Author's note : I'm putting this weekend's chapter up a day early, since I won't be able to get to a computer tomorrow.
And as always, thanks for all the favorites and to those of you who've left reviews. You're lovely and I'm so happy you're following the story.
Chapter 38
It was a strange week that followed the night Harry had spent with Draco in the secret room. He had to pretend that everything was normal, but he felt so obvious, like anyone who cared to look would be able to read it off him. He got distracted every time he caught sight of Draco, his heart immediately throwing itself into fits, and Harry would loose the thread of where he was going with whatever conversation he had just been in the middle of. Draco was doing much better, his studied indifference towards Harry was so flawless Harry had even started to get worried – but then Draco would catch his eye or smile discreetly at him in class and Harry's mood would rise by ten degrees for the rest of the lesson.
It was odd that neither Ron or Hermione seemed to have noticed his weird behaviour, but then Hermione had seemed a bit off as well, and he knew Ron was worried about her.
"She's probably just disappointed that that book she picked up didn't turn out to be help with you-know-what after all," he told him one evening they were on their way down to the Great Hall.
He had asked Hermione about the book after she had finally managed to get a hold of Malfoy, and she had told him it was a miss.
"I hope you're right. Just seems like it's a bit much on her, all the work she's doing to figure out what to do about the dementors on top of all the classes she's taking. Half the time I'm with her she's reading, and she keeps disappearing up to the room."
"She's always been like that about homework… And Luna and Dra- Malfoy are working on the other thing too."
Ron frowned. A large group of Hufflepuffs pushed past them on the stairs and Ron waited until they were gone before he answered.
"They don't seem to be pulling their load, do they? I mean, I don't know about Luna, but seems to me Malfoy is just sort of hanging around waiting for us to do the work for him."
Harry didn't have a chance to protest. They had reached the Great Hall and had to change the subject.
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Ron's suspicions about Azkaban being what was bothering Hermione seemed to be confirmed when she, Harry, Ron, Ginny and Neville happened to get the common room to themselves for half an hour one evening. The number of meetings up in the secret room had thinned out over the last couple of weeks.
"There isn't much else for us to do," said Ginny. "Turns out there really isn't much other security apart from the walls and the sea and the dementors. We've pored over those newspaper article, and they only mentioned upping the security once after Sirius escaped, but it doesn't seem like anyone ever pursued the idea. We're pretty much ready to go."
Hermione practically flinched at that and Ginny looked surprised at her.
"Something wrong?" she asked.
Hermione shook her head.
"No, I just – I wouldn't exactly say we're ready to go since we still haven't figured out what to do about… about the dementors."
"Right, I meant apart from that. You're sure you don't want us to help out a bit with that? I know Luna is helping you, but the rest of us have time too…?"
Hermione shrugged. She looked nervous.
"No thanks," she said. "I think we're on the right track, we just keep hitting… walls."
Ginny shrugged.
"Alright."
"There's also the issue of the aurors," said Neville.
"I still don't think it's an issue. We can easily sneak by them, and if Malfoy drew his shitty maps correctly then we'll just post guards where we talked about and we'll have the strategic advantage and the element of surprise on our side," said Ginny, rattling off her arguments in a way that made it clear that they had had this conversation before.
"And what if Malfoy didn't draw his map correctly?"
"Then we're all excellent duellers."
"But we're not trained aurors."
"Trained aurors who have been stationed at Azkaban for weeks with guard duty, probably not enough sleep, dementors sucking at the edges of their magic and constantly sustaining patronus charms. We'll be fine."
Hermione stood up.
"I'm really sorry," she said. "But I have some homework for charms I haven't had time to finish."
"Hermione-" said Ron, but she was already on her way.
He frowned but didn't follow her.
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It was two days before Harry got a chance to speak to Draco again. It used to be so easy to get a hold of him, to hang back after class, slip him a note in the corridors or just run into him by chance in the Owlery or the library, but now it felt nearly impossible to even come near him without being noticeable. Maybe it had always been like that, but he hadn't really noticed the difficulty before, when it was just about Azkaban, and he hadn't wanted to get a hold of him all the time.
He had spent a lot of time thinking about the night in the secret room. Draco had drifted off as soon as Harry stopped talking, but Harry hadn't been able to fall asleep. He had lain there in the darkness with his arm around him and listened to him breathing. It was easy to forget how warm people were until you were really close to someone else and then you were reminded what a miracle a living body is of muscles and veins and breath, little twitches and sounds.
He couldn't even remember when he had stopped tolerating Draco or defending him out of some principle, and had actually started to like him. It had happened so slowly he had hardly noticed.
It was probably partly because Draco wasn't a girl, and even if it wasn't a big deal in the wizardring world, Harry hadn't really considered it an option. It had been so easy not to notice, since he liked girls. He hadn't known he could fall in love with boys too. He hadn't realized that both was an option.
