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He kept smiling.
He smiled when they said his name, and he smiled when he wove through the tables. He smiled when they reached out to touch him, their fingers brushing his robes, like they all wanted a piece of him, so they could go home and tell their neighbors and their kids and their relatives that they had laid a hand on his skin, like they have a claim to him. He smiled when he shook hands with Kingsley, even though he didn’t smile as his bravery was recounted and he was told he would be accepting this token of their gratitude on behalf of all those who had fought in the war, and he smiled all the way back to his seat.
“You did it.” Draco had only stood up to let Harry back into his seat, but for a moment, Harry was overwhelmed with the feeling of gratitude for him. He could not have done this without him. “You’re all done.”
Harry pulled him into a hug, even though everyone was watching, even though he could hear the pops of cameras going in the sidelines, even though he was aware of the rumors it would start. He didn’t care. He could pretend that it was a brotherly hug, even though it was nothing like the kind he would have with Ron. They would all just have to get over it.
It turns out to not be that bad of a night.
He spends a lot of it with Ron by the dessert table, piling their plates high with food, because, as Kinglsey had said, they were saviors and could eat as much cake as they wanted, no matter how much it cost the ministry. He talks to Dean, giving a few exclusive comments for his article, and then he dances with Luna while Ginny went to talk to the manager of the Harpies, who she had said were my favorite team ever, Harry, I have to get a good word in, take care of Luna, will you?
Not that Luna needed taken care of, but it was sometimes better for her to stay with friends so she didn’t wander off, so Harry sways back and forth with her in the middle of the dance floor until Draco shows up behind her, tapping her on the shoulder and looking more nervous than Harry had seen him in a while.
“Hey, Luna.” He’s shifting his weight from one foot to another, like all the confidence he gained had been swept away. “Mind if I cut in?”
“Oh, alright.” She’s smiling, like she knows something they don’t. “I need to clear away from the gnargles, anyways.”
Draco looks like he’s going to laugh. He hasn’t quite managed to the art of following a conversation with her yet, even though Harry knows he loves Luna just as much as he does, so he waits until Luna has turned her back to raise an eyebrow, and they both burst out laughing.
“I didn’t need saving.” Harry says, and they are revolving on the spot by now. “She’s a much better dancer than I am. Wasn’t stepping on my feet or anything.”
“Oh, I.” Draco drops his hands with a flutter and then steps away, smoothing invisible wrinkles out from his sleeve. “I wasn’t trying to save you. I just wanted to dance, but.”
Harry doesn’t want to hear the rest of the sentence. “Don’t be stupid.” He grabs him by his expensive suit jacket and pulls him back. “But I should warn you. I’m a really bad dancer.”
Draco gives a little huff of a laugh, but if he says anything else, it gets lost in the music. They stay together for one song and then another, long enough for Harry to learn exactly how much shorter Draco is than him (a fact he keeps forgetting) and memorize they scent of his cologne, the one he only wears when he is trying to impress. He catches sight of Seamus and Dean together across the room, curved around each other, and when they rotate to face each other again, Harry can see Seamus flashing a thumbs up. He’s not sure if they approve of his choices, but they all seem glad that he’s found a guy, even if that guy is a Slytherin. He only wished Draco would feel the same way.
“You really are good at this.” Harry’s whispering into his ear, afraid of someone overhearing but unwilling to let it go unsaid. “Making people see things your way. Making them see you.”
“It’s the only thing I’m good at.” Draco says, his voice just a murmur. He’s got his hands tucked underneath Harry’s suit jacket, and now there is the only thin fabric of his dress shirt separating their skin. “I used to think that it was important.”
“It was.” Harry swallowed down the other things he wanted to say, about how glad he was that Draco was here, about how beautiful Draco was, about how he would take them home right this minute and just keep dancing, turning around in the living room. “Saved my life tonight.”
“Not as important as you.” Draco was looking up at him from beneath his eyelashes, and Harry had never noticed how long they were before. There were a lot of things he had never noticed, and all of them are suddenly information he can’t believe that he had missed for so long. “They all love you.”
“Not me. They love the boy who lived.” Harry didn’t want to think about that. Tonight was a good night. “They don’t even know who I am.”
“I do.” Draco seems on the verge of something. “I know you. And—” He falters, and Harry can feel his fingers flutter, just a tiny shake against his shirt, like the beating of a butterfly. “You’re important to me. You know that, right?”
