During the following week Draco learnt how to make coffee, a good one from the machine at the Hatter. He learnt to better hide his use of cleaning charms and that he needed to pour some of the flat's cleaning products down the drain, so that it looked like he was actually using them. He figured out how to change channels on the telly and what could and what could not be put in the microwave. He tried his luck on a skateboard but found a bike more to his taste. And to his abilities, although he was still wobbly. Potter had well enjoyed that particular experience.
Speaking of Potter, or Harry, as he sometimes thought of him now, Darco learnt that he really did look fine in breeches and suspenders, and what a revelation that had been. Green was definitely his colour. Less than two weeks together and, to his growing dismay, Draco could no longer deny he was falling a little in lust with Harry Bloody Potter, whose peaceful, sleeping face was currently just breaths away from his own.
Damn hormones.
He poked Potter in the ribs with his socked toe, startling him out of his nap. His dark head lolled to the side before his eyes abruptly blinked open and he straightened up, gripping for his glasses that were sliding dangerously low on his nose . He wiped a thin line of drool with the back of his other hand, which should not have looked half as endearing, and glared at Draco.
"Pay attention, idiot." Draco barked, with no true heat. "This film makes no sense. Why do you think Simba goes back for? He had a good life, why risking it all to help those other dumb lions? There were tons of them but no, they had to put it all on Simba." It came out slightly hysterical but, honestly, it just kept shocking him how much Harry's truly was the stereotypical Disney life.
Did that make him Nala? Not romantically, of course, but he did fit into the role of the messenger.
The other boy yawned, glancing at him with exasperation "Are you always this bloody analytical when it comes to cartoons? Anyway," He said, taking a moment to think of a reply. "Simba knew he could not abandon them. His chances against Scar were higher than anyone else's, and better him than endangering the lives of many more. What he had with Timon and Pumba was fun, but it wasn't his world really." He pinched the toe Draco had still pressed against his skin, looking like he truly believed in what he was saying, the sodding hero.
"But he was soo young!" Draco argued weakly "He could have died." He wasn't sure why he was being so insistent, it wasn't like he really wanted to think about this whole mess with the Prophecy.
"Well, he didn't." Harry told him matter-of-factly, nimble fingers tickling the sole of his foot. "Plus he wanted to bang- I mean impress Nala. That part was clear. Honestly, I find it a bit creepy how much they anthropomorphise animals in Disney. Like, are we supposed to find them seductive?"
"Such big words!" Draco teased. "Is this your way of saying you find the monkey seductive?" He scooted closer, relaxing into Potter's touch. The gentle tickle turned into a pleasant rub, making him want to melt into a puddle of goo.
"You don't?" The other boy gasped, lips parted in a poor imitation of a fish. Draco almost said something about finding the whole of Simba's character quite appealing, however dumb, but he gulped it down before it could make it past his throat.
"When is your friend supposed to arrive?" He asked instead.
"She said probably not until late evening." Potter replied, the "o" of his mouth shifting into an excited grin. "Which could mean whenever, but I think she is going out for dinner with the girls first."
Draco swallowed again. There was no denying he was feeling rather nervous. He thought about Scott's warning the previous week. Whatever that meant, he couldn't quite quell the irrationally strong desire to make a good impression.
As it turned out, Draco didn't get to meet Allie until the morning after. Neither of them had expected "late evening" to mean in the middle of the fucking night, but she must have arrived at some point because there she was, standing in their kitchen.
From his hiding spot he could see that she was wearing a sleeping shirt and boxers, so it was fair to assume she had most likely spent at least part of the night there.
Draco noticed it was the same outfit Potter had on when they had gone to bed the evening before and an unwelcome knot twisted in his stomach.
He had been woken up just a few minutes earlier by voices coming from somewhere in the flat and had patted his way out of the bedroom to investigate, stopping just out of view.
"Behave, Allie, or I might be tempted to reveal your true name!" Potter was saying, light and teasing.
"You wouldn't dare, you jerk!" She cried, voice deeper than Draco would have expected, but pleasantly so. It was gravel and rich, reminding him a little of the lead vocalist of the Weird Sisters
"Wouldn't I. . . Alberta?" Potter replied, the last word said in a low murmur. Draco could imagine him leaning towards her and, before he realised what he was doing, he had already stepped into the kitchen.
"Alberta? Really?" He asked casually, leaning against the door frame with all the nonchalance he could muster.
