complimentary colours • drarry •

18: because i love you

Sunday 10th January 1999

Harry watched the flames flicker in the eighth year common room's hearth, the heat making his eyes water. He sat with Ginny and Luna on the floor by the fire (he had no idea how they'd managed to get in but he wasn't going to question them), while Hermione and Ron sat opposite Dean and Seamus on the settees. They'd been sitting around since lunch and it was getting close to four o'clock.

Harry rolled his snitch back and forth across the rug as Pepper tried to swipe it away. He'd already lost it under a sofa twice but she swatted him with her paw whenever he stopped.

Ginny was talking, mostly at him, about the quidditch game against Slytherin next weekend. Harry thought that he really should have tried harder to insist that Ginny should be captain this year. She was much more focused than he was. She wanted to join the Holyhead Harpies when she left Hogwarts, and Harry had no doubt that she would.

He loved to hear Ginny talk about quidditch and he genuinely had been interesting in what she was saying. But as soon as the door to the common room opened and his attention was drawn over her shoulder, he stopped listening.

Draco walked through the door with Pansy and Blaise. They said a few words that Harry couldn't hear, before Draco's friends separated from his side, walking over to the settees that were still free. Draco turned towards the stairs but he paused when his eyes found Harry's. He glanced at Ginny, a small frown forming on his face, then continued on his way.

Harry watched him as he walked up the stairs, disappearing through the door to the dorms.

Draco had been studying all week. At first Harry had left him alone, a little wary after the last time they'd seen each other being Draco practically running away from him. He had decided during the last week of the holidays, that he wasn't going to give Draco some space.

The problem with that plan was that Harry was a clingy idiot and he missed him. So by the end of the week, he'd given up and started following Draco to the library again. Only by then, Draco seemed to have decided he was going to be a grumpy asshole and barely speak to him. The only plus to this was that Harry actually got some studying done in the silence.

He was becoming progressively more frustrated with Draco as he continued to pretend there was nothing wrong and as he watched the door close behind him, he suddenly remembered what Ron had told him at Christmas, about Draco being scared.

He wouldn't let Draco push him away.

He rolled his snitch away from Pepper's paw, and clasped his hand around the cold metal. Quidditch was always a good place to start with Draco, he thought.

"Harry, are you listening to me?" Ginny's voice cut through his thoughts.

"Uh, yeah," he said. "Do you know if anyone is using the pitch today?"

She made a face at the sudden question but answered, "No, it's free."

Picking up his snitch, he stood up, ignoring Pepper's offended meow at her entertainment being taken away.

"Where are you going?" Ginny asked as he turned towards the stairs.

"I'll be down in a minute," he lied.

•••

Draco was sitting at his desk 'studying'. He had read the same passage five times over and he'd only taken in the first paragraph. Everything else had been drowned out by his drifting thoughts.

It didn't help that when he finally did get past the first paragraph, a certain Gryffindor would pester him for his attention.

Harry was lying on Draco's bed and, as he had announced many times, he was bored.