Harry thinks this an apology. A way to say sorry. A way for Draco to say that he loves him without actually saying it, but Harry doesn’t care. He can wait. In the meantime, he would take this.
“Yeah, Draco. I know.” He presses a kiss down to the top of his head, and then steps away, because the song is ending and if they stay together for another, it would draw more stares than they were already getting. It’s almost with an afterthought that Harry bends down and kisses him on the cheek, so close to the corner of his mouth that it is almost on his lips, like this is just another thing where he would press the boundaries until it breaks, ruin this, too, with his recklessness. Harry doesn’t want that, but he wants more, and it’s almost worth the risk.
Chapter 25
Draco
He’s happy.
For a moment, Draco can’t remember why, only that he had gotten the best night’s sleep that he had had in ages and there was no panic lurking in the back of throat, only the sun streaming in through the open curtains and sending yellow light scattering over his skin. He rubs the sleep out of his eyes like he’s smoothing wrinkles in an old shirt, and it’s only when he stretches out an arm to where Harry would normally be (Draco is always the first one awake) and touches nothing but the fraying edges of the worn out sheets that he remembers—about the ball, Harry’s hand in his as the cameras flashed, the look on Harry’s face as he reached out to accept the award that he thinks he only got because he was lucky enough to survive, that dance with Harry’s hands on him and his voice whispering in Draco’s ear, promising things that he knew better than to believe were going to come true.
There’s a knot forming in his stomach at the empty space that was supposed to hold Harry, but he swallows it down, forces himself to calm the anxiety that is beating in time with his pulse. He woke up early, he thinks, pushing away the covers and searching around for an old jumper to yank down over his arms. That’s all this is. Nothing more.
People get up early all the time, but not Harry, and even though that’s a little worrying, Draco is still happy as he gets a shower and cleans up the stray remnants of last night (a shoe here, a stray tie hanging over the back of the chair, a stain from where Harry spilled his cologne) before heading downstairs, which is when he hears Harry yelling and Dean trying to talk over him as he apologizes, which is when Draco starts to realize that there might be a reason Harry wasn’t in bed and that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t that good of a day after all.
“What’s the matter?” There’s a paper spread out over the kitchen table and Harry leaning back against the counter, red in the face. Dean throws an exasperated look Draco’s way, and instead of explaining, he shoves a paper into his chest and waits for him to read it.
“Oh.” Draco’s voice is small and stunned, and it takes a great deal of effort for him to push the pages away and pretend what he saw didn’t matter. “Well…” He looks at Harry, trying to gauge how he is supposed to react to this, but Harry looks the other way. “At least we look good. Got my best angle.”
Witch Weekly, which was a subsidy of the Daily Prophet, had apparently sent their own reporter to get the inside scoop of the ministry event last night, and they apparently decided to get the biggest scoop of a story they could and tell the whole wizarding world why the Great Harry Potter broke up with the beautiful war hero known as Ginny Weasley, aka, the fact that he doesn’t like witches at all. The entire cover was just a collage of the two of them, all these different pictures smashed together, and even Draco had to admit that it looked convincing in a way that was more than a little embarrassing. There’s the two of them walking in, the two of them sitting at a table holding hands, and the worst, biggest picture: the two of them on the dance floor, wrapped up in each other with no thought as to who was watching.
It was clear now how big of a mistake that was.
“I thought that with you in charge the Prophet would leave me alone.” Harry’s voice was dripping acid, and Draco calmed the panic squirming up in his stomach with the thought that it was not the idea that people thinks he is with Draco that had upset Harry, but rather the fact that people would consider his non-existent relationship with Draco was something newsworthy. “That you would report real stuff.”
“The Prophet does report real stuff, mate.” Dean turned the paper around again, and then winced as the tiny, animated picture of Harry leaned in and kissed Draco on the cheek when he came up to talk to Draco and Hermione. That one was pretty hard to argue with, too. “This isn’t the Prophet. This is a glorified gossip column.”
“A very popular gossip column,” Draco said faintly, sinking into the chair and reading all that they reported on last night’s event. He had been featured in this magazine before, but never like this. “With a ton of readers who now think we’re together.”
