unfortunate.
note: hey welcome to sad harry/draco stuffs i wrote based on an old rp storyline from years ago, because my heart is harry/draco garbage. context? what context! the context is, roughly, canon divergent storyline set at the end of sixth year, during which harry and draco had a Thing, it was Complicated, blaise and draco also have a Thing, it is Complicated and years old and heartbreaking and they are each other's first everythings which is Important, draco is stupid and doesn't understand his own heart well enough to know he's in love with either of them, and basically harry gets the order to give draco sanctuary, blaise goes to the death eaters because he'd rather die than accept potter's help and anyway draco is Safe now so whatever, and draco does the only thing blaise can't ignore, aka puts himself in mortal peril by going to the death eaters ANYWAY and saying oh by the way here are all of potter's secrets i can spy for you now, and it's a good thing draco is crazy good at occlumency because that is a pack of lies.
but the point here isn't any of that because the point is i've been suffering over this for years. since it is a mangle of rp related stuffs it will never otherwise see the light of day. i do this solely to torture my own damn self while the poor patient person who plays blaise thinks of creative ways to kill harry potter and also sometimes me. this is what i do for fun.
ADDENDUM: i added a couple of links to bonus scenes (well, rp logs) that fit chronologically with these. featuring the formidable talents of cat, who writes blaise and ginny. <333
I.
Harry’s eyes gleam strangely behind the lenses of his glasses, the low, flickering light of the fireplace catching on the easy shield of them. He lowers his gaze to Draco’s forearm without releasing it from his too tight grip, the line of his mouth severe, brows furrowed in a way that looks like pain.
Draco is holding his breath. The skin around the brand is still pink and angry and sore.
“What’s the matter, Potter?” Draco smiles humorlessly into the fraught, uncomfortable silence. “Never seen a Dark Mark before?”
A muscle moves in Harry’s jaw. The cage of Harry’s fingers tightens around Draco’s wrist.
Then he pulls.
Draco catches himself against Harry’s chest rather than crashing into it, blinking quickly at the rapid shift, the feeling of Harry’s face tucking itself into the bend of Draco’s neck, the hot, too-quick burst of breath there. He finds himself encircling Harry's waist with his unmarked arm, stunned and a little off center, heart thudding insistently behind his breastbone. Harry’s fingers have gone vise-like around his forearm, relentless, and it hurts, the mark still fresh and achingly sensitive, but Draco clamps his lips down tight over a noise and shuts his eyes, swaying into him.
“Potter,” Draco says unsteadily.
Harry’s grip cinches tighter, stealing the breath from Draco’s lungs in one great, stinging rush.
His mouth is very warm against Draco’s neck. “You’re an idiot.”
His voice shakes, a little, though with what particular emotion, Draco can’t quite tell. Anger, or fear. Possibly the urge to pummel Draco into the wall for having the gall to act in ways unseemly to one Harry James Potter, secret control freak and avid hater of the word ‘no’. Privately, Draco thinks he’s doing the world a favor by forcibly familiarizing Potter with that word more often. It’s good for him, really. It’s-
“Potter, you brute, that does still smart a little,” he says, tugging ineffectually against Harry’s dire hold.
Harry goes very still. Then he lets go of Draco’s arm, not quickly but deliberately, as though he’d known what he was doing the entire time.
“Sorry.” Harry pulls back, expression shadowed and difficult to read.
Draco can’t make anything out with those damned hideous glasses catching the light and throwing it back, so he bites the inside of his cheek and removes them, tucking them thoughtlessly into the collar of Harry’s shirt. Harry blinks at the intrusion but says nothing, not even when Draco catches the angle of his chin in his palm to steady it, unflinchingly meeting his gaze.
Calmly, Draco says, “I’m not.”
Harry’s eyes harden a little, throat bobbing a tight swallow. “If he hadn’t been so bloody stubborn-”
“Careful,” Draco interrupts, voice deceptively mild. “You really don’t have room to be throwing stones, there.”
Harry is silent for a long moment. “Did you find him, at least?”
