[Advent fics]: More Than Half a Smile, H/D, R
Title: More Than Half a Smile
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione
Warnings: Slight angst, eighth year fic, present tense
Rating: R
Wordcount: 5900
Summary: Ever since Harry came back to Hogwarts for his eighth year, Malfoy has been responding to everything anyone does with half a smile. It doesn’t take long for Harry to realize that what he really wants is something more.
Author’s Notes: Another Advent fic, this one for gracerene, who asked for an eighth-year fic with fluff and top!Draco for sex. Hope you enjoy.
More Than Half a Smile
Harry notices it for the first time when Ron is standing to the side of the Potions classroom and making loud remarks to the ceiling about some people who shouldn’t have been allowed to come back, he’s just saying. Hermione would probably have scolded Ron last year, but since they got together and went through finding her parents and his grief for Fred together, she’s more inclined to smile at him.
So it’s left to Harry to wince and look at Malfoy.
And all he sees is Malfoy leaning against the doorframe with half a smile.
Harry blinks, wondering for a second if Malfoy is plotting painful revenge on Ron. He looks at Malfoy’s hand, which is near his wand, and he’s prepared to leap in if he has to and protect his friend.
But then Slughorn shows up, puffing and cracking jokes at his own expense about his lateness, and the moment is lost.
*
Harry sees that smile again when they’re at dinner and Malfoy is alone in the middle of a row of empty chairs at the Slytherin table. Some people from his year got arrested, some chose not to come back, and some are dead. Harry still wakes abruptly from dreams sometimes, remembering how Crabbe died.
But Malfoy doesn’t seem to mind either the stares and hisses he gets or the way that the younger Slytherins are shy to associate with him. He eats and reads, and doesn’t do much else. Now and then, a page turns in the huge tome next to his plate.
“Do you know what Malfoy’s reading, Hermione?” Harry whispers, leaning over to her.
“Who cares what he’s reading?” Hermione breathes, watching rapturously as Ron enchants a noodle to hover above his plate and swing into Neville’s face, which sets off a food fight.
Harry ducks the food along with everyone else, and watches as the professors start to scold them and the other tables snicker or sneakily join in. No one is treating the Gryffindor food fight with indifference.
Except Malfoy. He looks up with that weird little half smile again, his eyes distant. He looks as if he’s entirely focused on something else, Harry realize abruptly. That’s the odd thing. As though he has no interest in the world here and now, only the past.
Or the future?
The question is irresistible to Harry, who has found himself increasingly uncertain about his own future in the past fortnight. Hell, the past month. All right, the past year. At one point, he thought he wouldn’t have a future, and before that, that the world without Voldemort would look so different from the one with him that it was impossible to picture.
And now…Harry doesn’t know. He hasn’t been able to pick up his relationship with Ginny either, or serious studying for the NEWTS-Hermione’s other obsession, besides Ron-or books he should read to prepare for a career as an Auror. Everything is in suspension, as if other things besides Voldemort ceased breathing after the battle.
The last time he had a purpose, Harry thinks now, is when he testified at the trials, and worked a deal with the Ministry that meant Malfoy could attend Hogwarts. In return, Lucius Malfoy gave up everything-his wand, his money, his house, his freedom-but that was okay by the Ministry, in the end. Lucius was the one they wanted, the real and acknowledged Death Eater.
He envies Malfoy, who has so many purposes that he can read books at dinner through a food fight and use the same smile for every occasion.
*
The next time Harry sees Malfoy, he thinks he might have been wrong, after all. Malfoy has come to watch the Gryffindor team practice. What can that be but a sign that he still cares about Quidditch, and wants to plot against them by seeing what moves they’re going to do next?
Ron, of course, speeds over to hang in front of Malfoy, and jerks his head sharply. “You have to leave, Malfoy. This is private time.”
Malfoy looks up slowly, away from his book, as though weights dangled from his eyelids. And Harry realizes he’s been wrong. There’s still the same abstracted look, the same distant expression that doesn’t lighten even when he glances at Ron and then around the Quidditch pitch.
“Oh,” he says, dreamily. “I thought the Slytherin team was still practicing. Sorry.” And with that same little half smile, he stands and wanders off.
Ron turns around and stares at Harry. Harry, about to throw a leg over his broom, stares back. Then he turns around and watches Malfoy.
Malfoy walks past him, the boy he never used to pass without sneering, as if Harry doesn’t exist. Even during the trials, he seemed focused on Harry, as if he knew his freedom dangled from Harry’s words. But this time, he glides past, his eyes already on his book again.
Harry moves a hand sharply, as if reaching for his wand, before he can stop himself.
Malfoy looks up and gives the unchanged half-smile, then turns to avoid him and makes his way towards the school itself. The biggest change he makes is to adjust his grip a little on the book.
Harry blinks and looks back at Ron, who’s frowning more strongly than Harry’s seen him do since he got together with Hermione.
“Is it just me, or is that fucking weird?” Ron asks the air.
*
It is fucking weird, Harry thinks later that night, and I’m going to make him pay attention to something besides those bloody books.
Apparently, he makes that decision mostly because he’s yet again stumbled on Ron and Hermione snogging in the Gryffindor boys’ bedroom, and he doesn’t want to think about loneliness or love or being left behind. And then he went downstairs to the Room of Requirement to feel sorry for himself, only to witness Malfoy disappearing into a discreet room that looked like a study, the brief glimpse Harry got of it before the wall closed.
Malfoy was carrying another book, and smiling at it.
Harry reckons that Malfoy could just be studying seriously for the NEWTS. After all, he won’t have his inherited money to rely on after this year. Harry has heard constant rumors that his mother spent the last of their Galleons on school supplies to make sure Malfoy could finish Hogwarts. He has to get good marks to be able to support himself.
But he looks at everything with that damnable expression. And Harry is sick of it.
At least one thing can be normal and unchanged and move forwards, Harry thinks cheerfully as he goes back to Gryffindor Tower, ready to conjure a bucket of cold water over Ron and Hermione’s heads if they’re still going at it. He can torment Malfoy as usual.
*
So, the next morning when Malfoy wanders into the Great Hall and prepares to bury his nose in a book at the Slytherin table, Harry is already there. No one else is. Most students prefer to sleep to an hour that isn’t insane.
Harry does, too, for that matter. But sleeping to a normal hour will mean coming down with his friends and answering questions that Harry thinks he would probably find difficult to answer. And he doesn’t really want to answer them, or even question himself. It’s the purity of his annoyance with Malfoy that’s valuable.
He sits down at the Gryffindor table, and waits a minute to see if Malfoy is going to look at him and ask what he’s doing there. But he doesn’t. He’s too occupied with that bloody book, again.
Harry waits until a little food has appeared on his plate, and he knows that no house-elf is going to come into the Great Hall (which is rare, but does happen sometimes when there aren’t many people here, since they want to clean without being watched). Then he holds his wand out beneath the table and casts the Summoning Charm he’s been burning to cast since he came back to school.
Well, for the last week, at least.
Malfoy’s book trembles and rips free of his hands, speeding across the Great Hall to Harry. Malfoy looks up, staring. His smile stays only a second, as though he forgot to turn off the part of his brain that tells him to make it.
