(¡WARNINGS! Slash, duh. Also I don’t own the characters. Also I don’t think I’ve checked these parts over since I typed them up so there may be typos etck. Also x-posted xx)
THREE--- That first time on the first Wednesday we ever spent together was the happiest time of my life.
It wasn't, perhaps, the most pleasurable time we spent together, it wasn’t the best, but we never managed to recapture that same spirit again - never again were we quite so innocent, quite so carefree.
I remember we used to laugh a lot back then; we were always happy, always excited to see each other. There was so much I didn't know about him, and at the time I was eager to find it out, convinced that there was nothing about him that I wouldn't like.
Afterwards, we lay on the ground in the dappled sunlight. I couldn't stop smiling. He held my hand, and watched me with interest. Looking back, I see things that I should have noticed, things that now seem obvious… but I was just as innocent as he thought I was; I loved him, and couldn't see anything else.
"Same time next week?" He had asked slowly, and softly, and when I nodded happily he kissed me on the forehead and walked away, leaving me lying on the ground in the dappled sunlight, still smiling.
Every day as soon as I woke up I would wonder how long it was until Wednesday. I became more easily distracted, but also more cheerful, and though it irritated Hermione that I, too, had to ask her what was going on in lessons now, I was happier, and I think people liked the change.
I was never sure how much everyone knew, but I suspect that Hermione figured out a great deal. She watched, glad that I was happy but slightly worried about the cause. Each week she would see me become happy on Wednesday, and then gradually less cheery as the week went on. By Tuesday, and on Wednesday morning I was very fidgety, and as time went on, irritable, only for my happiness to be renewed by Wednesday evening.
After some time, Malfoy realised that he did have to attend some Arithmancy lessons, and on some Wednesdays he couldn't come at all. As a solution, he decided, once, that we could still meet, still on Wednesdays, but late at night instead.
Slightly uneasily, but so eager to see him that I'd agree to almost anything, I agreed to meet him at the same place at midnight. I didn't think much of it, and fell into my usual cycle. As Wednesday night approached, I became fidgety and excited, and a lot more anxious than usual. It reached the end of the day, and to my surprise I found I was nervous, even worried, but I tried to ignore it. I stayed in the common room, pretending to work. At around eleven o'clock, Ron went upstairs to bed, giving up on trying to finish the never-ending surge of homework, and leaving the common room unusually, but thankfully, empty.
I was wondering how I was going to explain it when I left the room at around midnight, but now I didn't have to, and slipped easily out of the portrait-hole into the dark corridor, without anyone to bother me.
Outside, it was very dark indeed. I hadn't ever been out so late on my own, I don't think, and it was very unnerving. I paused when I got to the forest, uncertain. The tall trees loomed over me in a mass of foreboding black shadows. What if Malfoy didn't show up? What if he couldn't find his way - what if I couldn't find my way... he'd think I'd just not showed up, and I... I pushed the thought of being lost, alone in the forest in the middle of the night, to the back of my mind, and went in.
As I walked, I could hear noises all around me - rustling and snuffling, the sound of twigs snapping or footsteps, even voices. I always turned to look, glancing around nervously whenever I heard anything, but there was always nothing - or nobody - there.
Eventually I reached the place - our place. I almost didn't recognise it in the darkness, it looked so malevolent and menacing. At this time of night, it all looked the same... but no, this was it. I went and stood with my back to a big tree, so that nothing could come up behind me.
I had been in the forest before, at night... and I had been almost completely fine. I felt safe enough in here with Hagrid, or Fang... even with just me and Ron, it had been scary, but as long as we didn't let our guard down, it was fine.
But this was different. I'd be letting my guard down quite spectacularly if Malfoy did ever turn up. And there were dangerous things in the forest, things I'd come all to close to before... I tried to forget about them. Suddenly there was a rustling right near me, and out from the shadows jumped...
"Boo," said Malfoy, giggling and kissing me on the cheek.
"Fuck," I said, terrified, but relieved to see him.
He raised one of his eyebrows. "Is that a command?"
And everything seemed a whole lot better, all of a sudden. Here we were, as normal, in our normal place. It was all familiar again.
But I still wasn’t quite content, I was still uneasy. I could still hear the trees rustling, the distant sound of twigs snapping, as if something had stepped on them.
“Wait, Draco…” He had dropped to his knees, and ignored me completely.
“Draco, please, I need to t- ooh…” He put his hands on my hips to hold them still against the tree, and was kissing the bulge in my trousers.
“Wait… wait…” But I was giggling now, and he showed no signs of stopping.
There was a noise behind me, and I remembered why I wanted to talk him. “Draco,” I said, tugging his hair to pull him away from me. He stood up, reluctantly, to face me. At first he looked mock-angry, frowning and pouting, but when he saw the look on my face, he looked suddenly anxious. There was another noise and I glanced about to see where it came from. He moved a little closer and put his arms over my shoulders.
“I…” what I was about to say was ridiculous. He would laugh, he’d dismiss it. “I’m scared.” It came out a lot quieter than I’d meant. He stared at me. I swallowed, and looked down at the ground. He wouldn’t understand. Of course he wouldn’t understand. I’d be trapped here with him in the forest.
There was a long silence.
“Harry…” he said, softly. I didn’t look up at him. He stroked along my jawline with his finger, and gently pulled up my chin so he could see my face. I lifted my eyes up to see him smiling at me – not his normal, devilish smile. This smile was fond, and affectionate. He put his arm around me properly, and pulled me into a hug. Slowly, he covered my neck in little kisses, and whispered in my ear: “I’ll keep you safe.”
