Harry decided it was sensible to wake up before Malfoy that morning (who had finally drifted off to sleep sometime around 6:30am) and intended to creep back to the Gryffindor dorms before he could be subjected to Draco's comedown temper.
He really had meant to leave. Truly. He could so easily have turned his back on the sleeping angel - no, devil by now - and headed safely up to his own bed in the Gryffindor dorms. At least, that's what he told himself later.
But some Slytherin instinct in Harry, the part recognised by the Sorting Hat in First Year, came over him and insisted it would be a good idea to sneak Malfoy's sketchbook out from its hiding place under the bed and have a quick peek at what he'd missed the last time. It had to be interesting; Malfoy was very defensive of it.
The pictures are mostly of you anyway, the snake in his head wheedled. You have a right to know what he's drawn about you.
Harry gave in pretty quickly. He peeled the sheets tentatively back, keeping one watchful eye on the sleeping boy beside him, and then he was on his knees and fumbling under the oak slats of the bed for the precious leather book that contained access to Malfoy's mind.
Almost immediately, he realised why Malfoy hadn't wanted him to see all of it.
There was a little inscription on the first page that he opened, in Malfoy's looping script.
It's always him, he had written. Why is it always him? Why can't I draw something else, think of something else? Even when something isn't about him, I make it so that it is. Everything I do comes back to him him him him him and my mind won't fucking stop-
Harry's heart thudded in his ears. It was about him, he recognised that at once.
He recognised it, because right there on the page was a description of exactly how it felt for Harry to be in love with Draco Malfoy. Even when something isn't about him, I make it so it is... it all comes back to him - it was eerie to read Harry's own thoughts down on paper in his lover's words.
The first picture that caught his eye following the inscription was an intricate drawing of a hand. It was unmistakably Draco's own: those exquisite fingers had found their way to Harry's face and throat enough times for him to know it anywhere.
Besides, there were the rings.
Harry could see the real ones to the right of his head, discarded for the night on Malfoy's bedside table, but in the picture they were perfectly in place. The signet, the silver serpent, the jet stone, and the wide band with the Malfoy family motto looped around the inside - Sanctimonia Vincent Semper - Harry's skin had known them all by name for a while, and prickled at the sight of their reflections on the page.
And around the hand's crooked little finger, beneath the signet ring, was sketched a tiny body.
It was dark-haired and weak and wrapped round and round the finger, and as Harry watched, the body flailed wildly. It didn't take a genius to work the metaphor out.
Why doesn't he stop me from doing this?, Draco had written underneath it, in messier writing than his usual style.
Harry had an answer for that question, though Malfoy never liked to hear it. "It's because he fucking loves you, idiot," he whispered to the page.
The next picture was a kiss, raw energy radiating from the moving lines, and "my mouth on his mouth, the language between us, and the choices I constantly make to protect the wall of my heart" was scribed over the rolling tongues.
Was it a caption? An afterthought? A diary entry? It was hard for Harry to tell, but it thrilled him either way, and he kept turning the pages to drink in each new confession, each new glorious image from Malfoy's brain.
There was plenty more of Harry, in colour this time as he moved towards the back of the book. Malfoy had evidently been employing the new paints Harry gave him, and Harry had to admit he'd made a good choice with them.
The hues were marvellously vibrant and swelled effortlessly over the parchment, revealing Harry's eyes, his scar, the spiral of his open mouth, his hands filled with opaline wine and fruits and tins of broom polish, and once, a beating heart.
This is what he looks like in the half light of my room, Malfoy had written under a particularly stirring image of Harry's bare skin. He'd sketched a lazily-thrown emerald sheet across his hips and most of his torso, but it was still unmistakably him.
This is what he looks like when I've had him all to myself for hours, monopolised him for a night again, done whatever I like to him. This is what he looks like when he tells me those words he keep saying though I beg him not to. I won't believe him, but he says it just the same.
No other person in the world but me has seen him like this before, and I don't know when I'll see this sight again so I'm committing it to parchment. It hurts me to look at, which is how I know I've got it right.
Then there came a mess of charcoal, the emblem of a fractured mind, and finally an uncanny line drawing, a sketch of the Dark Mark beaming a grizzly grin out of a dark suit.
There's catastrophe in my blood, doesn't he understand that? And it burns till I lash out.