Harry scoops up the book and reads the cover. He’s prepared for anything from a treatise on Dark Arts to a set of notes like the one Hermione has for NEWTS study, all carefully printed and written and in a bound notebook.
But then his mouth hangs open, and he realizes that he’s not prepared for anything, after all. Malfoy is reading Rita Skeeter’s biography of Dumbledore.
“Do you mind? That’s my book.”
Harry looks up and blinks and hands the book back to Malfoy, who has come all the way across the Great Hall to retrieve it. It’s the most attention Harry, or anyone else, has got from Malfoy since they came back to school. Harry knows he would have reveled in it as a great triumph only a short while ago.
But now, he can only stand up and look at Malfoy with a sort of wondering pity. All his life to plan for, and he reads this rubbish?
“Sorry,” he says. “I thought it was something interesting.” And he shakes his head and walks away. So Malfoy has changed enough that he can control his reactions, but he still prefers scandalous lies about the man he helped kill to the truth. Harry sighs. He has no reason to be disappointed-Ron certainly wouldn’t be if Harry told him-but he is.
Maybe it’s just that he has no more mystery now, and he’ll have to go back to concentrating on ordinary classwork and figuring out what the hell to do with the rest of his life.
*
“A lot of nerve you have, pretending that you’re doing anything more significant than my enjoyment of reading.”
Harry blinks. He’s sat at a table in the library for the last hour, pretending to study for Transfiguration. It’s hard to do, though. For one thing, Hermione would usually help him, but she and Ron both went away to “look for a book” within a few minutes of each other, and Harry hasn’t seen them since.
For another, Transfiguring boots to ducks seems so pointless to Harry now, after the spells he had to cast during the last year.
“What?” he asks, as Malfoy sits at the table across from him, and then shakes his head. “Oh. I wasn’t judging you, Malfoy.”
“The fuck you weren’t.” Malfoy bends towards him, so intimately that Harry wonders for a crazy second what rumors will start spreading about them soon. “I saw the expression on your face when you gave my book back. What is it to you what I read for pleasure?”
Harry feels down and dispirited, and he’s sure that Malfoy doesn’t have any power left to hurt him. That’s why he tells the truth. “I thought you were finding some sort of secret to life. You always seemed so distant and contented. You just smiled when Ron taunted you. I thought you knew what was really important. And instead, you’re falling for Skeeter’s lies just like the rest of them did.” Harry sighs. He knows that Dumbledore’s reputation will probably never recover from her malicious book.
It’s not that Harry still thinks Dumbledore is a saint, or wants to convince anyone else of that. But it will make it harder to discuss the real Dumbledore, the subtle and complicated man and manipulator, with anyone else, and be believed. For that, Harry resents and hates Skeeter.
“You looked as though you didn’t hate anyone,” he says wistfully to Malfoy, not that he really expects Malfoy to follow the progress of his private thoughts. “You looked as though you were serious, and the rest of us were just kids. And now I find out that you’re not. It’s a little disappointing.”
“That sounds like judging me to me,” Malfoy murmurs, but he seems shaken. He studies Harry with a relative of that old piercing look he had before the war, but it’s different somehow. Harry doesn’t know why. “You feel like a kid after that war? Really?”
“Adults know what they want and that everything’s complicated,” Harry says. He looks back at the doodles he’s drawn on the page in front of him, and sighs. He knows they don’t matter, but it seems like nothing else does, either. “I don’t know what I want, and some things still seem simple to me.”
Malfoy raps his fingers on the table in front of him. “Some things still are,” he said. “They just are. Like that you went through a war, and it makes sense that you’d need a while to process it and get used to living after it.”
Harry raises an eyebrow at him. “That might even be convincing, if everyone else didn’t already know.”
Malfoy gives him an ugly glance. “You’ve missed the lost expressions and the way that people walk around clinging to each other and staring at their books in class and doing nothing? You’ve missed them?’
Harry shakes his head. He’s ashamed to admit he hasn’t noticed many people from other Houses, only Malfoy. “I reckon I meant the Gryffindors then. Ron and Hermione know what they want.”
Malfoy rolls his eyes. “Wanting into each other’s pants does not constitute a serious lifetime goal, Potter.”
Harry blinks, and blinks again. Malfoy sits slowly back, and this time a viper-like grin that Harry does enjoy more than the half-smile widens over his face, although he thinks Malfoy enjoys it for entirely different reasons.
“You didn’t see they want that,” says Malfoy, with a sad shake of his head. “You really didn’t see that they want that.”
“Shut up, Malfoy, I know they were snogging,” Harry snaps, but it’s sort of automatic. “And yes, I knew they wanted to have sex. They want to get married, for Merlin’s sake.”
He’s not defending his observation skills. He’s more absorbed in the revelation that everything seemed settled to him in Ron and Hermione’s lives because they’ve chosen the person they want to be with. And Hermione wants to pass her NEWTS, of course.
But neither of them have talked in any more detail about what they want after school, Harry realizes with an abruptness that hits him like a blow. They haven’t talked about Aurors or law or the Ministry in a long time. Not since they got together. It’s been all low voices and sideways glances and giggles. Harry could have lived without knowing that both of his best friends can giggle like Parvati and Lavender.
“Potter? Potter.”
One thing Malfoy still doesn’t like is being ignored. Harry’s not sure if it’s leftover spite or just insurance that Malfoy will continue to speak to him, but he stands up and nods vaguely and gathers his books and wanders away.
He needs to think about this.
*
Harry shakes his head absently at Neville’s offer of the plate of eggs. Neville shrugs philosophically and ladles more eggs onto his plate, then dives into them.
Harry looks around with new eyes.
Neville is stronger and more confident after the war, of course. It’s hard not to be when you’ve led your own group of resistance fighters for months and cut off the head of a giant bloody snake with a giant bloody sword. But he’s one of the few. Now that Harry is looking instead of just seeing, he can tell that.
Other people droop. Other people look at empty places beside them and then look away. Other people are arguing about NEWTS and even arguing with their boyfriends and girlfriends. Ron and Hermione are blissfully happy, so Harry thought everyone was except him.
Maybe it’s time to stop letting just a few other people define his world.
Harry does take a bite of the kippers he’s managed to secure, and his gaze drifts sideways to Malfoy at the Slytherin table. Once again, Malfoy is reading what is probably still Skeeter’s biography, and his mouth is curved in that half a smile.
At least, it is until he catches Harry looking at him. Then he replaces it with a scowl.
Harry relaxes, and eats more thoroughly. Some things are still the same. That means it should be possible to recover some of his own strength and purposes, too.
And maybe look into careers that don’t involve being an Auror and spending a lot of time around nasty pure-bloods who aren’t as much fun to annoy as a certain Slytherin.
*
“Healing, of all things.”
“Mediwizardry,” Harry replies, without looking up. He’s taking notes from the book he has at a table near the front of the library, writing down anything that seems interesting. “I know I won’t have the Potions NEWT that Healing requires. But mediwizardry focuses more on Charms, and I’m good with that.”
There’s a silence long enough that Harry would think Malfoy went away, except he can still feel the breathing tension behind him. Then Malfoy moves around and sits down at the other side of the table. Harry ignores him until Malfoy clears his throat.
