FIC: The Way Through The Woods [Draco/Harry]
Title: The Way Through the Woods
Author: darkravenwrote
Prompt: # 137 by capitu
Pairing(s): Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy
Word Count: 2491
Rating: R
Warning(s): Fluff but also angst. Subtext lol.
Disclaimer:Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Notes: When I grabbed this prompt, this is not how I thought it would go. I still like how it turned out though :) Title is from Rudyard Kipling’s The Way Through the Woods which really jumped out at me. Thanks to shadowofrazia for the super quick, super last minute beta. Also the mods for their patience.
Summary: "This is getting ridiculous, Harry. I could set my clocks by your breakups!" Hermione says the sixth time Harry appears in her living room with a freshly rebroken heart. "What are you going to do this time?"
"Same thing I always do: get blindingly drunk over the holidays and wait for Spring." Literally.
The Way Through the Woods
They break up in winter
Harry surmises that maybe his life has somehow become dramatically predictable by the way Hermione gasps, "Harry, again?" as he throws himself onto her plush sofa. He tries not to laugh at the way her eyebrows inch up her forehead with her incredulity.
He leans his head back on her warm cushions and shuffles his feet closer to her lit fireplace. Above him, out of the window, a heavy drizzle indecisively dithers between real rain and a miserable sleet. It paints a suspiciously familiar picture.
"What happened this time?" Hermione asks, settling on her plush deep purple rug and plucking uncharacteristically at the down.
"I'm not really sure," he murmurs. They're the only ones there - Ron won't be back from the shop for several hours yet this close to the Christmas holidays - and she's listening so intently the hairs on his arms raise under her scrutiny. "I think I was still asleep for most of the argument."
Hermione clucks her tongue questioningly..
"No, literally. I took the night shift; Bill said he wanted to give Fleur a break and stay up with the little one. I didn't get in until eight this morning. Straight to sleep as usual, out like a light. When I woke up, Draco was already mid-rave about how insensitive I was and how he couldn't handle my tantrums anymore." Harry huffs out another laugh, fiddling with a burned tatter on the end of his sleeve.
"This is getting ridiculous, Harry. I could set my clocks by your breakups!"
"You don't need to tell me."
"Did you suggest-"
"If you say couples therapy again, I swear, Hermione, I'm going to-"
"Okay, I won't!" She shuffles up onto the sofa with him, curling her arms around her drawn up knees. Her toes pinch into Harry's tired thighs, but he appreciates her closeness. "What are you going to do this time?"
"Same thing I always do." Harry pats her foot once and hauls himself to his feet decisively. "Get blindingly drunk over the holidays and wait for Spring."
He strides across to her Apparition point behind Ron's bedraggled, half-dilapidated armchair.
"Don't you think maybe you should try and find out why he does this every year?"
"No," Harry says, flipping his wand from its holster. "He'll tell me when he's ready. Every year I think 'this time for sure,' but I guess this year it wasn’t to be." He shrugs like he hasn't just been thrown out of the stylish but cosy little flat he and Draco have made a life together in - or at least, they have for three quarters of the year.
Hermione's smile looks forced.
"Go easy on the Goblin's, Harry. I'll send Ron round when he gets home," she says, well-adjusted to their yearly ritual by now.
He nods and disapparates.
On his way home, he picks up three bottles of Goblin's Ginger rum to tide him over for the night and has made himself sick on one by the time Ron shows up in his fireplace a few hours later.
The holidays follow in much the same fashion.
In Spring they get together
Draco finds him hunkered down in a back corner of Lobberton & Blair's Library on a Sunday in early March. He's wearing an optimistic cream and blue robe suitably heavy for the showers outside. Harry scratches at the holes in his old muggle jeans self-consciously even though he thought he was over that kind of thing by now.
"Morning," Draco says cheerily, inviting himself to sit opposite Harry on his cluttered little table. It rocks dangerously as Draco settles a blueberry muffin atop Harry's mountain of closed books. Harry peeks up at him through his fringe, refusing to glance at the peace offering.