A narrow look. Draco releases Harry’s chin, arm settling carefully at his side. With that one movement, they are no longer touching, and he tries not to feel anything about that at all.
“I wouldn’t have come back otherwise,” he says, like it’s simple. Probably it’s one of the few things in Draco’s life now that is.
The line of Harry’s mouth tightens, remote.
“What do you want me to tell the Order?”
“I don’t need you to tell them anything,” Draco says evenly. “I’m perfectly able to pull my own weight. I have something to offer them now.”
Harry frowns, looking as though the idea is thoroughly distasteful to him.
“Disappointed?” Draco asks, lips curling unpleasantly. “Did you want me beholden to you a while longer?”
Harry starts, as though the words have made a physical impact. His eyes flash hurt that he isn’t quite quick enough to cover. “That wasn’t-it was never like that.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“For fuck’s sake, Malfoy, wanting you safe is the same as wanting you beholden to me?” Harry demands, voice rising a little. “Who thinks like that?”
Draco tilts his head. “Everyone, Potter, whether you like it or not. Perhaps it isn’t something you wanted outright, but you certainly didn’t lose sleep over it.”
Harry blinks at him strangely. “And you did?”
It isn’t pleasant, exactly, the twinge Draco’s heart gives at that-at the vulnerable look in Harry’s eyes, bared quite totally for Draco to see, the way his tone shades more toward sadness than anger. He steels himself against it, fingers clenching and unclenching at his sides.
Draco opens his mouth to speak.
A firm rap on the door pulls Harry’s gaze away. Draco’s is less quick to follow, lingering in the hollow of Harry’s throat and lower, noticing, for the first time, the fresh bruise peeking out over his collarbone.
“Harry?” calls a voice Draco recognizes. The line of Harry’s jaw softens as Ginny pokes her bright head into the room, though his eyes keep squinting at the doorway, glasses still tucked uselessly into his shirt collar. “Oh.” Ginny’s voice cools considerably. “Hello, Malfoy.”
“Weasley,” Draco says with absolutely no inflection.
Ginny turns her attention to Harry, quite through acknowledging Draco for the moment. “Dad’s here. He’s waiting for the two of you downstairs.”
Harry smiles at her softly. “Thanks. Tell him we’ll be down?”
She nods but hesitates, opening the door a little further. “You know you’re blind as a bat without those, don’t you?”
“Really?” Harry asks, amusement smoothing out the rough, unhappy edges of his voice. Draco frowns at that without meaning to. “No one’s transfigured you into a red-orange blur while I was gone?”
“Might have,” Ginny allows ruefully. “Fred and George keep trying to feed me prototypes. They snuck one into my breakfast last week.” She grins a little. Harry grins back. “I’ll see you down there.”
To Draco’s idle surprise, she glances at him, once and shortly, before she leaves.
“She asked to come, when she heard you were here,” Harry tells him.
“Why on earth would she do that?” he asks. And then, upon further consideration: “Ah.” His expression snags a little over something uncomfortable, eyes on the now empty doorway. “Blaise won’t have expected that, probably.”
“Was he expecting you?”
Draco lets the question linger for a moment, throat oddly constricted.
“No,” he says, frowning faintly. “No, he wasn’t.”
Harry rubs his eyes with the heel of his palm, looking tired. He mutters, “Then he’s an idiot.”
“That’s not necessary,” Draco says, sharp. Then, softer, “Come here.”
Harry stops what he’s doing, blinking rather owlishly, and holds himself biddably still while Draco unhooks the glasses from his shirt, murmuring a cleaning spell over them before replacing them carefully on Harry’s face.
Harry catches Draco’s wrist on the retreat, eyes once again obscured behind the lenses.
“I missed you,” Harry says, the words simple but heavy, without artifice. “What if you hadn't-- You just left.”
Draco's gaze is firm, and gives little.
“I told you," he drawls, "I was going to."
Harry frowns darkly. “How did you know they wouldn’t kill you on the spot?”
“Because I have something they want now, too.”