“Why do you want to be a Healer?” Malfoy asks. Soft-voiced. As if he actually cares.
“A mediwizard. I realized that I like Charms,” Harry says, and looks up at him. Malfoy’s face is pale, and seems more pointed than ever. Harry realizes with a jolt that it looks as though Malfoy hasn’t been eating or sleeping well. Did I cause that? Harry hopes not. “Most of the spells I had to use last year to save my life and help me defeat Voldemort were charms. I just didn’t think of them that way.”
Malfoy sniffs. “Who doesn’t know the category of the spells that they’re using?”
“People who don’t think about categories.” Harry looks down and finishes copying the sentence he’s been on for a while now. It’s a long and convoluted sentence, but Harry thinks that he can understand it without Hermione’s help.
“So you want to do something that reminds you of hunting the Dark Lord?” Malfoy watches him with the wild, impatient air of a hawk.
“Yes.”
“Then you might as well be an Auror.”
“I won’t have the NEWT marks for that, either.”
“They would take you anyway.”
“Another thing I want is for people to stop doing me special favors just because of this.” Harry taps the faded scar on his forehead, and reads the next paragraph in his book.
Malfoy’s entirely silent for long minutes. Harry reckons he can’t believe that anyone would want to skip special favors. That’s not Harry’s problem. It’s the truth.
“But even if you like Charms, there are other things you could study for.” Malfoy’s voice is fast and blurred. “Wandmaking. Spell improvement. Keeping magical creatures. Theoretical research. You might apply to the Unspeakables.”
Harry can’t help it. He laughs. He also doesn’t miss the way that Malfoy stiffens across the table, but if he doesn’t listen to Harry and accept his words as truth, that’s not Harry’s problem, either. “Me? Being discreet and rules-following enough for the Unspeakables?”
Malfoy leans forwards with his chin in his hand. “Yes, perhaps not. Although I do believe they are encouraged to break the rules in their business.”
Harry shakes his head. “No Unspeakables,” he says, his heart flying, but the reason is the expression on Malfoy’s face right now. The smile is still a half smile, but it’s on the opposite side of his mouth, and his eyes on Harry are alert and direct and interested.
“Then tell me more about why the Great Harry Potter is choosing mediwizardry,” Malfoy says, and challenges him with a raised eyebrow.
And Harry can do it, and it’s surprisingly easy to do. Maybe it wouldn’t be if he hadn’t wanted so badly to see something other than that infuriating smile on Malfoy’s face, or if Ron and Hermione were with him, or if Malfoy hadn’t already made him open his eyes to other people having problems, too.
But it is. And anyone who has a problem with it can shove it, as far as Harry’s concerned.
*
“You still don’t have to do mediwizardry,” Malfoy is insisting a fortnight later, when Slughorn has partnered them up in Potions. “You do well enough at the basic theory that you could get a good enough mark on the NEWTS.”
Harry rolls his eyes and adds the handful of newt tails to the potion, nodding in satisfaction when the proper pink cloud floats off the surface, which promptly starts to bubble a second later. “I was only doing so well our sixth year because I had Snape’s old Potions book. I don’t have a natural talent for it. And I don’t want to worry about my mark. I want to have an easy year.”
Malfoy rolls his eyes back. “Because brooding and moping has made it an easy year so far. And because the NEWTS are so easy no matter what you try.”
“I’m still not aiming for Healer.”
“I didn’t say that you have to aim for Healer.” Malfoy ought to become a Professor of Condescension, himself, Harry thinks. “Just aim at something that’s grander than mediwizardry.”
Harry turns his head abruptly. Malfoy is an inch away from him, and he freezes with wide eyes, as though Harry is about to curse him. Harry blinks at the unexpected proximity, but still takes the chance to make his point. “Grander? I’m not someone who wants a grand career. I’ve had one, thanks. And I’m not someone who automatically deserves it just because I was the Boy-Who-Lived, either.”
“Are,” Malfoy says in a queer voice.
“What?” And Harry probably looks really articulate and intelligent now. He’s getting a few concerned glances from other people in the room. He wonders if they’re for his flushed cheeks and stumbling speech, or just from the fact that he and Malfoy are close together and not hexing each other. Even Hermione has recovered enough from her rapturous gaze into Ron’s eyes to at least look curious.
“You still are the Boy-Who-Lived.” Malfoy licks his lips, opens his mouth, gives every sign of wanting to say more, but then turns abruptly away and ducks his head over the cauldron. “You deserve everything you want to demand from the wizarding world.”
Harry reaches out and lays the back of his hand on Malfoy’s forehead. Malfoy makes an inarticulate sound that Harry knows how to translate.
“I think you’ve done something with Draco Malfoy,” says Harry sternly, and moves his hand back. “Either that, or you have a fever. I was checking.”
Malfoy remains silent and red-cheeked for the rest of the class, and Harry knows he’s going to deal with Gryffindor questions right after it, too.
*
Harry stalks back and forth outside the Room of Requirement, his mind boiling. I need a place I can let out the anger safely. I need a place I can let out the anger safely. I need a place I can let out the anger…
The door forms, and he’s yanking it open when someone calls his name. All right, Malfoy calls his name. Silly to pretend that he doesn’t know the voice. Harry jerks his head back in acknowledgment, and stands there, still fuming, until Malfoy catches up with him.
“Rough day,” Malfoy says, not a question, and lays a hand between Harry’s shoulder blades to propel him gently into what looks like Snape’s Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. Well, that classroom if it had pillows fastened to the walls.
Wooden dummies and iron shields and thick plaques start bobbing up out of the floor the minute Harry’s inside. He turns to Malfoy, but Malfoy is sitting on a chair inside a shimmering cage of protective enchantments. He raises his eyebrows at Harry’s expression.
“I made a slight modification to the room,” he says. “For you, a place where you could let out the anger safely. For me, a place where I could be safe while you did it.” He props his chin up with his fist, the way he did that first day he questioned Harry about what he was studying.
Harry nods, and then whirls around and unleashes a barrage of spells against the room’s constructs. The arms of the dummies break off and whirl around their heads. The shields splinter. The plaques crack from top to bottom, and Harry hurls them away from him so hard that they puncture the pillows.
All the spells he’s using are charms. None of them are the peaceful sort that he’ll learn for mediwizardry, but that doesn’t matter. Even in the midst of the anger, Harry thinks, he knows where his future lies.
He fills the room with furious green and silver and gold and red and yellow light, and all the time, Malfoy watches him in silence. Harry wonders for a moment if he’s considering Harry’s professional technique.
Thoughts like that pierce through the anger. Harry sighs and leans forwards, his hands on his knees. The remaining dummies disappear into slits in the floor.
Malfoy waits for long enough that Harry’s sharp breathing is the only sound in the room. “What happened?” he asks softly, and his voice seems to join the breathing.
Harry takes a deep breath and lays down his wand. To his surprise, Malfoy comes over and settles his hands on Harry’s shoulders with an interested expression, rubbing back and forth until Harry nods and pulls away.
“Ron and Hermione asked me about our ‘association,’ as they put it.” Harry flings himself into the chair nearest the suddenly sprouting fireplace and extends his hands to the fire the Room of Requirement has put there. It eases some of the aches, although not as well as Malfoy’s hands. But Harry isn’t going to think about that right now.
