself that this was Sunday evening after the feast. They were saying hello, not goodbye. They were coming together, not falling apart.
Draco couldn't afford to fool himself. If he left himself open to a future that didn't exist, he would take this moment for granted—the same way he'd done all the ones before. Something that had greatly bothered him as he grieved this relationship was that he couldn't remember their previously final kiss. It had just been a peck or something while sitting beneath that tree in the cemetery. The mood about it had been silly and playful.
Not this one. As soon as Justin's lips brushed Draco's, heat roiled to life in his stomach and a shock ran down his spine. The power of it stunned Draco.
He became aware of growing difficulty to breathe. Justin pressed him up against the wall, grip tight on Draco's waist. He held their hips flush, essentially throwing oil onto the fire of desperation burning between them. One second, Draco was revelling in the gentle slide of tongues, and then everything started to taste salty. Justin broke the kiss with a sharp intake of breath, followed by a sniffle. Draco's cheeks had wet spots on them. He wiped them away as Justin tended to the rest of it on his own face.
He wasn't doing a very good job of it. Seeing so viscerally the pain he'd caused made Draco's chest hurt again. He cared about Justin. Draco didn't want to see him like this. He didn't want to have done this.
"Hey, it's okay," Draco tried, but his strained voice betrayed his own ramping upset. "Don't cry."
Justin roughly shook his head as his face crumpled. Draco pulled him into a tight hug, unsure of what else to do. Justin's body racked against his in silent sobs. As hard as Draco tried to hold it in, he too started to dampen the shoulder of the other boy's shirt.
"I don't belong anywhere," Justin managed to say. "No matter where I go, there's something wrong with me."
"There's nothing wrong with you."
Draco felt his sickest yet. It simply wasn't fair that they couldn't be left well alone to enjoy this—and to be free to enjoy it. If only Justin had been born to a wizarding family.
"I'm sorry." Justin pulled away suddenly, wiping at his face. "I wasn't going to be a mess."
"Yeah, well." Draco wasn't in much better shape.
"If you want to go ahead," Justin said, sniffling. "If you want to go. . ."
Draco didn't, was the thing. He took gentle grasps of Justin's wrists to move his hands away from his face. Justin calmed as they looked at each other, and then further so when Draco cupped his cheeks. Draco wiped them off with his thumbs before leaning in for one more chaste, lingering kiss.
Their gazes met again afterward, Justin searching Draco.
"There's nothing wrong with you," Draco repeated.
All Justin seemed capable of was a trembling bottom lip. Draco detested to leave him in this state, but this was it. They were done, regardless of how they felt or what they wanted or that this should be the furthest thing from what was right.
Draco rushed along through the dungeons, hoping beyond hope that he wouldn't meet anyone along the way. He managed to make it all the way to the dorm without interruption, vaguely aware that he only had a short while until the other boys would return from Ancient Runes. Draco almost didn't care if they walked in on him like this, thrown onto his bed with his face in his pillow as he tried to sob away the deep ache that pervaded his entire body.
Draco's solitude eventually had to come to an end. The door opened and closed. Draco only registered one set of footsteps.
"It's me," Nott spoke on the other side of Draco's curtains. "Can I come in?"
"Guess so."
Although Nott had seen Draco in this state over the holidays, it didn't make Draco any less embarrassed. Nott sat down on the edge of Draco's bed.
"I take it didn't go well?" he asked.
Draco shrugged. "It was goodbye. It was going to be awful, no matter what."
Sighing, Nott rubbed Draco's arm. "History of Magic is in twenty minutes. Did you want to clean up, or anything? You're a bit of a mess."
Draco felt like the combined weight of Crabbe and Goyle sat on him, pinning him to the bed. "I don't think I'm going to go."
"I doubt Binns would notice," Nott said. "I could let you copy my notes later."
"Thanks."
The rest of the boys came through to fetch their books, and then Draco was alone again. After the bells rang, he must have drifted off for a while because it was Goyle's voice that woke him.
He stood over Draco, tie loose. "Are you coming to lunch?"
"No."
"I'll bring you something, then."
Draco had cocooned himself in his blanket by the time Crabbe and Goyle returned. He had to pull his knees up to his chest to make room for Crabbe to sit on the end of his bed.
"What about Care of Magical Creatures, then?" Crabbe asked.
"What about it?" Draco glumly replied.
"You're coming, aren't you?"
"I don't think so." The last thing Draco wanted was for Potter to see him like this, especially so soon before the Quidditch match. "I doubt I'll be missing anything."
"Are you coming to Charms this afternoon?"
Draco shrugged. In the silence to follow, he could practically hear Crabbe and Goyle looking at each other.
"You can't just lay in bed forever," Goyle said. "And you should eat your sandwich."
He'd set it for Draco on the bedside table. Draco glanced at it, then tucked his chin. "You go ahead and have it."
Goyle sighed.
He and Crabbe tried again closer to the end of the lunch period to poke Draco into action, but there was nothing for it. Draco ended up drifting off again, internally daring Hagrid to make something of his absence. He felt rather anxious about missing Charms, but the thought that he'd have to spend two hours in a classroom with the Hufflepuffs (and Justin, by extension) sealed his decision to skive the entire day.
"All right, that's enough," Crabbe said later when he came in after Charms. "We covered you for Flitwick, but this ends now. You're getting up, and you're coming with us to dinner."
"No," Draco protested.
"Yes," Crabbe asserted. "Did you let me lay around and mope like this when I got dumped? No. So I'm not letting you do it either. Get up."