“And if they don’t believe you?” Harry argues. “If they start to suspect-”
Draco huffs something close to a laugh. “They already suspect.” The grip on his wrist is implacable, Harry’s expression tight and troubled, gathering heat like a storm. Draco regards him steadily, without a hint of apology. “You understand why I had to do it. Why I had to leave.”
“Yeah.” Harry pulls him closer. There’s a stubborn twist to his mouth, as though the admission isn’t one he particularly enjoys giving voice to-or as though he asked the world to change and it refused him, which Draco knows, from personal experience, annoys Harry considerably more than most things. “I do.”
Draco touches the bruise he’d glimpsed earlier, frowning rather pointedly at it. “Granger doesn’t know any basic healing spells?”
“Not that sort of bruise,” Harry murmurs.
Draco’s eyes dart up to catch his, concerned. A smile flickers over Harry’s lips, nothing like the bright, easy grin with which he’d favored Weasley a minute ago.
And then Draco isn’t thinking about Weasley at all, because Harry’s kissing him, slow and solid and expecting permission rather than asking for it. It shouldn’t make Draco’s stomach hollow out and swoop like that, shouldn’t make him want Harry to take more, and he bites a little meanly at Harry’s mouth, annoyed with himself, feels more than hears Harry’s breath trip in response. Harry hooks a hand around Draco’s neck, hauling him closer, pushing against the palm Draco has splayed over his chest. Draco’s fingers twitch and curl, uncertain whether they want to clutch at Harry or push him away, but knowing he should do one or the other, and soon.
“Potter,” he gasps against his mouth. His heart is a rapid drumbeat in his ears.
Harry makes a sound but doesn’t quite stop, breaking each kiss only to claim another, lips warm and soft and open against Draco’s, making Draco’s breath snag hotly in his throat.
“Potter,” he tries again, touch firming infinitesimally on Harry’s chest.
Harry does stop, then, swaying into him and breathing heavily. Draco closes his eyes, realizing with an inward curse that he’d been hoping, on some level, that he wouldn’t, and feeling distantly and properly horrified by that bit of self-knowledge.
“I don’t,” Draco says, mouth very dry. “I’m not,” he swallows hard, “entirely sure that’s a good idea.”
Harry shakes his head, nudging gently into the side of Draco’s face. “Why not?”
“I can’t,” Draco tries, thrown off at once and badly by the low note of tenderness in Harry’s voice, the way it curls there unselfconsciously. His own voice catches a little, the pitch of it rising. “I don’t think I can give you what you want.”
Harry’s breath is a warm burst against Draco’s ear.
“What is it you think I want?” he asks, palm still heavy over Draco’s nape, curling into the soft hair there.
Draco shivers.
“Potter,” he says a third time, flinching when Harry’s teeth graze over his jaw in rebuke. “You have to admit, the timing isn’t-” Lips brush over the bite, gentle. Draco’s heart shudders and seizes, the word catching in his throat. “Ideal. And there’s-”
Harry pauses, pulls back, eyes searching Draco’s face.
“There's what?”
Draco’s heart gives an unsteady kick. He doesn’t, can’t, know how to say it.
“They’re waiting for us downstairs,” Draco says instead.
Harry’s expression narrows, almost exasperated. But he drops the hand on Draco’s neck and steps reluctantly away, giving Draco what feels like utterly necessary space to breathe. His mouth moves uncertainly, a hard line, hurt buried in it. “We’re not done having this conversation.”
Draco doesn’t argue, mind clearing with the sudden distance, pulse steadying by degrees. He turns on his heel and heads for the door, not bothering to make it look like anything but what it is: a hasty retreat.
I.i. bonus scene.
II.
Draco is steeping a strong cup of tea when Potter’s distinctive footsteps make their way into the kitchen. Noisy, overconfident, purposeful. They stop about a table length away, and Draco dips his head fractionally toward his cup, cradled between both hands, feeling the steam of the drink on his nose.
“What happened?” Draco’s voice is cool.
“I thought you were listening.”
Draco turns in one smooth movement, the cup still held in front of him. The tea is very hot. Even with the polished ceramic as a barrier, it burns his palms; Draco grips it tighter.