They jumped around to face him, wide eyed. Potter looked caught between guilt and amusement and Draco almost laughed at the complicated mix of expressions that was passing on the other boy's face. He wasn't sure what his own face was exactly doing at the moment, but there was a definite smile pulling at the corner of his lips. She, on the other hand, was shaking her head, mouth opened in disbelief. Her eyes flitted between the two of them, scanning Draco with a calculating look that made him feel like a frog about to be dysected.
When Potter started sputtering pitifully, she punched him hard on one shoulder.
"Seriously! You are a dead man, Evan! You too!" She added, turning back to Draco with a very Slytherin smile. "Him, for being an idiot, and you for discovering my most embarrassing secret."
Potter snorted at that, mumbling something under his breath that sounded as if he had much more compromising material about her, but she elected to ignore him. "Nice to meet you, by the way. You must be Dean."
Not the only one hiding her true name, Draco thought, nodding anyway. "And you Alberta." He confirmed, matching her smirk.
She let out an incredulous laugh, and Draco took the time to observe her.
She was nothing like he had imagined, despite having seen her face in passing between the many pictures exposed at the Cafè. Her hair was shaved closely to her head, but even so he could notice a bald patch at the front, around two Galleons wide, and a few other spots where her scalp was bare. Her eyes were big, amber brown and intelligent. She was tall, nearly as tall as himself, and, although lean, it looked like she could pack a mean punch. He was sure that in the pictures she used to have brown, shoulder length hair, but he recognised her nonetheless.
She was rather beautiful, he thought. It was a strange thought, as he never used to be able to look beyond imperfections.
"Allie, if you'd be so kind, dear." She ribbed, in what was a passable imitation of his own accent. "I get why you two have hit it off. I miss living with this jerk, but he has told me good things about you, so I doubt he misses me much. You can ask, if you want. What happened to my hair, I mean." She added, noticing his gaze lingering.
"I wasn't. . ." He replied, sincerely. It was mostly true. What he had actually been thinking was that he wouldn't be surprised if Potter was a little smitten with this girl. Not sure how he knew, but there was something about the way she held herself that resonated with what he believed would attract Potter. And what a wild thought, that he had any idea of what would attract Potter.
"It's okay." She told him, "I was in a fist fight and the other guy pulled it off in chunks. You should have seen him, though. Not easy to smile with all those teeth missing!"
"Seriously?" He said, not sure if to be disconcerted or impressed.
"No! But I expected you to be more horrified at the prospect!" She replied, her smile now intrigued.
Draco thought about some of the nasty hexes he and his fellow students had subjected one another to at Hogwarts, present company included, and shrugged.
"Remind me not to pick a fight with you, then! I don't have much hair left. Anyway, I am going to have a shower now. Evan, do you still have my spare toiletries somewhere?" She asked, brushing her hand against Harry's wrist in a gesture that Draco had the maddening feeling was meant to irritate him.
The fact that he was actually a little annoyed wasn't exactly logical. Regardless, he couldn't help pressing slightly against Potter when he reached behind the other boy for a spare mug, barely keeping himself from checking if she was still in the room.
Potter, the idiot, took it as a silent request to move out of the way. As Draco had intentionally trapped one of his legs between his own, they ended up entangled, both stumbling for balance.
As a reflex, Harry's left hand rose to the small of Draco's back, steading him before he could topple backwards and embarrass himself any further.
Flustered, Draco lost whatever weak grip he still had on the mug and ceramic smashed on the tiled floor, pieces flying all around their bare feet.
"Fuck, that slut. The slut one, I mean." He corrected, glancing forlornly at the shattered remains of what used to be Potter's favourite mug and then back at the boy himself. "Fuck" he repeated, noticing just how close they were still standing. Without his glasses, Harry's eyes shone, reflecting the mid-morning light and Draco's own gaping face.
Said eyes blinked and he was suddenly let go of. Rubbing the back of his neck, Harry smiled almost shyly. "Don't worry. It was embarrassing anyway."
There was a faint color dusting his cheek as he surveyed the floor, where the last discernible pieces spelled a pitiful "zza ut", just an echo of its former glory.
He looked adorably dismayed.
Draco took a step back to regain some needed distance, lest he did something he would later regret, like uttering the word "adorable" aloud.
What a mess.
He made sure to avoid any broken shard and then focused back on Harry, one unimpressed eyebrow raised "Yeah, whatever. We both know how much you loved that trashy piece of crockery. Now that I think of it, I doubt I've ever seen you drinking out of any of the others, as much as you have always tried to make it look accidental."
