Credit: AO3- Sprout2012
_______________
It is much, much worse to receive bad news through the written word than by somebody simply telling you, and I'm sure you understand why. When somebody simply tells you bad news, you hear it once, and that's the end of it. But when bad news is written down, whether in a letter or a newspaper or on your arm in felt tip pen, each time you read it, you feel as if you are receiving the bad news again and again.
Harry stared at the worn piece of parchment in his hand, he had folded it and unfolded it many times, reading it over and over. He felt sick and lost, he didn't know what to do. Unfolding the letter again he read it one more time.
Dear Darling,
Please excuse my writing, I can't stop my hands from shaking.
I am writing this letter with a heavy heart. I cannot cope any more, I feel that you and I are not enough against everyone else. I know you deserve better, to have a partner that fits in with your friends and family.
Instead you chose me and your life was ruined in doing so. There have been times in my life when I have wondered truly, what good did I do to deserve a man like you, the answer is nothing. I don't deserve you. You give me far more than I give you. I have taken away from your life.
I cannot bear to see you unhappy, I know you feel torn, that you miss your friends and family. At times, our relationship felt like it was the best thing that had ever happened to me, but lately we have been fighting and this is because of your friends. So I have taken the difficult decision away from you.
I am leaving. You should be with your friends and family, I am not worth losing them over.
Please understand that I love you, that I am doing this for you. I'll always have a special place in my heart for you.
I hope that you're able to move on, and meet someone who loves you as much as I do, but who is good for you and fits in with your life.
Thank you for allowing me to see your lovely soul and for sharing so much of yourself with me.
Love Draco
Harry screamed and punched the nearby wall. How dare he! How dare Draco make that decision without him. To tell him in a fucking letter and not to his face. Two years together, two years and he bails now. Just because he can't handle the negativity their relationship caused.
Harry didn't care what his friends, family and the public thought. They could all go to hell. What he cared for was Draco, he was all that mattered to him. Yes it hurt that his friends weren't accepting, that it had been two years and yet they still made no effort.
That wasn't Draco's fault, that was his friends faults. Their loss. Harry could cope with anything, as long as he had Draco by his side.
Harry heard the fireplace flare to life and the sound of footsteps as they headed towards his bedroom.
Draco pushed the door open and glanced at Harry. His eyes were puffy, red, and his cheeks stained with dried tear tracks. His hair looked as if he'd been pulling on it and fretting over something. Draco also noticed the hole in the plaster, to the left of Harry, and Harry's bleeding knuckles.
"What happened?" he asked, wondering if Weasley had been an arse yet again.
Harry stared at him, he laughed a cold sounding laugh, "What do you mean what happened? When were you going to give me this?" Harry waved the letter in front of Draco's face.
Draco paled, "Where did you get that? You weren't meant to see that." Draco panicked.
Harry screwed the letter into a ball and threw it across the room, "Well you should have hid it better if you didn't want me to find it. When Draco? When were you going to leave? Was I going to wake up tomorrow and find this fucking excuse for a goodbye letter on your pillow. How could you." Harry seethed.
Draco hadn't actually left yet, or given Harry the letter. In fact Harry was sat at their shared desk, writing to Hermione when he found Draco's letter. She had been the only one to continue writing to him, she hadn't accepted Draco fully, but she wasn't telling him who he should be with, or giving him ultimatums. He had ran out of ink and pulled out the top draw to get some more, when he found Draco's letter.
Draco was stunned into silence, this wasn't happening. That letter was never meant to be read, or given to Harry.
"I..I.." Draco tried to explain to a furious Harry.
"I don't want to hear it. You didn't have the guts to tell me to my face, instead put it in a fucking letter. So I don't want to talk to you. Just collect your stuff and get the fuck out." Harry ordered.
Draco remained rooted to the spot. What? Harry wants me to go?
"I don't understand." Draco whispered.
Harry yanked a trunk out from under the bed and started throwing all of Draco's stuff in it.
"What's not to understand. You expect me to wait around until you decide to leave, living in fear for the day I wake and realise you're gone. No thank you, you can go now. Sorry it isn't on your terms but you're still getting what you want." He coolly explained, as he threw Draco's books from the bedside table in the trunk.