“Why would-” Malfoy begins, and then his face becomes smooth. “Oh. You meant you and me, not you and them.”
“Right first time.” Harry closes his eyes and ignores Malfoy’s mutter about how it was the second time. Malfoy is the only one in this room who would care about that, he thinks in exhaustion. “They got upset with me. They said that I could be friends with you, but I hadn’t told them about it, and that meant I didn’t care about them.”
“I didn’t realize you needed their gracious permission.”
Harry opens his eyes and turns his head to scowl at Malfoy. “I’m trying to pour out my soul here, and that’s the response I get?”
Malfoy’s lip quivers, and then he takes the chair next to Harry. “So what did you say?”
“I said that I valued our friendship as much as they did, which wasn’t much since they haven’t done anything since we got back except snog and disappear for ‘private study sessions.’” Harry rolls his eyes. “Then that upset Hermione, because she hadn’t meant to leave me out, and then Ron yelled at me for upsetting Hermione. And we both said some childish things that we didn’t mean, and the rest of Gryffindor came down to the common room and saw us arguing and decided to tell me off for being friends with a slimy Slytherin.”
Malfoy is silent for a time. Harry sighs and rubs his forehead. “Nothing to do with you,” he mutters. “Not with anything you’ve done since the war, anyway. Everything to do with what you did before the war.”
Malfoy nods. This time, he doesn’t have the half-smile on his face, but his eyes look equally as far away as Harry has sometimes seen them this year. “Do you think an apology would help?”
Harry feels as though someone has poured an avalanche on him. “What?”
Malfoy makes an impatient little cut with one hand. “I know not everyone will accept it. And people who hate me for being a Slytherin instead of for what I did aren’t going to be impressed. But I think Granger’s mature enough to accept it. And where she leads, Weasley follows.”
“All right,” Harry says. His brain feels as if it still has cold water trickling through it instead of thoughts. “But why would you care about what they think?”
Malfoy meets his glance. “Those two are the most important of the Gryffindors to you.”
“And why would you care about what’s important to me?” Harry’s tempted to fold his arms, but he’s still too stunned.
Malfoys stands up and crosses to his chair, still meeting his glance. “Not even you are unobservant enough to have missed this,” he murmurs.
Harry wants to protest that he never anticipated Malfoy’s tongue down his throat, but by then, he’s too busy dealing with it to protest. And then he finds he likes it. And after that, of course, it’s more than okay.
*
“He doesn’t mean it,” Ron says, glaring at Malfoy over Hermione’s shoulder.
“I do mean it,” says Malfoy steadily. He has one hand on Harry’s arm. Harry stands quietly beside him. He only means to interfere if there’s actual violence, but it’s harder to hold his tongue than he thought it would be.
They are in the middle of the Charms corridor, not well-traveled at this time of the day because most of the students have class and the only students free are those returning for their last year. Hermione is watching Malfoy raptly, and Ron suspiciously. Neither of them have really looked at Harry yet. Harry is a little glad for that and a little sorry, but more glad. That means that they really do think it’s Malfoy’s impulse to apologize, which is true.
“Why would you apologize now?” Hermione tucks a curl of hair behind her ear. “And what are you apologizing for?”
“I’m apologizing for calling you a-name,” says Malfoy. Harry has flexed his muscles under Malfoy’s touch. He does think the actual name might make Ron attack Malfoy. “I’m apologizing for being so awful to you the past few years.” He shifts his gaze to Ron. “For that song. And making fun of your family. And your lack of Galleons. And your-”
Harry flexes his arm again. Ron is starting to look agitated. Malfoy nods, stops, and then says, “So I want to know if you’re going to accept that Harry and I are together now.”
“Wait, what?” Ron asks. Hermione blinks. Harry ducks his head so he can hide either his smile or his burning cheeks, he’s not sure which.
“Harry and I are together,” Malfoy repeats blandly. “It’s true that not many people know it except us, but sometimes people are subtle.”
Ron bristles at the implication in Malfoy’s words, but Hermione cuts across him. “You really do want to be with Harry?” she asks.
Malfoy sneers at her a little. “I’ve apologized for a lot of things, I’ll do it for more, but I won’t apologize for being with Harry. You needn’t sound so surprised that there are people who would want him.” He moves a little as if to shield Harry from their sight.
“It’s a shock, that’s all,” says Hermione. “The fact of you dating, not the fact that you want to be with him.” She glances at Harry.
Harry holds her eye and smiles as reassuringly as he can. Ron and Hermione are still his friends, even if they accidentally made him feel like an outsider to their new relationship. He wants to show them that he’s happy, and even though his happiness is a higher priority right now than making them happy with who he dates, they’re still important to him.
Unexpectedly, it’s Ron who says, “Harry must be important to him. Can you see Malfoy apologizing for any other reason?”
Malfoy nods. Hermione looks back and forth between them. Harry smiles.
“Fine,” Hermione says, and pauses in brushing past them. “What are you going to tell Ginny, Harry?”
“If she doesn’t have the eyes to see what’s going on or the courage to approach him before this, then she doesn’t deserve Harry,” Malfoy-Draco-retorts haughtily, and sweeps Harry down the corridor before Harry can respond.
Harry rolls his eyes. “You realize I could have answered that. And that you might just have started another fight.”
“I stand by what I said,” Malfoy mutters, but his grip on Harry’s arm turns into a caress.
*
It all comes down to this, Harry thinks. He pants and tosses his head back on the bed in the Room of Requirement, in front of the sparkling fire. Garlands entwine the bedposts and the hearth and mantel. Apparently, even though they didn’t specifically ask for them, the castle thinks Christmas decorations ought to be everywhere at this time of year.
Draco moves above him, inside him, Harry’s legs around his waist. His eyes are enormous and astonished, his hair dripping sweat, his shoulders swarming with it. They’ve been at this a long time, longer than Harry thought they’d last their first time.
On the other hand, precisely because they’d danced around each other for so long, it feels as though this is a moment meant to last.
But Harry picks up the responsive motion of his hips without meaning to, and Draco picks up his thrusts. He’s panting now, his quiet sounds indistinguishable from the little ones Harry makes to encourage him. He’s finding that he enjoys all sorts of things he never thought he would, like snogging another bloke and sucking Draco off.
And feeling another bloke fucking him.
Draco’s flying before the end, his head held at an unnatural angle and his hips a snapping blur. He does pause when he gets near his release, and that’s the cue for Harry to reach down and tug at himself.
He doesn’t come at the exact same moment as Draco-that would be too much to ask for-but he comes right before, and he thinks that must feel satisfying to Draco from the inside, the squeezing and clamping around him.
Draco lies beside him on the bed after that and murmurs incoherent praise, his fingers picking through Harry’s hair and his eyes on Harry’s face. Harry gazes back, content with the reflections in Draco’s eyes and the sharp expression that’s there, more than half a smile.
Draco does mutter, as he rolls over, “You’re going to make a Potions NEWT high enough to be a Healer, with my tutoring, or I’ll know why.”
“Mediwizard,” Harry says straight back, and Draco falls asleep with half a smile on his face after all, but it’s Harry’s special one, and Harry is spent and exhausted and looking forward to the future.
The End.
