Diffraction Patterns (I Don't Know How to Forget You)

Chapter 4: Collapse

"That's true," Pansy agreed. "Maybe you should tell him."

"No."

"What are you going to do, then?" Blaise snorted. "Pine after him for the rest of the year?"

"Piss off," Draco muttered. He was beginning to regret his forthrightness.

"Draco." He looked up in surprise at the serious note in Blaise's voice. "I'm going to tell you this once, and then we're going to pretend it never happened. Alright?"

He nodded mutely.

As Blaise studied him with his dark, clever eyes, Draco felt as though he was being opened up for examination. Finally, he said, "You're overthinking. Everyone could see how Potter looked at you today. I know you think you don't deserve this, but you do." He paused. Draco had the sense that he was supposed to respond, but he couldn't make his mouth work. When he merely sat there, staring stupidly, Blaise sighed. "Talk to him. Tell him. You're going to miss your chance, and then Pansy and I will have to listen to you whine about it for the next ten years."

"He's right, Draco," Pansy murmured.

"And that's my last word on it," Blaise said briskly, picking up his spoon and turning back to his stew. "Have either of you heard from Theo lately?"

Draco's thoughts were racing by so quickly that he struggled to catch hold of them. Blaise had only been this frank with him once before—a tense night in their sixth year, when he had begun to suspect what Draco was planning and urged him to go to Dumbledore. "Talk to him," he had said. And here he was again, urging Draco to speak up for himself, to be vulnerable, to be open. The trouble was, he had spent years perfecting the art of closing himself off, of compartmentalizing his emotions until they were firmly locked away in the back of his mind. To be vulnerable, he had learned, was to leave oneself open to all manner of betrayal. And he didn't know if he could stand to be let down again.

***

Little pinpricks burst across his arm as Harry examined the Mark, but Draco found that he didn't mind. He was too busy trying to act as though he wasn't nervous, as though he hadn't spent hours upon hours wondering how he should behave around Harry. He had never felt like this before. In admitting to himself that he liked Harry, it was as though a dam had been struck open, and the deluge swallowed him up as he struggled to remain afloat.

Harry, on the other hand, was as nonchalant as ever, brows furrowed as he examined Draco's arm.

"Has it hurt much?" he asked, reaching back to pull out his wand.

"Not really," Draco said. "Not more than usual."

"Good. And the flashbacks?"

"Erm...I haven't had one since Potions."

Harry hummed to himself, pressing the tip of his wand against Draco's arm, when suddenly he remembered.

"Wait, no, that's not true. This morning, at breakfast, before the match—it was weird. It wasn't a flashback, not exactly, but it was close. It felt like something awful was going to happen."

Harry drew his wand away. "What set you off? Can you remember?"

"A letter from my mother." Draco felt rather pathetic—it had taken hordes of Dementors to bring Harry down, while he nearly fainted at the sight of a bloody letter.

"What did she say?"

"She's angry with me," he admitted. "Wants me to go to Azkaban with her, to see my father. She's been nagging me since the start of term."

"You haven't gone?" Harry asked. He sounded surprised.

"No," he said curtly. "And I'm not planning on it, either."