“I don't mean that,” he says calmly, gaze moving over Potter, once, from head to toe and back again. He forms the words carefully, trying to sound neutral. “Blaise. There was blood on his sleeve.”
Potter doesn’t blink at that, but his expression darkens a fraction. After a beat, it clears.
“Why don’t you ask him about it?” is all Potter says.
Draco puts the cup down on the table and crosses his arms over his chest, more to keep something between them. “Because I don’t always believe him, when it comes to that.”
It’s a worrying commonality between the two of them, Blaise and Potter, but Draco doesn’t voice that thought out loud. Potter scrubs a hand artlessly through his unkempt mane of hair, which, for a wonder, actually does seem to settle it, for some bastardized definition of settled.
“Disemboweling Hex,” Potter grunts more than says, blowing a noisy breath out through his mouth. He’s looking at the wall clock over the stove with little in the way of expression, an uncharacteristic dispassion that extends to his tone. “He blocked it. Really well, actually.” Potter’s tone is matter of fact. “He’s good. But there was a scythe jinx piggybacked onto it. Nearly got him.”
Draco very consciously does not grit his teeth, or allow himself to consider the image of what would have happened if it had.
“I see.” He taps the fingers of one hand against his upper arm and tries not to be angry. The feeling pulls at the corner of his mouth anyway, contained to that small space. “You’re in one piece, I trust.”
Potter’s gaze flickers toward Draco, then away. Draco’s hand twitches, as though wanting to find the string to which it belongs and pull it back.
“I’m fine,” Potter says. “I owe him a few for that.”
Draco’s eyebrow arches, unbidden, the rest of his expression unchanged.
“Well,” Draco says. “You did dispense of a scythe jinx for him.” A hint of ill humor, dry as bone. “Most of one.”
Potter looks at him then, direct and unblinking, for the first time since he stepped into the room. It hits Draco a bit like a train, and his arms stiffen, muscles pulling taut, barely perceptible through the thin, white material of his shirt. There’s a twist to Potter’s mouth that’s almost wry. It doesn’t quite gentle him.
“I thought if a Searing Spell didn’t kill me, you would,” he says, tone falling short of playful. Draco says nothing, regarding him blandly even as Potter takes several steps closer, not tearing his gaze away from Draco for a second. “You’ve steeped your tea too long,” he murmurs. “It’s going to taste disgusting.”
“Never you mind my tea, Potter,” Draco answers, aiming for dismissal and managing it. But the line of his mouth goes strange and wavering, and Potter is close enough that Draco can see dirt smudged in the hollow of his throat, the rumor of sleeplessness beneath his eyes. The small distance between them feels chasmic until, incredibly, Draco reaches out. He glances down at his own hand, clenched in the front of Potter’s shirt, feeling as though it doesn’t quite belong to him.
Potter breathes out, very slowly, but doesn’t move.
“Thank you,” Draco says, a little too firmly. He swallows, lifting his gaze and finding Potter’s expectant, dark - almost patient if Draco didn’t know better. For a moment Draco wants to say more, but the words crowd in his throat, obstructive.
Potter’s smile is a faint, humorless curve. “Sure,” he says quietly.
“You’re right, of course.”
“I am?”
Draco nods. “Killing you would have been very unpleasant. It would have irritated me immensely, not to mention the questions. Why Draco, the Dark Lord would say, if you could have done that the whole time, why the bloody hell didn’t you save us all the trouble? Mother, knowing of my deep and abiding respect for dramatic timing, would say nothing, but would shame me silently with a look that curdles the soul.” Mouth curling into an unpleasant smile, he drawls, voice dripping irony, “Aunt Bellatrix would probably suggest executing me, on the off chance I’m a traitor.”
“Now I know you’re feeling better,” Potter says dryly.
“I’m not feeling better,” Draco counters, eyes narrowing. “I’m extremely annoyed. And I intend to go back to sleep, so do keep the theatrics to a minimum.”
“Are you the pot,” Potter asks, “or the kettle?”