"It's afternoon," he argues as passively as he can. It's been a long weekend thanks to the recent spate of cursed toilet brushes that have been popping up all over England and Wales. Harry really can't be bothered to argue. Nevermind that Blair is the on-duty librarian today, and he's been known to apparate visitors out for less than a muffled sneeze on a bad day.
Draco frowns petulantly like he's going to argue, then his eyes twitch towards the muffin between them, and he stops himself with a truly noteworthy display of willpower .
"So it is," he says instead, even though it is in fact exactly eleven in the morning. "I thought you might be hungry."
"I've already eaten," Harry lies, shoving his nose further into his book. The smell of blueberries wafting into his face is torture.
"No, you haven't."
Harry starts sharply at how fond Draco sounds. He makes eye contact accidentally.
"Have."
"Eat the Godric damned cake, Potter," Draco growls under his breath, his eyes darting along the deserted shelves surrounding them.
Harry knows nothing has changed. They'll be happy for a few months, and then Draco will go off on one and that'll be the end. He'll be alone for Christmas again. Harry can't believe it used to be his favourite holiday once he started Hogwarts; he dreads Winter every year now.
Maybe this time will be different, though. Maybe this time Draco will let him in. One day something will change.
Harry bites his lip indecisively. Draco does look less put together than usual. It's barely noticeable, but he's used less product in his hair, and he's wearing the blue clasp that brings out his eyes. He hasn't even used his usual charm to hide the few freckles on his nose. He's appeared before Harry with the conscious intent to please him.
Draco's throat clicks loudly as he swallows, suddenly less sure. They both drop their eyes to the muffin sitting innocently between them. Harry stares so intently that he doesn't notice Draco moving until one of his fingers inches across and pushes the muffin ever so gently in his direction.
Harry can't help but smile at the way his tongue pokes out from between his dry lips in concentration.
Of course, Draco's nudge unbalances his pile, and the whole lot clatter to the floor with a series of resounding thumps. Blair storms along aisles like an avenging hippogriff on the hunt and ejects them from his building without preamble.
But Harry has a flattened muffin crumbling in one hand, and his other resting on Draco's back as they both gasp for breath through their helpless laughter. So, all things considered, it turns out rather well.
He is determined not to forgive Draco immediately, but in the end they spend most of March kissing in the rain.
In Summer they spend lazy days in bed
By the time June rolls around, the entire country has been flooded with an abnormally balmy, ridiculously early summer.
They spend most of the month in bed with the windows flung wide open and the curtains dancing lazily in the breeze. It's always hot and they're always sweaty, but they somehow manage to work up the enthusiasm to rut and hump one another to orgasm atop the sheets.
And when it's even hotter and hard to breathe through the heavy scent of sex in the air, they nap lazily together - all lolling limbs and sun-filled dreams. The temperature is really too high for them to be cuddling, but they're always touching - a toe here, a palm there.
And when it's even hotter than that, and they've peeled skin from skin, but can't even doze from the oppressive heat, Harry drags a reluctant Draco to their en suite. He powers on the shower as cold as it will go and ducks them both under it.
Even that doesn't cool them off for very long while they're together.
In Autumn they fight.
Harry makes the mistake of asking whether he should dress like Lucius Malfoy for Halloween. At first, after he has apologised for his poor - but really hilarious, who does Draco think he's kidding - taste, Harry thinks it will blow over. He's said sorry; Draco will forget about it. But an undeniable tension builds between them, level with the dread that's feeding itself to maturity in Harry's stomach.
Here they go again.
Like every other year, he walked past The Brewery months ago and dithered over the summer sale prices, angsting over whether he should get it over with and get his booze for Winter cheap, or whether that was just tempting fate. In the end, like every other year, his faith won out and he left it.
Now, he isn't so sure. The way things are going, his pocket might have thanked him for the forethought.
They argue about the stupidest things. It's so silly even Hermione can't find the logic behind it, and Harry has long since mentally referred to her as the boyfriend whisperer.
They fight about how wide they should leave their bedroom door open at night, and why their owl can't fly the Northern route with their morning post like all the other fucking owls, and how often the gravy should be stirred so it doesn't settle even though Molly taught them both to charm the spoon so it's constantly in motion. They argue because Harry needs to take some night shifts, and then they argue because he isn't taking any.
