November Rec: These Little Things (That Guide Me to You)
Hi friends! Kerrilee here, reccing some Harry/Draco for you for the month of November! I'm a relative fandom newbie, with just over a year under my belt, but I think I've made pretty good use of my time so far. For my first rec, I've chosen something from Erised '15--my first fest in fandom. And it was a pretty good one at that. ;) I've got high hopes for Erised '16 right around the corner!
I'll be reccing some long fics during the month, but let's start out with a short one. This one's a beauty!
Title: These Little Things (That Guide Me to You)
Author:huldrejenta
Rating: R
Word Count: 4300
Warnings: None
Summary: Harry realises his true feelings for Malfoy just as Malfoy decides to go travelling to find himself. Sometimes love means letting someone go. Sometimes going away will show you what your true home is.
Why I loved it: Draco is visiting European cities in alphabetical order and has invited some friends, including Harry, to join him in Edinburgh. This is where our story begins. This feels like a 25k word fic smooshed into under five. I was enthralled from the very first word. Harry does some serious pining here and you will feel that tug in your chest more than once. I cry every time I read it. The pacing is really magnificent--there is no rush. Just a slow build of their relationship and even though it is in Harry’s POV, you see how Draco’s feelings grow as well. There are some Slytherin cameo appearances, and Millicent is fantastic, but this is simply about Harry and Draco falling in love.
Excerpt:
Harry wonders if the moments where Malfoy directs all his intensity towards him, because there certainly are those moments as well, are simply Malfoy being Malfoy, or if they’re something more.
He worries constantly about reading too much into things and tries to remind himself that he’s here because a friend invited him to join the European tour for a while, now that Malfoy was so close to London.
Obviously he’s asked a number of friends the same.
So Harry tries not to over-analyse how come the two of them end up sitting a little too close or why Malfoy lets his hand linger on Harry’s forearm when he leans in to tell him something. He tries really hard to just act natural, but it isn’t easy to know what constitutes natural these days. He ends up second-guessing the smallest things, wondering if it’s too much, too friendly, too close.
“Anyone up for a coffee?”
They’ve arrived at a quaint little coffee shop Malfoy claims every citizen of Edinburgh is raving about. When they step inside and he returns from the counter with some hazelnut-thing for Parkinson and a cappuccino, extra foam for Harry (someone has been paying attention), Harry’s last doubts melt away.
This isn’t just a crush anymore. He’s falling in love. It’s the most terrifying realisation he’s had in a long time.