Draco makes a disparaging noise in his throat and lets go of him, shoving lightly at Potter’s chest for good measure.
“Tea, yes, thank you,” he says, retrieving the cup, its contents nearly black now, for how long it’s been steeping. “I’d forgotten it entirely.”
The drink is bitter, grounding, too strong to be pleasant. Draco focuses on that instead of the fact that Potter hasn’t moved, still encroaching on Draco’s space, trapping him against the side of the table and a countertop. He’ll have to brush up against Potter if he wants to extricate himself, so Draco stays put, and sips his tea, and waits, trying not to respond to the heavy, present weight of Potter’s stare on him, willing the tread of his heart not to kick up at it like an animal.
“Are we going to talk about anything?”
There is a new, rough edge to Potter's voice.
“We talk frequently,” Draco says vaguely, “about all sorts of things.”
“Why is kissing me a bad idea?”
Draco sets his cup down with a vicious clatter. “You want to do that now?”
“What, kiss you?” Potter shoots back, the volume of his voice rising in the room for the first time.
Draco’s rises to match it. “Yes, if you like!”
“If I- " A short, disbelieving silence. "You know I do! It’s you who’s-”
Potter cuts himself off with what appears to be great effort, eyes flashing with some awful, jagged sort of hurt that makes Draco’s heart thud sickeningly in his chest. The studied lack of expression from earlier is gone, blown away as though it had only ever been a thin film of dust over the real thing, and for a moment, Draco badly wants it back, wants Potter to stop looking at Draco as though he’s run him through.
Potter’s breaths aren’t quite even anymore, and he spits the next words out as though he’s eager to be rid of them. “You told me that part wasn’t a lie.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Then why-”
“I can’t.” Mortifyingly, Draco’s voice actually hitches a little. “It isn’t-obviously I-I care about you-”
“Is it?”
Draco blinks. “Pardon?”
“Is it obvious?”
Lead lines the inside of Draco’s stomach. He stares mutely at Potter for several moments and genuinely doesn’t know what to say.
At length he asks, tone dangerously even, “Just how much of me are you doubting, Potter?”
“I didn’t mean,” Potter starts, looking stricken.
“Do you suppose I’m playing your whole side?”
“No. I-”
Draco’s voice is deceptively mild, slicing through the air with the ease of a flaying knife. “Just you, then? Which of the-Salazar, how many is it? I didn’t think to keep an exact count. Which of the times we fucked do you suppose had an ulterior motive attached? Because that first time, I’ll admit, I still rather hated you-”
“Will you stop.”
Potter slams both palms down on the table on either side of Draco, crowding him up against it. Like this, Potter almost seems the taller, Draco’s spine bending just slightly backwards to keep their bodies from touching. There’s something wild about the light in Potter’s eyes, almost feral, a hungry thing glimpsed and then gone, as though Draco were a bone and Potter the junkyard dog who’d been denied it. Draco remembers seeing that look, once, the first time he woke Potter up by carding fingers gently through his hair, a late evening in the library, Potter slumped over in a doze on top of his blank scroll. It was as though no one had ever touched Potter quite that way before.
“Damn it, Draco,” Potter says, and he sounds wretched enough that Draco almost forgets to be cross. “I just miss you.” He tips forward as he says it, as though the admission carried weight, tilting his face into the bend of Draco’s neck and shoulder and slotting into place there.
Neither of them moves for several moments, Potter's breaths loud against Draco’s throat.
Draco swallows reflexively until it feels like he might be able to speak.
“I’m sorry,” Draco finally says. He touches the back of Potter’s neck. There’s an immediate warning hunch in the line of Potter’s shoulders that Draco wilfully ignores, stroking fingers over Potter’s nape. Little by little it relaxes. “I’m here. It will be alright.” The assurance is awkward in Draco’s mouth, the way words of comfort always have been. He frowns, thumbing over the top notch of Potter’s spine, fingertips digging lightly into his hairline, feeling the tension slowly ribboning out of Potter by degrees. It's a bit like calming an animal, some great beast that might buck him at any moment. Draco never quite figured out how to pitch his voice to make it sound soothing, so he doesn't bother trying. “The littlest Weasley and I had a talk, you know. It was very illuminating.”
