Title: Something Good
Players: Harry/Draco, OFC
Word Count: 560-ish
Notes: After the War ends, someone stumbles upon something good.
The world is a strange, strange place.
This was what Paula Walker of Ravenclaw thought while she watched Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy on a couch Transfigured from a bench, hands in each other's pants, having a mutual wank which would send Potter's watchdogs into fits of research and threats if discovered, and force Slytherin to: a) attempt to seduce Malfoy en masse, or b) kill him in painful and lingering ways.
Both boys looked starved, which was no surprise. The siege and subsequent battles took it out of everyone. Paula had seen them on the walls, reinforcing spells and standing watch. She had those same duties, now and again.
Malfoy had lost both parents in the final week of fighting. Potter lost his godfather the year before in an incident nobody would talk about. Paula herself lost two brothers and her father; her mother was in hiding for being on the wrong side of the line that Light would not cross.
At Hogwarts, there were a total of seventeen students in residence whose parents had been in some way connected to Voldemort. Though neither of them had ever guessed their father's politics, Paula's sister Stella, a third-year Hufflepuff, avoided her as if she were Voldemort's reincarnation.
Eleven of the students were Slytherin. Two were Ravenclaw, three Hufflepuff. The lone Gryffindor was Cassandra Witlock, an excitable fourth-year who was worse in Potions than Longbottom. Her Mum was on the fringes, with a former boyfriend. When lines were drawn, he resurfaced. Since then, Cassandra had become a very quiet girl.
It’s over. We’re still here. I find these two, meant to be enemies from birth, but if they are, they're doing a remarkable job of denying it.
Potter leaned into Malfoy and kissed him. Malfoy's groan of pleasure could be heard where Paula was, at the top of the Astronomy Tower stairs. Potter spoke into Malfoy's mouth. Paula couldn’t hear his words, but Draco's posture told her that these were verbal caresses.
Even if Potter's weedy and Malfoy's horsey and they're both skeletons like everyone else round here, it's beautiful. Like the world didn't end. Like we're not dead, even if we look and feel like walking corpses. If they can see something in each other, the rest of us might have a chance at lives after the War.
She didn't feel like an intruder. If they'd wanted privacy they'd have used a ward. There wasn't one, and this was too good to pass up.
Malfoy was whispering to Potter now, pushing himself into the other's hand, increasing his pace. It looked like neither could stand much more. Harry gasped; Draco's jaw went slack a moment later.
The words that poured out of both made Paula gasp. Love you so much love you more beautiful so perfect please Merlin god…
All at once, it hurt to watch. It hurt to see them alive and know that she wasn't halfway there and no matter what she'd thought just before, she might never be again. So much had happened, so many secrets and betrayals. Recovery would be barely possible. Rebuilding, that was still a distant dream.
Paula Walker scurried away down the stairs before she could be discovered. She might not be alive, but she wouldn't disrupt what Potter and Malfoy had salvaged together. Someone should come out of this war with something good.