Harry flushed harder. "Well, yeah. Allie bought it a joke during our first month living together. She said it looked like I was planning to survive on junk food alone. You know, when I finally had the chance to pick what I was eating, pizza had seemed the right choice maybe a tad too often."
"Pizza is good." Draco said, mouth suddenly dry. He looked away, heart beating fast, almost painful. He asked himself once more what he was really doing there, barging into Potter's life like he had any rights to be there. Potter with his new friends, their happiness. The inside jokes and silly trivials he was slowly being let in to, like they actually wanted him to belong, when all he had come for was to rip them apart.
He couldn't stop himself glancing at the other boy once more, finding concern and confusion in his sleepy eyes. He knew he had sounded off, yet the fact that Harry had picked up on it still came as a surprise. He averted his gaze again, mumbling to the floor "Well, I better clean this up. You look like you haven't gotten much sleep." Cringing at the somewhat jealous inflection, he all but pushed Harry out of the room. "So go take a nap, or do - whatever you have to do." It came out so close to begging that Harry left without another word, a bewildered look upon his stupidly pretty face.
Draco sighed and vanished the mess with one flick of his wand, not caring one bit that someone could have seen him.
Later, once alone in his room, he took out the diary, now charmed green and silver, and opened it to the first page.
His mother was there, still only a black dot of ink against white. The figurine was motionless, probably resting or dining, but still there.
He stared, taking deep breaths as she had once taught him, for what felt like a solid ten minutes and then flipped the pages and began writing. He and Lupin had maintained a regular correspondence in which Draco would bitch about Potter and/or insult the other in exchange for updates.
"By the way, if your plan was to give Potter the chance to use his "other wand" around, congratulations! You have succeeded." He drew a tiny cock for emphasis, adding an even tinier thumb up and smiley face to it as an afterthought.
It sounded petty and bitter but, truly, Draco had never claimed he wasn't either of these things. He threw the diary at his feet and started twisting a loose thread from the pillowcase around his finger.
"Your class and manners are ever so astounding!" Came Lupin's reply just as Draco was starting to get bored.
"Well, yeah. Suck it up. Or don't, Potter already does enough of that."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that people seem to enter his room with their clothes on and exit it wearing his. I suppose that being on a break from all that Saviour business has its perks after all. He seems to be an equal opportunities kind of guy, as well. Boys, girls, house elves next."
"You are being unfair. He is 17 and finally able to just focus on mundane, adolescent problems. Do you really blame him for wanting to explore his body? I take it you are referring to Scott and the girl, and from what you have told me they are both good friends of his. I assume they are being safe and, well, it's really not our business what he does. Why do you even care?"
"I don't!" Draco scribbled quickly, so much that his own tidy handwriting came out lopsided. Part of him had expected the other wizard to negate his suspicions, to tell him that Potter was every bit the chaste, naive hero of the legends.
"Oh." Lupin wrote, next to it, like he had a fucking clue of what Draco himself didn't really understand.
"Shut up."
"I am not quite sure that would be wise, not like this. Don't forget he doesn't really know who you are."
"Whatever." Draco replied, forcing his hand to go steady. "It's not like you are implying. It's just that it makes for an awkward living situation, that's it."
"Yeah, ok. It won't be for much longer."
Draco's hands were getting sweaty, and the Muggle pen slipped lower, scratching a long line across the page. "No, not much." He agreed, thinking of Harry's approaching birthday. Not much longer at all. "Any more exciting news from the front?"
"Yes," Lupin wrote, taking a long pause. "There have been some raids in Diagon Alley, with confirmed sightings of your aunt. And your father, I am afraid. He looks tired. Narcissa wasn't with them, if that's of any comfort."
"Mother doesn't like to be involved. He better be keeping her safe." He replied, almost to himself. "You know what, fuck it all! I have to go. I've remembered I have something to buy and I better make myself scarce before Potter starts fucking the fornitures next. A pleasure, as always."
Despite his words, he stalled, staring at the diary until his eyes started stinging. However, Lupin's answer never came and Draco suddenly felt so desperately alone.
The long walk in the sunshine helped clearing his mind and, by the time he made it back to the flat just shy of 4pm, he was at least tanned if not less miserable. His search hadn't been entirely fruitless either, he considered, placing the brand new mug he had bought into the kitchen sink. It wasn't perfect, but it would do.
He had just finished washing it when he heard shuffling from behind.
"Hi" Potter's friend greeted him, entering the kitchen with a huge yawn. She stretched languidly and just then noticed what Draco was holding. "Oh, wow, that's ugly."