"No. Please Harry. Let me explain." He begged, finally realising what was happening.
He stepped closer to Harry and pulled on his arm. Harry yanked his arm free.
"Don't touch me." He yelled.
Draco didn't know how to handle Harry when he was like this. He was a whirlwind of emotions and nothing would get through to him, until he had calmed down.
"I can explain." Draco begged.
Harry turned his gaze to him, eyes full of anger.
"I think it is fairly simple Draco. It is there for me in black and white, I don't need an explanation." His voice had returned to it's normal level, but just as deadly.
"It's not what you think." He pleaded.
Harry stopped his packing and frowned at him, "How can that be misunderstood." he snapped, pointing a finger at the screwed up letter.
Draco sighed, "Please just sit down and I'll explain."
Harry narrowed his eyes at him, and sat on the chair at their desk. Draco perched on the edge of their bed.
"You were never meant to see it. Ever. I wasn't ever going to give it to you, or leave." He started saying, Harry snorted.
Draco continued, "When I was younger and I struggled with my emotions and hiding them, my mother gave me some advice..."
"How touching Draco, but I couldn't give a shit about Malfoy parenting advice. Get to the point." He interrupted.
Draco glared at him, "I am. Just shut up and listen. I struggled with the Malfoy mask as it were, I couldn't stop feeling such strong emotions. My mother told me to write it down. To write a letter to the person who had annoyed me, upset me, or hurt me. Whatever. So from a young age I would pour all the negative and upsetting things into letters. Then I would destroy the letters, writing them was a form of release for me, therapy as such. I never intend to actually send the letters. I just use them as an outlet, when things got too much."
Harry's body language was still screaming, 'stay away', 'I don't trust you' but he looked like he was thinking over what he had said.
Harry uncrossed his arms and asked, "It is still your thoughts though, your true feelings."
Draco shrugged, "Yes. But only when I feel weak. We all have moments of weakness. I was never going to actually leave and give you the letter. It just helped me release all the pent up frustration and emotions I was feeling about us. About me causing you to lose your life, your friends and family."
Harry stood and Draco thought he had gotten through to him, but Harry's next words showed that Draco hadn't.
"You still thought about leaving. I have never, not once during our two year relationship even considered leaving. Did you not stop to think, that I didn't have a life, until you. You are my everything." Harry calmly and coolly told him.
Draco was getting mad now, "What do you want a fucking medal. The great Harry Potter isn't as weak as Draco Malfoy - well we all know that. Good for you, never thought about leaving you should be proud. It is easier for you, you know that you make my life better. I on the other hand have had a negative effect on your life."
"Stop thinking about yourself all the time." Harry snapped.
"You bastard, that whole letter I was thinking of you and making sure you had your life back. Your friends and family back. Leaving would break me, but I'd sacrifice that for you." His voice raising as they glared at one another.
"Like fuck you were Draco. You were being selfish as always. You were thinking of taking the easy way out, the cowards way. You couldn't handle the backlash of being with me, so you were going to leave and take the easiest way out. Instead of staying and fighting for what you want, and what I want." He raged.
Draco screamed, "I WASN'T GOING TO LEAVE. I WASN'T GOING TO GIVE YOU THE LETTER."
Harry shook his head, "Not yet. Not now. But who's to say a few months down the line, you have another weak moment and that time you actually do leave. I can't live in fear, waiting for the day when my whole world falls apart."
Draco didn't know how to prove he wasn't going. Apart from staying. Staying forever and never leaving. He had no intention of leaving Harry, but he needed Harry to believe that, to trust him and to move past this.
He wished he destroyed that fucking letter. He was usually good with things like that. But once he finished writing it, he heard Harry calling and he panicked and shoved it in the desk draw. Then Harry effectively distracted him with his kisses and then they had sex. The letter completely forgotten in the draw.
"Nothing I say will make you believe me right now. I'm not going anywhere, I just had a bad day yesterday. I was feeling morose and I listened to my demons and Weasleys words ringing in my head. I have always felt that I am not good enough for you, that you deserve more - better." He quietly said, sitting back down. He must have stood up when they were yelling.