It took a couple hours yet for Crabbe to annoy Draco upright. The three of them headed off once Draco had washed his face and combed his hair.
"Finch-Fletchley wasn't in Charms either," Goyle said as they climbed the stairs for the Entrance Hall. "You know, if that makes you feel any better. Macmillan said he skived everything today too."
It, in fact, did not make Draco feel better.
"It gets easier," Crabbe told him. "At least you're not in the same house and don't have every class with him, like I did with—"
"Shut up!" Draco told him.
They'd stepped into the Entrance Hall as Potter, Weasley, and a gang of other Gryffindors were coming out of the Great Hall. Their chatter ended—perhaps at the sound of Draco's voice—and their gazes darkened. Draco mirrored Potter's narrowed eyes as they all passed each other by. Just as Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle were about to go into the Great Hall, Weasley piped up from the marble staircase.
"Oi, Malfoy." His voice echoed a bit. "How come you weren't in class this afternoon? Losing your nerve for Saturday, are you?"
Lay low, Draco remembered from Flint.
"Because you should be," Weasley said before the Gryffindors carried on, elbowing each other and grinning.
Draco's fingers twitched toward his wand. "I could get him from here."
"Not now," Goyle told him. "Saturday."
Saturday came far too quickly. Draco wished he'd slept better, and he felt vaguely sick as he walked with the Quidditch team to breakfast. He couldn't help looking at the window as they rounded where he and Justin always met. Justin wasn't there. To not have him wish Draco luck felt like a bad omen.
Draco's appetite still hadn't really recovered, so he poked at his eggs with trembling hands. It didn't help that three-quarters of the Hall lit up with applause when the Gryffindor team walked in.
"All right," Flint addressed them later as they prepared to leave the changing room. "This game is ours. So is that Cup. Just remember that."
Draco could feel Potter's gaze on him as they met the Gryffindors out on the pitch. He refused to make eye contact, although took after Potter once Madam Hooch blew her whistle.
The Gryffindor Chasers had finally decided to embrace fouls as cooked into the game's rules. The score bloated up to thirty-zero for Gryffindor, and then Draco caught a hand gesture between Flint, Bole, and Derrick that shifted the Beaters' focus onto Potter. The Firebolt made it pointless, unfortunately.
Thirty points to ten, once Flint scored.
Forty to ten, after some penalty shots.
Fifty to ten, after Katie Bell got one past Bletchley.
Sixty to ten, after Angelina Johnson did.
Draco had to temper his breathing. The match's outcome was going to come down to him.
He kept an eye on Potter from the rear. As they coasted along at similar speed, Draco's stomach dropped so hard he was surprised it didn't hit the ground.
The Snitch.
It was about twenty feet up in the air, and perhaps beyond the upper periphery of Potter's vision. There was something happening in the match below that had distracted Lee Jordan, so maybe, if Draco was cautious. . .
His heart pounded as he quietly put on speed, gaze fixed on the Snitch. Potter too suddenly altered trajectory. He'd seen it. No way could Draco beat him in a contest of speed. Draco changed direction for a spot between Potter and the Snitch. As he was just about to collide with Potter, Draco threw out a hand and caught his Firebolt by the tail coil.
Every muscle in Draco's arm threatened to spasm with the effort of holding it. Potter looked down, and his confusion turned rapidly to white-hot anger. "You—!"
Out the corner of Draco's eye, the golden glint above them vanished.
"What?" Draco said when Potter looked back up, too late. "Can't handle a little blagging, Potter?"
Potter took off, shaking with anger. The other Gryffindors too seemed to decide this was one foul too far. Their Chasers lost their nerve, and Flint started a comeback along with Montague and Warrington. Potter rounded back and put Draco off-course with how close he passed by. Draco sloth-rolled away and changed direction, only to find his knees knocking Potter's.
"Get out of it, Potter!" Draco shouted at him. "Fuck off!"
"You fuck off!" Potter roared back. "Slimy, cheating git!"
Draco raised a fist fully intent to crack him one, but Potter took that moment to abide his request in fucking off. With a snarl, Draco made to gain some air. He stopped—along with what felt like time itself—when he spotted a glint down at the bottom of the pitch.
Heart pounding in his ears, Draco set off in as fast of a dive as his broom was capable of. Potter was busy, off playing the hero. If Draco was lucky, he'd have the Snitch firmly in his hand before Potter even realized—
A mass manifested to Draco's left. Draco reached for the Snitch, urging his broom faster. His fingertips were close enough to brush it, but not enough to enclose. As that point inched closer, Potter knocked his wrist with a backhanded swat, surged forward, and clutched the Snitch.
The stadium exploded. Draco landed haphazardly, stuck somewhere between pounding adrenaline and shock, and staggered toward where the rest of the team had come down.
Flint had a determined look to him. For a fleeting second, Draco feared he was about to catch the worst dressing down of his life. Instead, Flint grabbed Draco firmly into a hug and pat him hard enough to the point of pain on the back.
Draco hadn't even realized that tears streamed down his face. It was like he was so devastated, he couldn't even feel it.
"Don't listen to them," Flint spoke somewhere near Draco's ear. "Don't listen."
It was pretty hard not to, as three-quarters of the school lost their bloody minds over Gryffindor taking the Cup. Lee Jordan said something about Potter's Firebolt, and that was when Draco's face properly crumpled—for his was lost, having been snatched away the same way Potter did the Snitch.