"I know." Draco agreed, with a satisfied grin. Muggles novelty shops had been a terrifying experience, but not one without results. The new mug, with a badly printed "pizza cat" and a picture of a murderous looking one wearing a slice around his face, was probably even tackier than the "slut" one had been. "Where's Evan?"
"Work . He has the afternoon shift until 6."
There was an awkward pause, during which cat Ron made his appearance and went straight for Draco's calves. Her reaction, similar to what Potter had been, didn't disappoint.
Draco smiled beatifically, picking his newly elected best friend up for a well deserved cuddle. Ron purred loudly.
"So, Potter said you are staying for -" He started, at the same time as she told him "Evan asked me to invite you to -".
They both fell silent.
"Who's Potter?" She asked quizzically after another uncomfortable pause.
Draco mentally cursed his own negligence. Damn the entirety of the Malfoy's bloodline for making him such a dumbass and damn this Muggle girl for bringing it out of him so easily.
"Who?" He asked, keeping the tone casual.
"You said Potter." She repeated slowly, as if talking to a particularly dim child.
"Oh, that. You see, Potter is. . . A character from this famous English Novel about a - a magical boy with green eyes and. . . A scar. It's funny how similar they are described, so I call your friend Potter in my mind, that's all. Must have slipped."
"Green eyes and a scar?" She repeated skeptically, her own eyes narrowed into slits.
He nodded, daring her to contradict him.
"You have a thing for him, don't you?"
Draco startled, completely caught off guard.
"For a character from a book?" He asked stupidly.
She scoffed and, in that precise moment, he really did not like how unbalanced she made him feel. Instinctively, he went for something that he was sure would make her just as uncomfortable.
"What happened to your hair?"
To his surprise, she laughed.
"I was experimented on. After the success with Captain America and all, they were hoping to create the new generation of superheroes. As you can see, it didn't work. I am still radioactive, tho." She joked, wiggling her fingers at him.
He blinked, taking a step back, and she laughed harder.
"Anyway, if you want to come, we are having a party somewhere tonight. I'm leaving to meet your magical boy with green eyes and a scar at a quarter to six, you are welcome to join me."
Snatching an apple from the fruit bowl, she turned and left. Ron, the two-faced bastard, jumped from Draco's arms and followed her into Potter's room.
Draco was drunk, which wasn't really a feat considering the amount of Muggle alcohol that had made its way into his bloodstream since the beginning of the night.
Harry stood a few feet away with an even drunker Scott, who was unsuccessfully trying to drag him onto the make-shift dance floor. Despite him vehemently shaking his head, Harry's body swayed slightly, following a rhythm of its own that didn't match the fast-pace of the song being played. Draco found himself tapping along to the same silent tune, his focus entirely consumed on watching the other.
The confirmation that Potter did not know how to move unless he was soaring through the air brought Draco back to their fourth year. There wasn't much of the reluctant Triwizard champion left in the boy in front of him. In fact, while fundamentally still looking like himself, he was almost unrecognisable.
He wondered if he'd ever get to see Harry like this again, once the month was over. As if aware of Draco's thoughts and wanting to reassure him, Harry chose that exact moment to link eyes with him, smiling goofily.
Draco swallowed.
Fuck.
He slumped further down the sofa, nursing his drink while sullenly trying to make sense of his confusing feelings.
So, maybe, he was a little attracted to Potter. Was his attraction merely physical? Was it even physical? Yes, that part was difficult to deny, Potter had grown and Draco did not mind at all what he was seeing. But, then, once past the carnal aspect, what else did he have to go on?
It was true that, without their shared past to interfere, they had fallen into an easy friendship. Harry's dry and witty sense of humour somewhat balanced Draco's cynical and, at times, scathing one, and not often he had found someone that could keep him on his toes like Harry did. Even at Hogwarts, the Gryffindor had never been one to back down from a challenge and now, without the deeply rooted hate to add bite to their insults, Draco realised he was having fun.
He had spent so long either loathing or envying the other boy, that he had never stopped to consider him as a person. And now here he was, without the additional baggage of starstruck admirers or annoying friends like Weasly and Granger to shelter him. All for Draco to discover one layer at the time, for him to be taken apart and rebuilt with a piece of himself snuggly secured inside Harry's heart. His chance to form a connection that could last beyond the revelations they would have to face sooner other than later.
In that moment of drunken stupor Draco felt, with sudden clarity, that despite knowing that it would be easier if he didn't let himself get attached, it was already far too late for that.