Through the Clear, Cold Air.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/703566.html. Comment wherever you like.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione
Warnings: Slight angst, eighth year fic, present tense
Rating: R
Wordcount: 5900
Summary: Ever since Harry came back to Hogwarts for his eighth year, Malfoy has been responding to everything anyone does with half a smile. It doesn’t take long for Harry to realize that what he really wants is something more.
Author’s Notes: Another Advent fic, this one for gracerene, who asked for an eighth-year fic with fluff and top!Draco for sex. Hope you enjoy.
More Than Half a Smile
Harry notices it for the first time when Ron is standing to the side of the Potions classroom and making loud remarks to the ceiling about some people who shouldn’t have been allowed to come back, he’s just saying. Hermione would probably have scolded Ron last year, but since they got together and went through finding her parents and his grief for Fred together, she’s more inclined to smile at him.
So it’s left to Harry to wince and look at Malfoy.
And all he sees is Malfoy leaning against the doorframe with half a smile.
Harry blinks, wondering for a second if Malfoy is plotting painful revenge on Ron. He looks at Malfoy’s hand, which is near his wand, and he’s prepared to leap in if he has to and protect his friend.
But then Slughorn shows up, puffing and cracking jokes at his own expense about his lateness, and the moment is lost.
*
Harry sees that smile again when they’re at dinner and Malfoy is alone in the middle of a row of empty chairs at the Slytherin table. Some people from his year got arrested, some chose not to come back, and some are dead. Harry still wakes abruptly from dreams sometimes, remembering how Crabbe died.
But Malfoy doesn’t seem to mind either the stares and hisses he gets or the way that the younger Slytherins are shy to associate with him. He eats and reads, and doesn’t do much else. Now and then, a page turns in the huge tome next to his plate.
“Do you know what Malfoy’s reading, Hermione?” Harry whispers, leaning over to her.
“Who cares what he’s reading?” Hermione breathes, watching rapturously as Ron enchants a noodle to hover above his plate and swing into Neville’s face, which sets off a food fight.
Harry ducks the food along with everyone else, and watches as the professors start to scold them and the other tables snicker or sneakily join in. No one is treating the Gryffindor food fight with indifference.
Except Malfoy. He looks up with that weird little half smile again, his eyes distant. He looks as if he’s entirely focused on something else, Harry realize abruptly. That’s the odd thing. As though he has no interest in the world here and now, only the past.
Or the future?
The question is irresistible to Harry, who has found himself increasingly uncertain about his own future in the past fortnight. Hell, the past month. All right, the past year. At one point, he thought he wouldn’t have a future, and before that, that the world without Voldemort would look so different from the one with him that it was impossible to picture.
And now…Harry doesn’t know. He hasn’t been able to pick up his relationship with Ginny either, or serious studying for the NEWTS-Hermione’s other obsession, besides Ron-or books he should read to prepare for a career as an Auror. Everything is in suspension, as if other things besides Voldemort ceased breathing after the battle.
The last time he had a purpose, Harry thinks now, is when he testified at the trials, and worked a deal with the Ministry that meant Malfoy could attend Hogwarts. In return, Lucius Malfoy gave up everything-his wand, his money, his house, his freedom-but that was okay by the Ministry, in the end. Lucius was the one they wanted, the real and acknowledged Death Eater.
He envies Malfoy, who has so many purposes that he can read books at dinner through a food fight and use the same smile for every occasion.
*
The next time Harry sees Malfoy, he thinks he might have been wrong, after all. Malfoy has come to watch the Gryffindor team practice. What can that be but a sign that he still cares about Quidditch, and wants to plot against them by seeing what moves they’re going to do next?
Ron, of course, speeds over to hang in front of Malfoy, and jerks his head sharply. “You have to leave, Malfoy. This is private time.”
Malfoy looks up slowly, away from his book, as though weights dangled from his eyelids. And Harry realizes he’s been wrong. There’s still the same abstracted look, the same distant expression that doesn’t lighten even when he glances at Ron and then around the Quidditch pitch.
“Oh,” he says, dreamily. “I thought the Slytherin team was still practicing. Sorry.” And with that same little half smile, he stands and wanders off.
Ron turns around and stares at Harry. Harry, about to throw a leg over his broom, stares back. Then he turns around and watches Malfoy.
Malfoy walks past him, the boy he never used to pass without sneering, as if Harry doesn’t exist. Even during the trials, he seemed focused on Harry, as if he knew his freedom dangled from Harry’s words. But this time, he glides past, his eyes already on his book again.
Harry moves a hand sharply, as if reaching for his wand, before he can stop himself.
Malfoy looks up and gives the unchanged half-smile, then turns to avoid him and makes his way towards the school itself. The biggest change he makes is to adjust his grip a little on the book.
Harry blinks and looks back at Ron, who’s frowning more strongly than Harry’s seen him do since he got together with Hermione.
“Is it just me, or is that fucking weird?” Ron asks the air.
*
It is fucking weird, Harry thinks later that night, and I’m going to make him pay attention to something besides those bloody books.
Apparently, he makes that decision mostly because he’s yet again stumbled on Ron and Hermione snogging in the Gryffindor boys’ bedroom, and he doesn’t want to think about loneliness or love or being left behind. And then he went downstairs to the Room of Requirement to feel sorry for himself, only to witness Malfoy disappearing into a discreet room that looked like a study, the brief glimpse Harry got of it before the wall closed.
Malfoy was carrying another book, and smiling at it.
Harry reckons that Malfoy could just be studying seriously for the NEWTS. After all, he won’t have his inherited money to rely on after this year. Harry has heard constant rumors that his mother spent the last of their Galleons on school supplies to make sure Malfoy could finish Hogwarts. He has to get good marks to be able to support himself.
But he looks at everything with that damnable expression. And Harry is sick of it.
At least one thing can be normal and unchanged and move forwards, Harry thinks cheerfully as he goes back to Gryffindor Tower, ready to conjure a bucket of cold water over Ron and Hermione’s heads if they’re still going at it. He can torment Malfoy as usual.
*
So, the next morning when Malfoy wanders into the Great Hall and prepares to bury his nose in a book at the Slytherin table, Harry is already there. No one else is. Most students prefer to sleep to an hour that isn’t insane.
Harry does, too, for that matter. But sleeping to a normal hour will mean coming down with his friends and answering questions that Harry thinks he would probably find difficult to answer. And he doesn’t really want to answer them, or even question himself. It’s the purity of his annoyance with Malfoy that’s valuable.
He sits down at the Gryffindor table, and waits a minute to see if Malfoy is going to look at him and ask what he’s doing there. But he doesn’t. He’s too occupied with that bloody book, again.
Harry waits until a little food has appeared on his plate, and he knows that no house-elf is going to come into the Great Hall (which is rare, but does happen sometimes when there aren’t many people here, since they want to clean without being watched). Then he holds his wand out beneath the table and casts the Summoning Charm he’s been burning to cast since he came back to school.
Well, for the last week, at least.
Malfoy’s book trembles and rips free of his hands, speeding across the Great Hall to Harry. Malfoy looks up, staring. His smile stays only a second, as though he forgot to turn off the part of his brain that tells him to make it.