That night it had all become so real to him, what they were doing. Right now they were able to keep it a secret, but that couldn't last. Harry wasn't good with secrets. Sooner or later they would have to give it up or they would have to tell people. And so that night they had slept on the sofa, he had made up a scenario; challenged himself to envision the most impossible situation as possible. He had set it in a distant future when they would all be more grown up and the war wouldn't be looming as close. He had tried to imagine what it would be like if Draco came with them to the burrow.
He did it carefully, constructing all the little details of the story – how nervous he would be; the way his fingers would flick to the cuff of his left sleeve the way they sometimes did when he was stressed. Harry could see how he would become smaller in Mrs Weasley's kitchen, how out of place he would look in all that homely clutter. He would be wearing his expensive robes, but his shoulders would fold in, the elbows held close to the body like sparrow's wings, flighty and tense, every joint strained against the pull of his good upbringing, that had taught him to hold his head high and keep his back straight. A privileged upbringing where he had learned how to suavely converse with politicians, but not how to humbly enter a house where he wasn't welcome.
And the Weasley family would all be there, of course. Mrs Weasley would stand up to greet Harry and then stop in her tracks when she caught sigh of Draco, who wouldn't know what to say. Harry had seen Mrs Weasley angry plenty of times, but that was mostly directed towards her children or husband, and the anger towards a Malfoy in her home would surely be much colder.
"What's he doing here?" she would ask, her voice hard as flint.
And maybe Mr Weasley would look up to see what was going on and he would start – stand up, hesitate for a moment, and then he would stalk out of the room, unable to even look in their direction a second time.
Harry had stopped himself there. Forced himself to start over from Mrs Weasley's look of surprise. There would probably still be that painful flash of anger, but it wouldn't be Lucius who stood in her kitchen. Harry had reminded himself that Mrs Weasley was the only one who had never, at any point, forgotten that they were children when they fought in the war. So maybe she would remember that for Draco too.
"You're looking skinny," – maybe she would say that instead.
And Draco would sit down carefully and apologize and say thank you and politely ask Mr Weasley about his work in the ministry, and it would be tense and difficult but it would not be wrong. Maybe it could happen like that.
He had returned to that scenario a couple of times, mulling over it again, trying to decide if he believed in the second one. Of course it would be impossible to predict, but it was just as impossible not to try. Mostly because if he did not believe in the second one, then he could never try to bring Draco to the Burrow. If there was a chance that Harry choosing Draco would hurt Mrs Weasley, he knew there wasn't really any choice. If he ever had to choose between Draco and his friends, he would choose his friends. That was just how it was.
He thought Draco probably knew that too.
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On the third day after they had slept in the secret room, Draco, Pansy Parkinson and Tracey Davies passed him in the hallway, and Draco brushed so close by him, their shoulders touched. Later, Harry found a note in his pocket.
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He climbed the stairs to the top of the astronomy tower when classes were over. The only students he met were on their way down, and the stream of them soon thinned to nothing. It was another day of bright sunshine and it was uncharacteristically warm even this late in February, the weak winter sun getting stronger every day. Usually on a day like this one, he would have been down on the quidditch pitch as soon as classes ended. It was the perfect weather for a match and he knew Ron and Ginny and a couple of the others were already down there. He didn't much mind missing out.
He pushed open the door at the very top of the tower and stepped out into the sunshine. It was quite different up there in the daytime, the view of the grounds a watery endlessness of toned down colours this time of year, when the grass below was muddy, the sky pale and the Forbidden Forest mostly black and leafless. Draco stood up when he saw him, the wind grabbing hold of his robes and tossing his hair across his face.
"Hey," he called, his face splitting into a wide, uncontained smile.
They stayed up there until the sun started to set and the air became too chilly. They didn't talk about Harry's friends or what would happen if they were caught or how hard it was not to look at each other in class, how hard it was to know that they couldn't touch each other or speak to each other when anyone else was watching. They just talked about dumb things, funny things, things people had said and done during the weak. They laughed a lot. It was so easy.
They kissed a lot too.
And Draco settled down with his head resting in Harry's lap. He asked Harry what he wanted to do after Hogwarts and Harry ran his fingers through his hair while he talked about quidditch scores, the rent of flats in London and the impossible grade requirements for becoming an auror (Draco laughed at that and told him that he could get T's on everything and they would still let him in).
When it was time to go back down, Draco got up and stretched out a hand to Harry and pulled him to his feet. And then he kept hold of Harry's hand and held it all the way to the stairs in a cool, determined grip.
As soon as they were through the door, he let go.
"Sorry," mumbled Harry as Dracos' hands disappeared into his pockets.
"It's alright," he said. "I don't mind."
They started down the stairs.
"Have you thought of an excuse for where you've been all day?" he asked.