It's utter madness, and by the middle of November Harry can feel the end coming. They've been building up to something big and it's approaching.
He expects Draco to corner him. He's tense from the moment he wakes up to the moment he nods off to sleep. He spends one particularly anxiety-ridden day in the garden one weekend raking leaves with Draco. (He's not even sure why they're doing it by hand. It used to be a tradition, but a spell would be better for his nerves this year.) He's absolutely positive Draco will pounce on him at some point during the day, but he only retires for the night with a stiff back from being tense for so long.
The leaves turn to a crackling mess of dried bones on London's streets, and still Harry hears nothing of their impending break-up. If he wriggles a little closer to Draco's back at night, and if it's not in his sleep, then nobody needs to know.
In Winter they…
"Harry?" Draco murmurs one morning in early December, waking Harry from a fitful sleep.
This is it. Harry can tell. This will be their seventh break-up. He resigns himself for it to be naked and in bed together, which is a new low. He burrows down under their thick winter quilt and waits.
He hums noncommittally.
"I think, hmm…" Draco sits up in bed, fiddles with his wand on his bedside table for a second, and settles back down against his pillow. The arsehole has even put pyjama bottoms on, while Harry has to live through the shame of being chucked out of his own house bare-arsed.
"I want…" Draco stalls properly this time, biting hard enough into his lip that it turns from red to white to a mottled splotchy purple under the pressure.
Harry breathes. "Yes?" he says with the courage of a man walking towards his own noose.
"I’ll be back in a minute." The covers are up and Draco’s out of the room before Harry can ask Draco to put him out of his misery like a wounded animal.
The seconds tick by agonisingly. A feather scratches at the back of his neck through his pillowcase, but he can’t find the strength to move, like he’s going into shock.
He’s so busy worrying, he misses Draco tiptoeing back into the room. He perches on the edge of their mattress and leans over Harry. His breaths come out in short, sharp pants, which does nothing to settle Harry’s roiling gut.
"Here," he says, dropping something into Harry’s quilted lap. "Breakfast."
Harry picks it up, and how could he not smell it wafting up the stairs?
"Chocolate chip?"
Blueberry is Harry’s favourite, which makes it the apology muffin. Banana is their compromise muffin and cranberry is their no reason breakfast muffin, but chocolate chip? Harry’s never been given that before. If he stretches his mind back far enough, he has snatches of memory. Draco at the Slytherin table hoarding them away from Crabbe and Goyle. Draco on his one and only date with Astoria Greengrass at Madam Puddifoot’s kicking up a fuss about the ratio of chocolate to crumb.
Harry stares at his present, unsure. "Bit of a step up, isn’t it?" he finally settles on saying.
"Yes," Draco says with a monumental seriousness, and Harry feels like something has shifted. "It is. I’ve never given anyone one before."
Draco’s still panting through his rosy lips, which are flushed like his cheeks. Harry doesn’t think it’s from the cold. His pale eyes are wide and earnest. The love bite on his neck looks positively scandalous above his bare chest and pebbled nipples.
"Well then," Harry scrambles for the correct words, afraid of breaking this fragile moment. If it is what he thinks it is, he wants to make sure he finishes it perfectly. "Thank you."
Draco nods gravely, like he understands the situation exactly. That makes one of them at least.
As he seems to do with most life changing things, Harry says it quite by accident.
They’re standing under their porch watching the first - and quite possibly only - snow of the year settle thick and heavy on their little garden when Draco says out of nowhere, "It’s my parents’ anniversary on the 18th. It’s a big thing for purebloods." He sniffs and scuffs the fingers of his free hand across his nose.
Everything clicks into place.
"Christ, that’s what this has all been about? Years of bloody torture!"
"Murder was a very real possible outcome. I didn’t want to bring it up unless…"
"Unless?"
"Unless I was sure we were, you know, going to make it."
"So you-"
"Dealt with it badly, yes."
"Jesus fucking Christ, Draco." Harry can’t help but laugh. "I love you too, you muppet."
It isn’t the only snow of the year. In fact, they wake up the next morning - sated and tangled - to find themselves snowed in. Of course, their floo has malfunctioned.
