Secrets

Chapter 2: A Thing with Potter

Draco didn't know what this thing was with Potter. And it was a thing because it definitely wasn't nothing. And if it wasn't nothing, it had to be something. Whatever it was, Draco appreciated it, from the bottom of his heart. The thing was, these days, people tended to treat him like he had terminal Dragonpox and that invariably manifested itself in one of three ways. Either people completely ignored him as if, by pretending he was invisible, they could pretend they didn't have to deal with the problem of his existence. Or they treated him with kid gloves as if he might break at any moment and therefore needed to be handled with extreme care (well, that was really only Blaise and Pansy and a couple of members of the staff). Or they treated him like he was a dirty contagious and diseased rat, to be hexed and jinxed at every sighting and preferably killed when no one was looking because that would really solve everyone's problems.

Potter was different and it confused Draco. Potter treated him like he was normal. Not a Malfoy, in any sense of his name – just mundanely normal. His expression was always perfectly schooled to show nothing beyond the vaguest of amused sparkles in his vibrant green eyes behind his glasses. It was like their interactions were an everyday occurrence, as if Draco had never been a Death-eater or never warred with Potter for seven... six... years or had never supported Voldemort and his stupid beliefs and his stupid values and his stupid ways... Sometimes Draco hated himself with so much self-loathing it hurt to the marrow of his bones but then Harry Potter came along and both took the pain away and simultaneously made it hundred times worse.

So, yes, Draco didn't understand what this thing was with Potter but it was something. And that came to mean everything. And when Draco had flared up about it because he finally broke from trying to understand it all, they both knew that he didn't mean a word of it when he told Potter to leave him alone and to stop calling him Draco because they weren't friends. Perhaps Potter understood that all Draco wanted was for Potter to be his friend and to never stop calling him Draco and what he wanted, more than anything, was to call Potter "Harry" but he felt like he didn't deserve that privilege these days, so he never dared, not even in his thoughts.

The problem was his thoughts didn't agree with his logic. His thoughts took him towards seeing the man before him, the man who struggled beneath the surface with the same issues of nightmares and anxiety and the way that people treated him. It was, in many ways, different for Harry; he wasn't a diseased pariah to be scorned but rather a hero to be worshipped. In other ways, it was exactly the same and, like Draco, he wanted to be treated as if he was 'normal'. Perhaps that was what Harry had always wanted. Yes, Draco was beginning to see that now.

So, when they started meeting in the common room in the early hours of the morning after waking from their nightmares, life changed for Draco because he had a moment in the day to look forward to. And when Harry told Draco about his childhood and that awful family, Draco wanted to be strong and take him in his arms and protect him from the world. He didn't have the courage to do that but he longed to... although he absolutely avoided studying his feelings for the Boy who Lived.

It was usual for Draco to be the first one to wake in the middle of the night and make his way to the common room, but when October came to an end, he was surprised to find Harry was on their sofa first. Well, not on it but next to it, with a pile of cushions and blankets and pillows and his duvet.

'What are you doing?' Draco asked.

'Pillow fort,' said Harry, rearranging a pile of cushions and draping a blanket over them.

Draco shook his head. 'Not like that and what happened to using magic. We are wizards, you know.'

'I wanted to do it the Muggle way...' he pouted.

'Okay. Any reason why?'

'I've never done it before.'

'Fair enough.'