As Harry leaned closer he realised that this rendition of the Mark looked quite humanlike, and then he saw the silver eyes gleamed out of the soulless mess of bones that counted for a face -
It was one of Malfoy's macabre self-portraits.
He's drawn himself as the fucking Mark, Harry realised with an awful jolt. His head swam and for a moment he thought he might throw up.
The portrait was truly clammy to look at with its eerie grin and its handless menace as its serpent tail coiled right up the page and wrapped around another person's throat.
Harry didn't care to examine the face of this 'other' too closely, too scared that he'd find his own features.
Just then, Malfoy alarm spurted out of his wand on the bedside table, blaring red and loud, and Harry realised it must have been set for the Slytherin Quidditch practice. He froze, unable to react quickly enough to hide the book, horrified in the knowledge that he was about to be caught in the act.
Malfoy sat up as soon as the noise began, shutting it off with an irritable "Silencio", and made instant eye contact with Harry down the side of his bed. He took in the book, Harry's shaking hands, and the guilty expression on his face, and didn't think twice before landing a powerful slap on the other boy's cheek.
The crack of impact was so loud Harry felt it could be heard across the castle, but louder still was his pulse roaring in his ears, pumping humiliation and fear around his body.
"Your dirty Mudblood mother never tell you not to be a thieving arsehole before she pegged it, then?" Malfoy asked viciously, wiping his hand on his sheets as though it was diseased from the contact with Harry's stinging face.
"I don't know," Harry responded, forcing himself to make eye contact, "Did yours never tell you not to hit like a little bitch?"
Malfoy put his rings on for the second slap, and Harry felt like he deserved that when it came.
"If you ever snoop around in my shit like that again I will happily set you on fire and warm my hands on the blaze, you revolting little scumbag," Malfoy told him, voice as even and calm as if he was merely mentioning the weather, or his impending Quidditch practice.
Harry knew that he meant those words, and bit back the bile in his throat. He wanted to apologise but it seemed a bit wet just to blurt it out, so he stayed kneeling at Malfoy's feet in stunned silence and shame, willing himself not to cry.
He watched as Malfoy picked up his kit bag from the other side of his bed, glanced disdainfully down at Harry as though he was considering kicking him, and then stalked from the room, anger rolling off him in tangible waves.
He wasted no time in rushing to Ron and Hermione.
***
"I just don't understand why you're surprised, Harry," Hermione was saying with a gentle rub of Harry's back. "I mean, Malfoy's always like this to you. You can't still be shocked every time he's a..."
"A colossal sweaty knob?" Ron offered.
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Wasn't quite the description I was looking for, Ronald, but it'll do."
Harry frowned lightly. He should've known they wouldn't understand. How could they, when they'd never felt the balm of the other boy's kiss after days of enforced pain, like giving a cool draught of water to a man stranded in the desert and dying of thirst?
How could they, when they would never see Malfoy so hot and messed up above them as Harry had had him, his beautiful aristocratic features contorted with heavenly exhilaration as his body made Harry see paradise, or the way he looked just as he was getting high, the way it softened those features and made them velvet again instead of ice?
The way he'd looked that time he apologised, so broken and young and still bewitchingly pretty, or those wild eyes flashing from across the ice as he skated the line between life and death like it was nothing.
Harry closed his eyes. Malfoy's mouth .... scarlet with sugar, scarlet like his bleeding nose ... the way coloured lights refract off his skin and the way he lies so still in the dark-
No, it was impossible. How could he explain that specific feeling?
He looked at his friends, two people who he loved deeply but who had just never had the taste of intoxication and rapture that Harry had experienced, never had whole art books dedicated to them (Why can't I draw some thing else? ... Everything I do comes back to him him him him him) and flipped through to see their own marred-up souls staring back at them in glossy colour on each sacred page.
How do you try and explain what that's like?
"He sees me," he responded slightly weakly, still half lost in these precious visions.
"Mate, I can see you right now - So can anyone else who has eyes."
Harry should've known Ron wouldn't understand what he meant.
"Not like that," he shook his head. "We see each other differently. I can't explain it. He's like a different type of magic to me."
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a/n: thank you for reading, sorry for the slow update!
hope you enjoy the chapter though, please vote and lmk 🤍🤍
~ paradisedraco