Inevitable

17 | Apart

Three weeks. Three weeks of complete and utter misery.

Harry and Draco both threw themselves into their work, pretending like everything was fine. Pretending like their hearts hadn't both been shattered into a thousand pieces just three weeks earlier.

Looking at Draco from the outside, he might have actually seemed fine. He was friendly to his patients and coworkers, a mask of calm indifference never leaving his face.

Only Neville and Dottie noticed the fact that his smile never quite made it to his eyes, or the way he seemed to zone out any time he wasn't directly speaking with someone.

They didn't need to ask what was wrong.

The story of Harry and Draco's breakup had somehow made the news the very next morning, with Rita Skeeter speculating wildly and delightedly about the possible reasons behind the failure of their relationship.

Harry wasn't nearly as good at keeping up a facade as Draco.

He tried to act like himself at first, but his heart just wasn't in it. He became more and more withdrawn and sullen as the weeks went by.

His coworkers found his clenched jaw, clipped answers, and simmering temper grating, and his barely reigned-in magic more than a little frightening.

Margaret made a pass at him one morning and was met with a savage glare as he wrenched his arm from her grip and barked out a harsh "stay the fuck away from me, Pond." Even she gave him plenty of space after that.

The only benefit to Harry's bad temper was in the field, when his carefully restrained magic would be released with abandon. They captured twenty Neo-Death Eaters in one raid, and suddenly the attacks on Muggleborns stopped.

Robards wondered if they had inadvertently captured their leader, or just captured enough of them that there was no one to do their dirty work for them.

When the news broke that, once again, the "Savior of the Wizarding World," had come through for them, the Wizarding community in Britain breathed a collective sigh of relief.

But Harry wasn't convinced that it was over, and said as much when the Prophet interviewed him.

As usual, his Auror instincts were correct. The next week, another attack occurred, and panic was restored.

Harry hated being right.

•••••

And Draco hated Harry. Or so he told himself, as he drank himself into oblivion each night before staggering up to his room at the Leaky Cauldron.

He couldn't escape him.

Harry Potter was in every newspaper, on the lips of every other patron at Leaky, in the pitying and/or triumphant stares of everyone he met who recognized who he was and why he was there.

It made him want to vomit.

And he usually did, drinking the way he had been.

Christmas came, and Draco spent it alone, unusually sober in his room, staring blankly at the latest photo of Harry in the Daily Prophet.

Andrè and Kent's gift was the only one that arrived for him: Two sets of matching gold cuff links for him and Harry. They were lovely.

Their letter to him included a cheerful invitation to their wedding in the United States in three month's time, with the request that Draco be Andrè best man, and that he bring Harry so they could meet him.

News of their breakup hadn't reached the States, and Draco couldn't bring himself to write the words down on paper.

He tossed the gift and the letter into his trunk and went back to his pitiful staring at Harry's photograph, tracing his features before finally crumpling the paper, tossing it on the floor, curling up on the bed, and succumbing to exhaustion.