Or so Harry tells Molly when she calls the muggle way to invite them to lunch.
Author: darkravenwrote
Prompt: # 137 by capitu
Pairing(s): Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy
Word Count: 2491
Rating: R
Warning(s): Fluff but also angst. Subtext lol.
Disclaimer:Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Notes: When I grabbed this prompt, this is not how I thought it would go. I still like how it turned out though :) Title is from Rudyard Kipling’s The Way Through the Woods which really jumped out at me. Thanks to shadowofrazia for the super quick, super last minute beta. Also the mods for their patience.
Summary: "This is getting ridiculous, Harry. I could set my clocks by your breakups!" Hermione says the sixth time Harry appears in her living room with a freshly rebroken heart. "What are you going to do this time?"
"Same thing I always do: get blindingly drunk over the holidays and wait for Spring." Literally.
The Way Through the Woods
They break up in winter
Harry surmises that maybe his life has somehow become dramatically predictable by the way Hermione gasps, "Harry, again?" as he throws himself onto her plush sofa. He tries not to laugh at the way her eyebrows inch up her forehead with her incredulity.
He leans his head back on her warm cushions and shuffles his feet closer to her lit fireplace. Above him, out of the window, a heavy drizzle indecisively dithers between real rain and a miserable sleet. It paints a suspiciously familiar picture.
"What happened this time?" Hermione asks, settling on her plush deep purple rug and plucking uncharacteristically at the down.
"I'm not really sure," he murmurs. They're the only ones there - Ron won't be back from the shop for several hours yet this close to the Christmas holidays - and she's listening so intently the hairs on his arms raise under her scrutiny. "I think I was still asleep for most of the argument."
Hermione clucks her tongue questioningly..
"No, literally. I took the night shift; Bill said he wanted to give Fleur a break and stay up with the little one. I didn't get in until eight this morning. Straight to sleep as usual, out like a light. When I woke up, Draco was already mid-rave about how insensitive I was and how he couldn't handle my tantrums anymore." Harry huffs out another laugh, fiddling with a burned tatter on the end of his sleeve.
"This is getting ridiculous, Harry. I could set my clocks by your breakups!"
"You don't need to tell me."
"Did you suggest-"
"If you say couples therapy again, I swear, Hermione, I'm going to-"
"Okay, I won't!" She shuffles up onto the sofa with him, curling her arms around her drawn up knees. Her toes pinch into Harry's tired thighs, but he appreciates her closeness. "What are you going to do this time?"
"Same thing I always do." Harry pats her foot once and hauls himself to his feet decisively. "Get blindingly drunk over the holidays and wait for Spring."
He strides across to her Apparition point behind Ron's bedraggled, half-dilapidated armchair.
"Don't you think maybe you should try and find out why he does this every year?"
"No," Harry says, flipping his wand from its holster. "He'll tell me when he's ready. Every year I think 'this time for sure,' but I guess this year it wasn’t to be." He shrugs like he hasn't just been thrown out of the stylish but cosy little flat he and Draco have made a life together in - or at least, they have for three quarters of the year.
Hermione's smile looks forced.
"Go easy on the Goblin's, Harry. I'll send Ron round when he gets home," she says, well-adjusted to their yearly ritual by now.
He nods and disapparates.
On his way home, he picks up three bottles of Goblin's Ginger rum to tide him over for the night and has made himself sick on one by the time Ron shows up in his fireplace a few hours later.
The holidays follow in much the same fashion.
In Spring they get together
Draco finds him hunkered down in a back corner of Lobberton & Blair's Library on a Sunday in early March. He's wearing an optimistic cream and blue robe suitably heavy for the showers outside. Harry scratches at the holes in his old muggle jeans self-consciously even though he thought he was over that kind of thing by now.
"Morning," Draco says cheerily, inviting himself to sit opposite Harry on his cluttered little table. It rocks dangerously as Draco settles a blueberry muffin atop Harry's mountain of closed books. Harry peeks up at him through his fringe, refusing to glance at the peace offering.
"It's afternoon," he argues as passively as he can. It's been a long weekend thanks to the recent spate of cursed toilet brushes that have been popping up all over England and Wales. Harry really can't be bothered to argue. Nevermind that Blair is the on-duty librarian today, and he's been known to apparate visitors out for less than a muffled sneeze on a bad day.
