Harry's POV
Almost four hours had passed by the time I finally got to ask something that had been bugging me since I had looked around at the familiar faces of my friends. "Where's Ron?"
"He's out with Hermione, dear." Mrs Weasley set another cookie on my plate and sat down next to me. "She’s still trying to bring him round the whole situation about you."
Oh. "How's it, uh, coming along?"
She sighed. "Not well. I'm so sorry, Harry, but I think it'll take a lot of work before he'll be able to be comfortable around you again. I guess it’s because it was all sprung on him so suddenly after everything ended... he just needs to clear his head out a bit."
I looked down at my knees, and everyone remained silent for a couple of seconds, obviously feeling bad for me. Finally Mrs Weasley changed the subject by asking me if I wanted to stay for lunch. As soon as she mentioned it, my stomach growled and my mouth watered at the idea of her cooking. Almost as soon as I was about to accept the offer, I remembered Draco, hanging around somewhere, invisible no doubt. He would be starving, too, and it wouldn't exactly be polite to eat a meal while he went without.
"No thanks, Mrs Weasley. I should probably be heading home now."
She smiled sadly at me. "Okay. You'll visit again soon, though, won't you?"
"I will." I promised, and proceeded to say my goodbye's to the rest of the Weasley’s. When I reached Ginny, I pulled her into a hug and made her agree to keep me updated on everything that happened between her and Anthony. At the last minute, Mrs Weasley thrust some food in my hands and told me to take care of myself, which of course reminded Percy that he had a book about the wizarding war that had somehow already been written and published. I wasn't able to leave for another good half an hour, and when I did I was struggling to carry all the books, food and pranks from Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes that had been piled on to me.
I walked away from their house down the pathway, and Draco materialized beside me. He grabbed half of the junk that I had been given and reached for my hand so we could head home. Within two seconds we were back at our place, and I let the stack fall on to the kitchen table.
"That's a lot of stuff." His eyes scanned the table, which was almost completely covered in the various items I had been given
"Really Draco? I hadn’t noticed."
Draco stuck his tongue out at me, and I did the same to him. Before I knew it, we were pushing and shoving each other and laughing harder than I had in a while. Finally we calmed down, mostly due to the fact that it was nearing four o'clock and we were famished.
"What do you want to have for lunch? I'm a bit tired. How about one of those packages that you heat up in the thingy?"
"Microwave, Draco, and we do have all this you know." I gestured to the pile of food on the table.
He sighed. "I can’t cook."
“I had a muggle upbringing, I know all this stuff." I tried to block out images of when I had been forced to be a slave for the Dursleys.
"Well I guess I should start learning, right? My turn.” He picked up a pot of Mrs. Weasley's homemade soup. "What do you have to do to make this?"
I told him to just heat it up, since it had already been put together. He turned on the stove cautiously and poured some of the liquid in to a smaller pot, before pulling up a chair and waiting for it to boil.
I smiled. "It's going to take forever if you keep on staring at it like that. Maybe we should put away the rest of this stuff while we wait, as long as it gets stirred a bit while we work."
With both of us working, it took only a couple minutes to get everything where it was supposed to go, and the soup, too, was heated before we knew it. Draco carefully ladled it in to bowls, and we sat down to eat it together. I laughed at him and how proud he looked of himself.
"It's just soup, you know."
"Sure, but I’ve never used a stove before. Or anything for that matter."
I just shook my head and ate the soup, thinking about how different our lives had been. Polar opposites. Yet here we were, living together, eating the soup that Draco had made... or at least heated up.
When we were done I began washing the dishes, and he started fiddling with the radio sitting on the counter. Eventually he found a station playing an old muggle song, 'Forever Young'.
"I like this one," he nodded his head to the beat as he pulled out a handful of candy from the stash beside the fridge. I looked at him.
"What?" he asked through a mouthful of gummy worms.
"Are you serious? We just ate!”
"I like candy!"
Finally I just gave in. "Fine, but I want some too."
He grinned and used magic to float some over to me. I ate it out of the air, and he laughed.
"My hands are all soapy! I can't just use them!" I glared at him jokingly.
"So you'll use magic to eat candy but not to wash the bowls? That makes sense."
I blinked and started to dry my hands. "Right. I guess I'm just used to not being able to do magic at all in the muggle world. The Dursleys wouldn't let me."
He shook his head. "They seem really messed up, even for muggles. You're their family."
Shrugging, I told that I had gotten over it once I went to Hogwarts and found a real home. Draco stayed quiet for a while.
"Harry... I want to apologise. For giving you hell in Hogwarts even though you, uh, you know, like me.”
I shoved him lightly. "Don't flatter yourself. I had plenty of boyfriends." Even though I hadn't. I just didn't want to seem like I was a loser with no dating experience.
"Oh." Draco looked suddenly upset, and I frowned at him.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing”
"You okay?"
"Yeah. Fine."
"Are you sure? You look kind of sick."
"I'm fine, Harry. I just need to go check something."
"Um... okay." I said quietly, but he had already left the room.
I wondered what the problem was: all I had been talking about was my 'other boyfriends', who didn't actually exist, of course. Did he have a problem with me being gay? If he did, why didn't he just tell me?
I waited for almost two hours, trying to distract myself from the problem that was Draco. I could hear him in his room, the floor creaking as he paced from side to side over and over. The occasional squeak from the bed told me he had sat down.
He was obviously thinking about something. The whole shutting himself in his room was a clear sign that it was something important that he couldn't talk tome about. Finally the worry go to me, and I had to go and check on him. I ran up the stairs on knocked on his door.
"What?"
I jumped at the angry, frustrated sound of his voice, which I hadn't heard since our years at Hogwarts. "Nothing. I was just wondering if you were okay."
An audible sigh came from behind the door. "I'm fine, Harry. Just... thinking.
"About what?"
"Nothing!"
I stared at the door for a while, wondering whether he would hex me if I walked in. I eventually gave up and retreated back downstairs. The pacing continued, and as the time passed I managed to progressively become more and more terrified that he was angry at me. I didn't know what I could have done that would have caused this big of a problem, but I must have done something, right?
What if he left? That was the question that I kept going back to. What if I had somehow offended him so much that he would end up going back to the Wizarding World, back to his friends, back to his family? I wouldn't be able to handle it. These last couple of weeks had had more impact on my life than I ever thought so short a period of time could. If he left, I would be unbearably sad.
If he left, I wouldn't be able to go back to being myself, the Harry Potter that all my old friends knew. I wouldn't be able to go back to the Wizarding World pretending everything was all fine and dandy.
I also wouldn't be able to stay in the muggle world.
I would die.