“You’re telling me you’re not?” Dean asked, which made things go from angry to awkward in less than a heartbeat. Harry just glowered at him, and Draco clawed at the dark mark hiding under his sleeve, wishing more than ever that he could just wash it away once and for all, even if he has to burn it away. Dean just looks from one to the other and raises his hands in surrender. “Okay. Whatever. None of my business. But listen, Harry. I can’t stop them. I just wanted to give you a heads up.”
“Can’t you make them stop?” Harry looked tired, which was just so unfair, that he could have a night where he was allowed to be happy and have it turn into this, another reminder about how nothing in his life really belongs to him. “Tell them I’m off limits, or something?”
“You kidding?” Dean grins, and he runs a hand through his hair, sheepish but still just as arrogant as he was back in school. “I can’t do that Harry. You’re a gold mine. Those of us with a vault full of galleons have to make a living somehow, you know.”
Draco wants to jump in, demand that he stop and pull the story before the papers go out, tell him that Harry had given enough and it would have been nice if people could go as far to keep their nose out of his business as a thank you, but it’s not his friend and therefore not his place, so he stays silent.
“You think you would have gotten their facts right.” Harry pushes himself off the counter and heads down the hallway to let Dean out, Draco trailing faintly behind him. “I’m bi, not gay.”
“Right.” The corner of Dean’s mouth twitches up again, and for the first time, he looks a little sorry. “I’ll have a full retraction printed by tomorrow morning. Personal apology and all.”
Harry claps him on the shoulder, and Dean leaves, which even though Draco was dying for that to happen, it was even worse when they were left alone.
The thing about the article is that it’s showing the whole world a part of themselves that they haven’t even sat down and talked about, only danced around, like it’s a flame that’s fun to chase but would burn them if they got too close. Draco doesn’t want to be the one to bring it up, but it seems like neither does Harry, so they just go about their day, and the whole time that article is in the back of Draco’s mind, making him think that they really, really should talk.
And also that maybe they shouldn’t talk, because if they start talking then they were going to come to an unavoidable conclusion: that maybe the Witch Weekly lady was right, and they’re just pushing off the inevitable, and that everyone around them knows what they are both so desperately trying to get away with not talking about, because they’re afraid that one of them will want to walk away. But at this point, where they dance with each other in front of everyone and share a bed and spend most of their time with each other, maybe it’s more stupid than anything else to go on thinking that they don’t have feelings for each other.
And then what, Draco? The voice pops up again, and Draco tries to quiet it, he really does try, he hates the voice and what it says and the things it makes him think about himself, and he hates it even more because when he takes a step back to look at things objectively, it’s not like its wrong. It’s only telling the truth that everyone else is too polite to say. You go on a date and everything’s good for a day, or a week, or a month, but then you get in a fight and he remembers who you are, what you’ve done, and the next minute you find yourself in a cell in Azkaban and even worse than you started. You can’t fool yourself that anyone would have cared about you if Harry doesn’t.
Which is the truth, and also why he can’t be the person to talk about it. He can’t because he’s afraid, and because even though he loves him, even though he’s fairly sure Harry loves him back, Draco has to live with the fact that he is here and free all because of Harry, that this is a debt he will never be able to pay back, and that he should be on his knees groveling for his forgiveness, that he has no right to even exist. If he were to take a chance, it might be fine for a while, but a few mistakes down the road and this nice protection that Harry has given him will go up in smoke like it’s not even there. He is free with Harry’s blessing, and nothing more, and no matter what Draco had thought before or how much less threatening Azkaban is now that it lacks dementors, he cannot give up freedom now that he has a sense to know what it means.
So he reads the paper instead.
About how Harry and Ginny broke up, only to be replaced by Luna days later in the aftermath of the war. About the sentencing hearing and how Harry stood up, which started a whole other article speculating about whether they had been together before that, maybe even back at their Hogwarts days, and some kids he had never talked to wormed their way into a minute of fame to tell the press that it was definitely a possibility, which, hello, Harry almost killed him in their sixth year, and it wasn’t even on accident. Then it goes on to talk about the places they had been sighted together and how last night was their first real public announcement, and by the end of it, Draco could almost be convinced of it himself.
He wants to be convinced of it.
He wants it to be real, wants it in a way that makes him ache, and just for a moment as he closes the paper, he thinks that Azkaban cannot be worse than this.