Draco frowns petulantly like he's going to argue, then his eyes twitch towards the muffin between them, and he stops himself with a truly noteworthy display of willpower .
"So it is," he says instead, even though it is in fact exactly eleven in the morning. "I thought you might be hungry."
"I've already eaten," Harry lies, shoving his nose further into his book. The smell of blueberries wafting into his face is torture.
"No, you haven't."
Harry starts sharply at how fond Draco sounds. He makes eye contact accidentally.
"Have."
"Eat the Godric damned cake, Potter," Draco growls under his breath, his eyes darting along the deserted shelves surrounding them.
Harry knows nothing has changed. They'll be happy for a few months, and then Draco will go off on one and that'll be the end. He'll be alone for Christmas again. Harry can't believe it used to be his favourite holiday once he started Hogwarts; he dreads Winter every year now.
Maybe this time will be different, though. Maybe this time Draco will let him in. One day something will change.
Harry bites his lip indecisively. Draco does look less put together than usual. It's barely noticeable, but he's used less product in his hair, and he's wearing the blue clasp that brings out his eyes. He hasn't even used his usual charm to hide the few freckles on his nose. He's appeared before Harry with the conscious intent to please him.
Draco's throat clicks loudly as he swallows, suddenly less sure. They both drop their eyes to the muffin sitting innocently between them. Harry stares so intently that he doesn't notice Draco moving until one of his fingers inches across and pushes the muffin ever so gently in his direction.
Harry can't help but smile at the way his tongue pokes out from between his dry lips in concentration.
Of course, Draco's nudge unbalances his pile, and the whole lot clatter to the floor with a series of resounding thumps. Blair storms along aisles like an avenging hippogriff on the hunt and ejects them from his building without preamble.
But Harry has a flattened muffin crumbling in one hand, and his other resting on Draco's back as they both gasp for breath through their helpless laughter. So, all things considered, it turns out rather well.
He is determined not to forgive Draco immediately, but in the end they spend most of March kissing in the rain.
In Summer they spend lazy days in bed
By the time June rolls around, the entire country has been flooded with an abnormally balmy, ridiculously early summer.
They spend most of the month in bed with the windows flung wide open and the curtains dancing lazily in the breeze. It's always hot and they're always sweaty, but they somehow manage to work up the enthusiasm to rut and hump one another to orgasm atop the sheets.
And when it's even hotter and hard to breathe through the heavy scent of sex in the air, they nap lazily together - all lolling limbs and sun-filled dreams. The temperature is really too high for them to be cuddling, but they're always touching - a toe here, a palm there.
And when it's even hotter than that, and they've peeled skin from skin, but can't even doze from the oppressive heat, Harry drags a reluctant Draco to their en suite. He powers on the shower as cold as it will go and ducks them both under it.
Even that doesn't cool them off for very long while they're together.
In Autumn they fight.
Harry makes the mistake of asking whether he should dress like Lucius Malfoy for Halloween. At first, after he has apologised for his poor - but really hilarious, who does Draco think he's kidding - taste, Harry thinks it will blow over. He's said sorry; Draco will forget about it. But an undeniable tension builds between them, level with the dread that's feeding itself to maturity in Harry's stomach.
Here they go again.
Like every other year, he walked past The Brewery months ago and dithered over the summer sale prices, angsting over whether he should get it over with and get his booze for Winter cheap, or whether that was just tempting fate. In the end, like every other year, his faith won out and he left it.
Now, he isn't so sure. The way things are going, his pocket might have thanked him for the forethought.
They argue about the stupidest things. It's so silly even Hermione can't find the logic behind it, and Harry has long since mentally referred to her as the boyfriend whisperer.
They fight about how wide they should leave their bedroom door open at night, and why their owl can't fly the Northern route with their morning post like all the other fucking owls, and how often the gravy should be stirred so it doesn't settle even though Molly taught them both to charm the spoon so it's constantly in motion. They argue because Harry needs to take some night shifts, and then they argue because he isn't taking any.
It's utter madness, and by the middle of November Harry can feel the end coming. They've been building up to something big and it's approaching.
