Blackberry Jam (A Drarry FanFiction)

Chapter Twenty Two

July 31st 1944

The sun was blazing down, and there was sweat running down Harry's back as he worked. He rubbed the droplets beading on his forehead irritably with the sleeve of his t-shirt, trying his best not to get any flecks of paint on his face.

The project was going well, he had to admit, and just because it was his birthday he hadn't wanted to let a good day's weather go to waste. But maybe he was starting to think this wasn't his best idea as Draco huffed again, making long sweeps with his paintbrush along the freshly scrubbed outside of the cottage.

Mrs Figg was still pretty agile for a lady of her age, managing rather well with preparing their meals and keeping on top of the housework, especially when both Harry and Draco were perfectly fine pitching in as much as they could. But over the four years they had spent in Little Whining, the cottage had fallen into disrepair in many areas. Harry had decided over the last six months, since spring had sprung and the weather had made outdoor work more palatable, that they owed it to their guardian to try and fix what they could.

Besides, it wasn't like he had much else to distract himself with since last September.

He had hoped that cleaning the gutters and weeding the garden would allow him and Draco some space from each other. Draco, after all, preferred a good book over anything else, and Harry had intended to do the chores by himself to give them both the room to breathe they evidently needed. But Draco, damn him, insisted on joining in at every turn. Perhaps he felt guilty letting Harry do the work, but that was the point, and it frustrated Harry that he couldn't even do this right for their relationship.

He blamed himself entirely. If he hadn't lost his faculties completely, their friendship would not now be holding on by a thread. He had wanted to accept that Draco had forgiven him for his inappropriate behaviour, but that was hard to do when he couldn't even forgive himself.

It hadn't been hard to see the shift. The way Draco stayed up reading late so Harry could go to bed first, the way he walked just a little bit further away when they came back from school, the hesitancy he had to always sit beside Harry in lessons, finding excuses to pair off with other boys if he could.

It was Harry's fault, completely. He had given in to a moment of madness, and now it was only right that Draco should be skittish of him. So why? he thought savagely as he dragged his paint brush up and down as high as it could go on the wall. Why would he not just let it be! Why was he painting the house too! Harry had offered him the opportunity to spend less time with him, and yet here he was, still by his side, reminding him that things had changed and would probably never go back to the way they were.

It was insult to injury. That, and the fact that Draco had a new friend now that Harry had to do his level best not to get jealous of, because he wanted he and Draco to spend less time together, so they could have space to move on from the kiss in the woods. But every time Theodore bloody Nott's name came up, Harry had to work very hard not to break anything.

Theo was one of the friends Draco knew through his mother's acquaintances, and he lived a couple of towns over so Draco had to take a bus to go see him. Harry had assumed in the beginning that would mean they only got together once in a blue moon, but it seemed recently that they were seeing each other every other day, and Harry would have been lying if he didn't admit that broke his heart.

He tried, extremely hard, not to be bitter and resentful, because Draco should have a friend that had presumably never harboured any perverted thoughts towards him. But that was how Harry had gotten into this whole mess; he couldn't help the way he felt.

Draco was the other half of himself, and he had forgotten what life had been like without him always by his side. But the developments over the past several months had reminded him quite keenly what life was like without him, and Harry had never felt more empty.

Draco obviously did not feel the same, and had naturally drifted away from his odd friend, who had willed a war to continue just so he could stay with his best friend a little longer.