Potter doesn’t respond for some time. When he does, it's muffled. “A talk?”
“Mm.”
Potter turns his head slightly, so that he’s speaking less directly into Draco’s neck. “Since when do you and Ginny talk?”
“Since, of the three of you out in the hallway just now, she earned the honor of annoying me the least.”
Potter grunts, but doesn’t argue the point. Draco keeps touching him, rubbing small circles behind the shell of his ear.
“What did you talk about?” Potter's voice is soft.
“You and Blaise, in single combat. We placed bets.” Brightly, “Care to know who she thought would lose?”
“You’re really awful.”
Draco dips his head a fraction. “Miss that, too, do you?”
Potter is silent for a long moment. “Yes.”
The line of Draco’s mouth sobers. On a blink, his eyes close, and he waits several seconds to open them.
Without another word, Potter turns his head, mouth angling once more into Draco’s skin.
II.i. bonus scene.
III.
There’s an impromptu standoff happening in the kitchen. It’s either very late, or very early, and the kitchen table has been turned into a stage for military planning, a single large map covering scratches in the wood, one corner heavily torn, parts of it marked up in blue and red. Nobody in the room is older than eighteen.
Draco’s gaze his locked with Harry’s. His shirt has ripped along the shoulder, exposing a healing cut underneath, angry red and raised along the edges. He feels it pull with every breath. “You have to give me something to tell them.”
“Why should he?” Weasley asks, and Draco grits his teeth, a little. Miracle of miracles, he truly does prefer the youngest Weasley to any of her brothers. “You lot haven’t brought back anything useful in weeks!”
“And the only way we will is if you give me something. Potter.” He swallows. “Harry.” Something in Harry’s eyes flares and sharpens, the line of his mouth softening unconsciously. Draco almost feels guilty for it. Almost. “It doesn’t have to be much. We’re close, I know we are. I’ll bring you something back this time.”
Granger's voice is hesitant. “I don’t know, Harry…”
Draco has to give her credit; she tries hard to be fair. She tries much harder than he would, were their roles reversed.
Harry is looking at no one but Draco. There may as well be nobody else in the room.
“Tell them…” Harry’s tongue darts out to wet his lips, a bad habit that leaves them perpetually chapped and dry. Draco’s heart pangs a little, that he knows that. That he’s gotten this close. A beat, and something in Harry’s gaze settles, sure and sound as steel. “Tell them Inverness.”
Draco blinks. “What’s in Inverness?”
“I am,” Harry says, low and decisive. “I will be. They want something? You can tell them Harry Potter will be there, and that he’ll be alone.”
Draco’s voice has gone brutally cold. “Oh, lovely. Shall I come back when you’re ready to be serious? You idiot. I’m not telling them that. I meant something small.”
“Ron’s right,” Harry says, in that calm, collected way he’s started to, lately, since they began playing at war. It grates, every time, twists something in Draco’s chest, because Harry shouldn’t have to sound like that. None of them should. “Something small hasn’t gotten us anything in weeks.”
“You’re not doing it,” Draco says, the muscles in his jaw pulling painfully tight.
“I know how to defend myself,” Harry says, and adds, dryly, “I’ve had a bit of practice.”
Draco ignores the sorry attempt at humor, eyes hard, mouth a forbiddingly thin line. Draco’s hands, at his sides, turn into fists. “You’re not doing it, and I’m not telling them that.”
Harry looks at him for a long time.
“Mate,” Weasley says at length, uncharacteristically tentative. He sounds distinctly uncomfortable, well and truly put off by the novelty of having to take Draco’s side in anything. “No offense, but that sounds a bit mental.”
Harry doesn’t respond for several moments. When he does, he is speaking to Draco.
“Zabini will,” he says and, to his credit, doesn’t look or sound the slightest bit sorry.
Draco’s stomach drops into his toes.
→ part iv aka goodbye aka i wrecked myself