Harry scoops up the book and reads the cover. He’s prepared for anything from a treatise on Dark Arts to a set of notes like the one Hermione has for NEWTS study, all carefully printed and written and in a bound notebook.
But then his mouth hangs open, and he realizes that he’s not prepared for anything, after all. Malfoy is reading Rita Skeeter’s biography of Dumbledore.
“Do you mind? That’s my book.”
Harry looks up and blinks and hands the book back to Malfoy, who has come all the way across the Great Hall to retrieve it. It’s the most attention Harry, or anyone else, has got from Malfoy since they came back to school. Harry knows he would have reveled in it as a great triumph only a short while ago.
But now, he can only stand up and look at Malfoy with a sort of wondering pity. All his life to plan for, and he reads this rubbish?
“Sorry,” he says. “I thought it was something interesting.” And he shakes his head and walks away. So Malfoy has changed enough that he can control his reactions, but he still prefers scandalous lies about the man he helped kill to the truth. Harry sighs. He has no reason to be disappointed-Ron certainly wouldn’t be if Harry told him-but he is.
Maybe it’s just that he has no more mystery now, and he’ll have to go back to concentrating on ordinary classwork and figuring out what the hell to do with the rest of his life.
*
“A lot of nerve you have, pretending that you’re doing anything more significant than my enjoyment of reading.”
Harry blinks. He’s sat at a table in the library for the last hour, pretending to study for Transfiguration. It’s hard to do, though. For one thing, Hermione would usually help him, but she and Ron both went away to “look for a book” within a few minutes of each other, and Harry hasn’t seen them since.
For another, Transfiguring boots to ducks seems so pointless to Harry now, after the spells he had to cast during the last year.
“What?” he asks, as Malfoy sits at the table across from him, and then shakes his head. “Oh. I wasn’t judging you, Malfoy.”
“The fuck you weren’t.” Malfoy bends towards him, so intimately that Harry wonders for a crazy second what rumors will start spreading about them soon. “I saw the expression on your face when you gave my book back. What is it to you what I read for pleasure?”
Harry feels down and dispirited, and he’s sure that Malfoy doesn’t have any power left to hurt him. That’s why he tells the truth. “I thought you were finding some sort of secret to life. You always seemed so distant and contented. You just smiled when Ron taunted you. I thought you knew what was really important. And instead, you’re falling for Skeeter’s lies just like the rest of them did.” Harry sighs. He knows that Dumbledore’s reputation will probably never recover from her malicious book.
It’s not that Harry still thinks Dumbledore is a saint, or wants to convince anyone else of that. But it will make it harder to discuss the real Dumbledore, the subtle and complicated man and manipulator, with anyone else, and be believed. For that, Harry resents and hates Skeeter.
“You looked as though you didn’t hate anyone,” he says wistfully to Malfoy, not that he really expects Malfoy to follow the progress of his private thoughts. “You looked as though you were serious, and the rest of us were just kids. And now I find out that you’re not. It’s a little disappointing.”
“That sounds like judging me to me,” Malfoy murmurs, but he seems shaken. He studies Harry with a relative of that old piercing look he had before the war, but it’s different somehow. Harry doesn’t know why. “You feel like a kid after that war? Really?”
“Adults know what they want and that everything’s complicated,” Harry says. He looks back at the doodles he’s drawn on the page in front of him, and sighs. He knows they don’t matter, but it seems like nothing else does, either. “I don’t know what I want, and some things still seem simple to me.”
Malfoy raps his fingers on the table in front of him. “Some things still are,” he said. “They just are. Like that you went through a war, and it makes sense that you’d need a while to process it and get used to living after it.”
Harry raises an eyebrow at him. “That might even be convincing, if everyone else didn’t already know.”
Malfoy gives him an ugly glance. “You’ve missed the lost expressions and the way that people walk around clinging to each other and staring at their books in class and doing nothing? You’ve missed them?’
Harry shakes his head. He’s ashamed to admit he hasn’t noticed many people from other Houses, only Malfoy. “I reckon I meant the Gryffindors then. Ron and Hermione know what they want.”
Malfoy rolls his eyes. “Wanting into each other’s pants does not constitute a serious lifetime goal, Potter.”
Harry blinks, and blinks again. Malfoy sits slowly back, and this time a viper-like grin that Harry does enjoy more than the half-smile widens over his face, although he thinks Malfoy enjoys it for entirely different reasons.
“You didn’t see they want that,” says Malfoy, with a sad shake of his head. “You really didn’t see that they want that.”
“Shut up, Malfoy, I know they were snogging,” Harry snaps, but it’s sort of automatic. “And yes, I knew they wanted to have sex. They want to get married, for Merlin’s sake.”
He’s not defending his observation skills. He’s more absorbed in the revelation that everything seemed settled to him in Ron and Hermione’s lives because they’ve chosen the person they want to be with. And Hermione wants to pass her NEWTS, of course.
But neither of them have talked in any more detail about what they want after school, Harry realizes with an abruptness that hits him like a blow. They haven’t talked about Aurors or law or the Ministry in a long time. Not since they got together. It’s been all low voices and sideways glances and giggles. Harry could have lived without knowing that both of his best friends can giggle like Parvati and Lavender.
“Potter? Potter.”
One thing Malfoy still doesn’t like is being ignored. Harry’s not sure if it’s leftover spite or just insurance that Malfoy will continue to speak to him, but he stands up and nods vaguely and gathers his books and wanders away.
He needs to think about this.
*
Harry shakes his head absently at Neville’s offer of the plate of eggs. Neville shrugs philosophically and ladles more eggs onto his plate, then dives into them.
Harry looks around with new eyes.
Neville is stronger and more confident after the war, of course. It’s hard not to be when you’ve led your own group of resistance fighters for months and cut off the head of a giant bloody snake with a giant bloody sword. But he’s one of the few. Now that Harry is looking instead of just seeing, he can tell that.
Other people droop. Other people look at empty places beside them and then look away. Other people are arguing about NEWTS and even arguing with their boyfriends and girlfriends. Ron and Hermione are blissfully happy, so Harry thought everyone was except him.
Maybe it’s time to stop letting just a few other people define his world.
Harry does take a bite of the kippers he’s managed to secure, and his gaze drifts sideways to Malfoy at the Slytherin table. Once again, Malfoy is reading what is probably still Skeeter’s biography, and his mouth is curved in that half a smile.
At least, it is until he catches Harry looking at him. Then he replaces it with a scowl.
Harry relaxes, and eats more thoroughly. Some things are still the same. That means it should be possible to recover some of his own strength and purposes, too.
And maybe look into careers that don’t involve being an Auror and spending a lot of time around nasty pure-bloods who aren’t as much fun to annoy as a certain Slytherin.
*
“Healing, of all things.”
“Mediwizardry,” Harry replies, without looking up. He’s taking notes from the book he has at a table near the front of the library, writing down anything that seems interesting. “I know I won’t have the Potions NEWT that Healing requires. But mediwizardry focuses more on Charms, and I’m good with that.”
There’s a silence long enough that Harry would think Malfoy went away, except he can still feel the breathing tension behind him. Then Malfoy moves around and sits down at the other side of the table. Harry ignores him until Malfoy clears his throat.
“Why do you want to be a Healer?” Malfoy asks. Soft-voiced. As if he actually cares.