He expects Draco to corner him. He's tense from the moment he wakes up to the moment he nods off to sleep. He spends one particularly anxiety-ridden day in the garden one weekend raking leaves with Draco. (He's not even sure why they're doing it by hand. It used to be a tradition, but a spell would be better for his nerves this year.) He's absolutely positive Draco will pounce on him at some point during the day, but he only retires for the night with a stiff back from being tense for so long.
The leaves turn to a crackling mess of dried bones on London's streets, and still Harry hears nothing of their impending break-up. If he wriggles a little closer to Draco's back at night, and if it's not in his sleep, then nobody needs to know.
In Winter they…
"Harry?" Draco murmurs one morning in early December, waking Harry from a fitful sleep.
This is it. Harry can tell. This will be their seventh break-up. He resigns himself for it to be naked and in bed together, which is a new low. He burrows down under their thick winter quilt and waits.
He hums noncommittally.
"I think, hmm…" Draco sits up in bed, fiddles with his wand on his bedside table for a second, and settles back down against his pillow. The arsehole has even put pyjama bottoms on, while Harry has to live through the shame of being chucked out of his own house bare-arsed.
"I want…" Draco stalls properly this time, biting hard enough into his lip that it turns from red to white to a mottled splotchy purple under the pressure.
Harry breathes. "Yes?" he says with the courage of a man walking towards his own noose.
"I’ll be back in a minute." The covers are up and Draco’s out of the room before Harry can ask Draco to put him out of his misery like a wounded animal.
The seconds tick by agonisingly. A feather scratches at the back of his neck through his pillowcase, but he can’t find the strength to move, like he’s going into shock.
He’s so busy worrying, he misses Draco tiptoeing back into the room. He perches on the edge of their mattress and leans over Harry. His breaths come out in short, sharp pants, which does nothing to settle Harry’s roiling gut.
"Here," he says, dropping something into Harry’s quilted lap. "Breakfast."
Harry picks it up, and how could he not smell it wafting up the stairs?
"Chocolate chip?"
Blueberry is Harry’s favourite, which makes it the apology muffin. Banana is their compromise muffin and cranberry is their no reason breakfast muffin, but chocolate chip? Harry’s never been given that before. If he stretches his mind back far enough, he has snatches of memory. Draco at the Slytherin table hoarding them away from Crabbe and Goyle. Draco on his one and only date with Astoria Greengrass at Madam Puddifoot’s kicking up a fuss about the ratio of chocolate to crumb.
Harry stares at his present, unsure. "Bit of a step up, isn’t it?" he finally settles on saying.
"Yes," Draco says with a monumental seriousness, and Harry feels like something has shifted. "It is. I’ve never given anyone one before."
Draco’s still panting through his rosy lips, which are flushed like his cheeks. Harry doesn’t think it’s from the cold. His pale eyes are wide and earnest. The love bite on his neck looks positively scandalous above his bare chest and pebbled nipples.
"Well then," Harry scrambles for the correct words, afraid of breaking this fragile moment. If it is what he thinks it is, he wants to make sure he finishes it perfectly. "Thank you."
Draco nods gravely, like he understands the situation exactly. That makes one of them at least.
As he seems to do with most life changing things, Harry says it quite by accident.
They’re standing under their porch watching the first - and quite possibly only - snow of the year settle thick and heavy on their little garden when Draco says out of nowhere, "It’s my parents’ anniversary on the 18th. It’s a big thing for purebloods." He sniffs and scuffs the fingers of his free hand across his nose.
Everything clicks into place.
"Christ, that’s what this has all been about? Years of bloody torture!"
"Murder was a very real possible outcome. I didn’t want to bring it up unless…"
"Unless?"
"Unless I was sure we were, you know, going to make it."
"So you-"
"Dealt with it badly, yes."
"Jesus fucking Christ, Draco." Harry can’t help but laugh. "I love you too, you muppet."
It isn’t the only snow of the year. In fact, they wake up the next morning - sated and tangled - to find themselves snowed in. Of course, their floo has malfunctioned.
Or so Harry tells Molly when she calls the muggle way to invite them to lunch.