Harry crouched in front him, "Draco you know I love you. I feel a bit hurt and upset right now, but I will always love you. We need to talk about this. Instead of writing how you feel in a letter, come find me and talk to me. I'm not going to leave you for showing your emotions, you don't need to hide them from me."
Draco lowered his head, "Yes I know. But when I feel these negative emotions for your friends and family, I feel that I am putting you in a difficult situation. I'm not asking you to choose between us, I don't want to bad mouth them. They're still your friends."
Harry reached out and placed one hand on Draco's knee, and the other he tucked Draco's hair behind his ear so he could see his face better.
"I appreciate that you would refrain from bad mouthing them to me. It shows how thoughtful you are, but I don't want you to bottle everything up. You can speak negatively of them, as long as what you are saying is fact and constructive. Not hateful insults that have no bearing on the situation." Harry leaned forwards and rested his forehead against Draco's.
"Sorry I went off on one. I felt my whole world crumble, when I read that letter, it almost broke me. I thought I lost you." He quietly apologised.
Draco indicated for Harry to move back, and he stood. Walked over to the desk and picked up a blank piece of parchment and his quill he used this morning. The break up letter he wrote last night when he felt weak. Then they had made love and he fell asleep in Harry's arms and he knew he could never walk away from that. So when he woke early this morning he wrote another letter, but he destroyed that one.
Draco turned to Harry and smiled, "I know this spell it works the same way as the spell used on wands, the spell that shows the last incantation the wand had cast. Well this adapted spell can be handy for you as an Auror I guess. You cast it to a quill and it pens the last thing that it had written. Many criminals probably destroy letters, evidence, but they don't destroy the quills. So I can teach you I guess, you might get letters, co-ordinates to hide outs etc."
Harry stood and smiled uncertainty, "Sounds great, but um why are you bringing this up now?"
Draco cast the spell to his quill and it began duplicating the last thing it had written. Once it finished, Draco picked it up and handed it to Harry.
"This was the last thing that quill wrote." He smiled and said he would let Harry read it in peace. Leaving to go sit in the living room.
Harry watched Draco walk out the room, he feared that Draco was going to leave and never come back. But he squashed that thought, he trusted Draco. Harry sat on the bed and read the letter in front of him.
Harry,
I do not have the words to express how much you mean to me, and how much I love you. The word love doesn't encompass what I feel. You are the man, who brought back, all the joy and happiness in my life. Which I'd been missing until you came along. When I think of how my life was before us, I shudder.
You have always been there for me no matter what, and at the end of each and every tiring day, it is you whom I want to come back home to, it is you who makes me feel complete, and it is you who fills my heart with all the wonders and joys of the world. I love you.
I know I struggle with showing my feelings, but that is who I am. Just because I don't express how I feel, doesn't mean I don't love you.
The way you sleep at night hugging me tight, makes me feel warm and protected, and makes me realise that this is where I belong without a shadow of a doubt. Every day that you stay with me, makes my love grow deeper. I love you and will never let you go.
There are days when I lie in bed, consumed by thoughts of you, the way your eyes light up when you smile, the way your lips curve, how you hug me close and I can smell the freshness of your skin. Your smell comforts me, makes me feel secure, loved and like I belong there with you.
I may not be able to actually tell you how much you mean to me, so today I want to tell you in a letter. I want to tell you that having you walk back into my life was the best thing to happen to me.
All my heart and soul,
Yours always
Draco
X x X
Harry knew Draco struggled with expressing his romantic, emotional side. He had been raised to show no emotion, to not show weakness. He could understand why Draco struggled to express how he felt to Harry's face, he told Harry he loved him, but he would never say everything he put in the letter. He'd be too embarrassed and he would feel vulnerable.
The fact that he had written how he felt, made Harry happy. Yes he had originally destroyed the letter, too embarrassed to show Harry. But he had cast that spell and gave Harry the letter knowing he was bearing his heart and soul in those words.
Harry left the bedroom and went in search of Draco. He found him in the kitchen drinking a large glass of wine. He looked up and they made eye contact.
Harry was now the one lost for words, struggling to express his feelings. So he just took the wine glass out of Draco's hand, placed it on the counter. Then pulled him into a tight embrace. Holding on for all he was worth.
"I love you." Harry whispered into Draco's ear.
Draco squeezed him tighter, "I love you too."
- The End -