“A mediwizard. I realized that I like Charms,” Harry says, and looks up at him. Malfoy’s face is pale, and seems more pointed than ever. Harry realizes with a jolt that it looks as though Malfoy hasn’t been eating or sleeping well. Did I cause that? Harry hopes not. “Most of the spells I had to use last year to save my life and help me defeat Voldemort were charms. I just didn’t think of them that way.”
Malfoy sniffs. “Who doesn’t know the category of the spells that they’re using?”
“People who don’t think about categories.” Harry looks down and finishes copying the sentence he’s been on for a while now. It’s a long and convoluted sentence, but Harry thinks that he can understand it without Hermione’s help.
“So you want to do something that reminds you of hunting the Dark Lord?” Malfoy watches him with the wild, impatient air of a hawk.
“Yes.”
“Then you might as well be an Auror.”
“I won’t have the NEWT marks for that, either.”
“They would take you anyway.”
“Another thing I want is for people to stop doing me special favors just because of this.” Harry taps the faded scar on his forehead, and reads the next paragraph in his book.
Malfoy’s entirely silent for long minutes. Harry reckons he can’t believe that anyone would want to skip special favors. That’s not Harry’s problem. It’s the truth.
“But even if you like Charms, there are other things you could study for.” Malfoy’s voice is fast and blurred. “Wandmaking. Spell improvement. Keeping magical creatures. Theoretical research. You might apply to the Unspeakables.”
Harry can’t help it. He laughs. He also doesn’t miss the way that Malfoy stiffens across the table, but if he doesn’t listen to Harry and accept his words as truth, that’s not Harry’s problem, either. “Me? Being discreet and rules-following enough for the Unspeakables?”
Malfoy leans forwards with his chin in his hand. “Yes, perhaps not. Although I do believe they are encouraged to break the rules in their business.”
Harry shakes his head. “No Unspeakables,” he says, his heart flying, but the reason is the expression on Malfoy’s face right now. The smile is still a half smile, but it’s on the opposite side of his mouth, and his eyes on Harry are alert and direct and interested.
“Then tell me more about why the Great Harry Potter is choosing mediwizardry,” Malfoy says, and challenges him with a raised eyebrow.
And Harry can do it, and it’s surprisingly easy to do. Maybe it wouldn’t be if he hadn’t wanted so badly to see something other than that infuriating smile on Malfoy’s face, or if Ron and Hermione were with him, or if Malfoy hadn’t already made him open his eyes to other people having problems, too.
But it is. And anyone who has a problem with it can shove it, as far as Harry’s concerned.
*
“You still don’t have to do mediwizardry,” Malfoy is insisting a fortnight later, when Slughorn has partnered them up in Potions. “You do well enough at the basic theory that you could get a good enough mark on the NEWTS.”
Harry rolls his eyes and adds the handful of newt tails to the potion, nodding in satisfaction when the proper pink cloud floats off the surface, which promptly starts to bubble a second later. “I was only doing so well our sixth year because I had Snape’s old Potions book. I don’t have a natural talent for it. And I don’t want to worry about my mark. I want to have an easy year.”
Malfoy rolls his eyes back. “Because brooding and moping has made it an easy year so far. And because the NEWTS are so easy no matter what you try.”
“I’m still not aiming for Healer.”
“I didn’t say that you have to aim for Healer.” Malfoy ought to become a Professor of Condescension, himself, Harry thinks. “Just aim at something that’s grander than mediwizardry.”
Harry turns his head abruptly. Malfoy is an inch away from him, and he freezes with wide eyes, as though Harry is about to curse him. Harry blinks at the unexpected proximity, but still takes the chance to make his point. “Grander? I’m not someone who wants a grand career. I’ve had one, thanks. And I’m not someone who automatically deserves it just because I was the Boy-Who-Lived, either.”
“Are,” Malfoy says in a queer voice.
“What?” And Harry probably looks really articulate and intelligent now. He’s getting a few concerned glances from other people in the room. He wonders if they’re for his flushed cheeks and stumbling speech, or just from the fact that he and Malfoy are close together and not hexing each other. Even Hermione has recovered enough from her rapturous gaze into Ron’s eyes to at least look curious.
“You still are the Boy-Who-Lived.” Malfoy licks his lips, opens his mouth, gives every sign of wanting to say more, but then turns abruptly away and ducks his head over the cauldron. “You deserve everything you want to demand from the wizarding world.”
Harry reaches out and lays the back of his hand on Malfoy’s forehead. Malfoy makes an inarticulate sound that Harry knows how to translate.
“I think you’ve done something with Draco Malfoy,” says Harry sternly, and moves his hand back. “Either that, or you have a fever. I was checking.”
Malfoy remains silent and red-cheeked for the rest of the class, and Harry knows he’s going to deal with Gryffindor questions right after it, too.
*
Harry stalks back and forth outside the Room of Requirement, his mind boiling. I need a place I can let out the anger safely. I need a place I can let out the anger safely. I need a place I can let out the anger…
The door forms, and he’s yanking it open when someone calls his name. All right, Malfoy calls his name. Silly to pretend that he doesn’t know the voice. Harry jerks his head back in acknowledgment, and stands there, still fuming, until Malfoy catches up with him.
“Rough day,” Malfoy says, not a question, and lays a hand between Harry’s shoulder blades to propel him gently into what looks like Snape’s Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. Well, that classroom if it had pillows fastened to the walls.
Wooden dummies and iron shields and thick plaques start bobbing up out of the floor the minute Harry’s inside. He turns to Malfoy, but Malfoy is sitting on a chair inside a shimmering cage of protective enchantments. He raises his eyebrows at Harry’s expression.
“I made a slight modification to the room,” he says. “For you, a place where you could let out the anger safely. For me, a place where I could be safe while you did it.” He props his chin up with his fist, the way he did that first day he questioned Harry about what he was studying.
Harry nods, and then whirls around and unleashes a barrage of spells against the room’s constructs. The arms of the dummies break off and whirl around their heads. The shields splinter. The plaques crack from top to bottom, and Harry hurls them away from him so hard that they puncture the pillows.
All the spells he’s using are charms. None of them are the peaceful sort that he’ll learn for mediwizardry, but that doesn’t matter. Even in the midst of the anger, Harry thinks, he knows where his future lies.
He fills the room with furious green and silver and gold and red and yellow light, and all the time, Malfoy watches him in silence. Harry wonders for a moment if he’s considering Harry’s professional technique.
Thoughts like that pierce through the anger. Harry sighs and leans forwards, his hands on his knees. The remaining dummies disappear into slits in the floor.
Malfoy waits for long enough that Harry’s sharp breathing is the only sound in the room. “What happened?” he asks softly, and his voice seems to join the breathing.
Harry takes a deep breath and lays down his wand. To his surprise, Malfoy comes over and settles his hands on Harry’s shoulders with an interested expression, rubbing back and forth until Harry nods and pulls away.
“Ron and Hermione asked me about our ‘association,’ as they put it.” Harry flings himself into the chair nearest the suddenly sprouting fireplace and extends his hands to the fire the Room of Requirement has put there. It eases some of the aches, although not as well as Malfoy’s hands. But Harry isn’t going to think about that right now.
“Why would-” Malfoy begins, and then his face becomes smooth. “Oh. You meant you and me, not you and them.”
“Right first time.” Harry closes his eyes and ignores Malfoy’s mutter about how it was the second time. Malfoy is the only one in this room who would care about that, he thinks in exhaustion. “They got upset with me. They said that I could be friends with you, but I hadn’t told them about it, and that meant I didn’t care about them.”
“I didn’t realize you needed their gracious permission.”
Harry opens his eyes and turns his head to scowl at Malfoy. “I’m trying to pour out my soul here, and that’s the response I get?”
Malfoy’s lip quivers, and then he takes the chair next to Harry. “So what did you say?”
“I said that I valued our friendship as much as they did, which wasn’t much since they haven’t done anything since we got back except snog and disappear for ‘private study sessions.’” Harry rolls his eyes. “Then that upset Hermione, because she hadn’t meant to leave me out, and then Ron yelled at me for upsetting Hermione. And we both said some childish things that we didn’t mean, and the rest of Gryffindor came down to the common room and saw us arguing and decided to tell me off for being friends with a slimy Slytherin.”
Malfoy is silent for a time. Harry sighs and rubs his forehead. “Nothing to do with you,” he mutters. “Not with anything you’ve done since the war, anyway. Everything to do with what you did before the war.”
Malfoy nods. This time, he doesn’t have the half-smile on his face, but his eyes look equally as far away as Harry has sometimes seen them this year. “Do you think an apology would help?”
Harry feels as though someone has poured an avalanche on him. “What?”
Malfoy makes an impatient little cut with one hand. “I know not everyone will accept it. And people who hate me for being a Slytherin instead of for what I did aren’t going to be impressed. But I think Granger’s mature enough to accept it. And where she leads, Weasley follows.”
“All right,” Harry says. His brain feels as if it still has cold water trickling through it instead of thoughts. “But why would you care about what they think?”
Malfoy meets his glance. “Those two are the most important of the Gryffindors to you.”
“And why would you care about what’s important to me?” Harry’s tempted to fold his arms, but he’s still too stunned.
Malfoys stands up and crosses to his chair, still meeting his glance. “Not even you are unobservant enough to have missed this,” he murmurs.
Harry wants to protest that he never anticipated Malfoy’s tongue down his throat, but by then, he’s too busy dealing with it to protest. And then he finds he likes it. And after that, of course, it’s more than okay.
*
“He doesn’t mean it,” Ron says, glaring at Malfoy over Hermione’s shoulder.
“I do mean it,” says Malfoy steadily. He has one hand on Harry’s arm. Harry stands quietly beside him. He only means to interfere if there’s actual violence, but it’s harder to hold his tongue than he thought it would be.
They are in the middle of the Charms corridor, not well-traveled at this time of the day because most of the students have class and the only students free are those returning for their last year. Hermione is watching Malfoy raptly, and Ron suspiciously. Neither of them have really looked at Harry yet. Harry is a little glad for that and a little sorry, but more glad. That means that they really do think it’s Malfoy’s impulse to apologize, which is true.
“Why would you apologize now?” Hermione tucks a curl of hair behind her ear. “And what are you apologizing for?”
“I’m apologizing for calling you a-name,” says Malfoy. Harry has flexed his muscles under Malfoy’s touch. He does think the actual name might make Ron attack Malfoy. “I’m apologizing for being so awful to you the past few years.” He shifts his gaze to Ron. “For that song. And making fun of your family. And your lack of Galleons. And your-”
Harry flexes his arm again. Ron is starting to look agitated. Malfoy nods, stops, and then says, “So I want to know if you’re going to accept that Harry and I are together now.”
“Wait, what?” Ron asks. Hermione blinks. Harry ducks his head so he can hide either his smile or his burning cheeks, he’s not sure which.
“Harry and I are together,” Malfoy repeats blandly. “It’s true that not many people know it except us, but sometimes people are subtle.”
Ron bristles at the implication in Malfoy’s words, but Hermione cuts across him. “You really do want to be with Harry?” she asks.
Malfoy sneers at her a little. “I’ve apologized for a lot of things, I’ll do it for more, but I won’t apologize for being with Harry. You needn’t sound so surprised that there are people who would want him.” He moves a little as if to shield Harry from their sight.
“It’s a shock, that’s all,” says Hermione. “The fact of you dating, not the fact that you want to be with him.” She glances at Harry.
Harry holds her eye and smiles as reassuringly as he can. Ron and Hermione are still his friends, even if they accidentally made him feel like an outsider to their new relationship. He wants to show them that he’s happy, and even though his happiness is a higher priority right now than making them happy with who he dates, they’re still important to him.
Unexpectedly, it’s Ron who says, “Harry must be important to him. Can you see Malfoy apologizing for any other reason?”
Malfoy nods. Hermione looks back and forth between them. Harry smiles.
“Fine,” Hermione says, and pauses in brushing past them. “What are you going to tell Ginny, Harry?”
“If she doesn’t have the eyes to see what’s going on or the courage to approach him before this, then she doesn’t deserve Harry,” Malfoy-Draco-retorts haughtily, and sweeps Harry down the corridor before Harry can respond.
Harry rolls his eyes. “You realize I could have answered that. And that you might just have started another fight.”
“I stand by what I said,” Malfoy mutters, but his grip on Harry’s arm turns into a caress.
*
It all comes down to this, Harry thinks. He pants and tosses his head back on the bed in the Room of Requirement, in front of the sparkling fire. Garlands entwine the bedposts and the hearth and mantel. Apparently, even though they didn’t specifically ask for them, the castle thinks Christmas decorations ought to be everywhere at this time of year.
Draco moves above him, inside him, Harry’s legs around his waist. His eyes are enormous and astonished, his hair dripping sweat, his shoulders swarming with it. They’ve been at this a long time, longer than Harry thought they’d last their first time.
On the other hand, precisely because they’d danced around each other for so long, it feels as though this is a moment meant to last.
But Harry picks up the responsive motion of his hips without meaning to, and Draco picks up his thrusts. He’s panting now, his quiet sounds indistinguishable from the little ones Harry makes to encourage him. He’s finding that he enjoys all sorts of things he never thought he would, like snogging another bloke and sucking Draco off.
And feeling another bloke fucking him.
Draco’s flying before the end, his head held at an unnatural angle and his hips a snapping blur. He does pause when he gets near his release, and that’s the cue for Harry to reach down and tug at himself.
He doesn’t come at the exact same moment as Draco-that would be too much to ask for-but he comes right before, and he thinks that must feel satisfying to Draco from the inside, the squeezing and clamping around him.
Draco lies beside him on the bed after that and murmurs incoherent praise, his fingers picking through Harry’s hair and his eyes on Harry’s face. Harry gazes back, content with the reflections in Draco’s eyes and the sharp expression that’s there, more than half a smile.
Draco does mutter, as he rolls over, “You’re going to make a Potions NEWT high enough to be a Healer, with my tutoring, or I’ll know why.”
“Mediwizard,” Harry says straight back, and Draco falls asleep with half a smile on his face after all, but it’s Harry’s special one, and Harry is spent and exhausted and looking forward to the future.
The End.
Through the Clear, Cold Air.
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