“I really… I don’t like it here,” I said, choking a little. To my surprise, I found I was almost crying. “Draco, please…”
He let go, and took a step back to look at me. “Okay,” he said simply. And it was.
He held my hand as we walked back through the forest. It was the most reassuring thing in the world. He did understand. He cared enough about me to stop. And he was so… in control. But then, he always was.
Even when we reached the foot of the stairs, he didn’t go back to his Slytherin dormitory, but came up the stairs with me. It seems a stupid idea now, one of the stupidest things we’d ever done, but at the time it seemed almost logical. He followed me through the portrait-hole into the Gryffindor common room, and up to the dormitory. Yet again, the common room was empty, and the others upstairs were all asleep.
I collapsed into bed, and Malfoy sat down on it next to me. And that’s all he did, for a little while, just sat, stroking my hair.
Just as I was falling asleep, I felt him climb in to lie next to me. He held me in his arms, nothing else, just keeping me warm. As I dozed off into a happy sleep, I realised he was right. Here he was, keeping me safe, and as long as he was here, I was invincible too.
I woke the next morning feeling at first oddly peaceful, and then, as I remembered gradually the events of the night before, increasingly alarmed. I sat up, frantically wondering what to do, but found my bed empty. Malfoy had left in the night. Of course he had – this was Malfoy. He was always in control, he always seemed to have a plan. I’m not sure whether he really did, but he always acted as if he knew what he was doing. And that was all that mattered, really.
FOUR--- It was around that time that he stopped ignoring me in class. Rather than staring straight past me, pretending I didn’t exist, he began to taunt me and tease me in front of the whole class. This wasn’t new, exactly, he had done the same sort of thing before, but years ago, when we first started at Hogwarts.
He had done it before to produce a reaction… but now he did it because there would be no reaction. Whereas in the past I might have jinxed him, or at least said something back, now, I just couldn’t retaliate. I just couldn’t do it. The insults would get worse and worse, until the Slytherins were cheering him on, and Ron and Hermione were almost shaking with fury, and I would just sit there.
“Cat got your tongue, Potter?” he would jeer. Once or twice I had to hold Ron back to stop him doing something, but I never did. It wasn’t as if I was stopping myself – I never really wanted to. He didn’t make me angry, the taunts were empty and meaningless. Usually it just made me depressed, and quiet. I was hurt, but not for the reasons everyone thought, and so their well-meaning advice was rendered useless. Mostly they just told me how awful Malfoy was, how he wasn’t worth it, which definitely didn’t help. I didn’t defend him at all, and a lot of the time I just realised what a lot of truth there was in what they were saying.
I didn’t believe it, at first, didn’t understand how he could be so cruel. He was just doing it because he knew I wouldn’t fight back. I supposed it won him some more friends.
Maybe, despite everything else, he didn’t care about me at all. It was only us two that really understood the significance of it all. I always looked at him pleadingly, expecting him to stop, or give some indication that I meant anything to him, but he never did. He only stopped when he was bored, when the crowd he was entertaining became bored. It was useless trying to appeal to him – he was a completely different person in public. This Malfoy had no sympathy for me at all. But even though he was different, completely different from the Malfoy I love, he had the same face, the same weightless hair and thin legs, the same pretty neck and delicate hands; watching him insult me hurt far more than the insults themselves ever did.
And so, one Wednesday afternoon, I confronted him about it. But this time he didn’t understand, he didn’t think it was important.
“Come on, Harry, I don’t mean it.”
And when he put it like that, anything I felt seemed very small and insignificant. The argument I’d been constructing mentally over the course of the week was suddenly disjointed and irrelevant.
“But…” I began, struggling to express what I felt, but finding no words with which to do so. “It’s not that, it’s just… there’s no reason for it. You could just stop, and it wouldn’t matter to you, but it would matter to me.” That had all sounded very clumsy. It hadn’t go to the point at all.
“There’s no reason for it? You think… you think I’m doing this for no reason?”
I faltered. What had I missed? “Well, I… no, I can’t see… I don’t know why you do it.”
“…Jesus, Harry. Jesus.” He ran his hand through his hair, looking agitated. It wasn’t the venomous voice he used in class, it was much worse… more… disbelieving, disappointed. “You think I’m just this irrational little bastard, abusing you in front of the whole class just for kicks?”
There was a silence. You could hear the wind blowing through the trees, and his heavy breathing. I was stunned, unable to respond because, and this was the worst thing, it was true.
“Thanks,” he said quietly, bitterly, looking right at me. There was a pause. “You think people didn’t notice when I started sticking up for you all of a sudden?” He was looking at the ground, now, kicking at tree roots. “They were all… suspicious. I had to do something.”
It gradually sunk in, and I understood what had been going on. It was the worst feeling in the world. He had done nothing wrong at all, and while he stood up for me amongst his friends, I had simply agreed with mine. He had been trying to regain a balance, to keep us out of trouble, to keep us together. He did care – or at least he used to. God knows what he thought of me now.
I tried to say something, anything at all that might make it better. “I didn’t-“
“Mmm.” He cut me off. It was no use, there was nothing to say. This wasn’t a misunderstanding that could be fixed by explaining everything. We both understood perfectly clearly.
He unzipped my jeans in silence, not with any anticipation or relish – only a grim sense of duty. This wasn’t enjoyable – this was just what we did.
He didn’t speak, at all, he didn’t kiss me once, and when it was over he left immediately without a goodbye, a “see you next week,” or even a backwards glance.
I turned up at two o’clock the next Wednesday, but he didn’t come. I didn’t really expect him to at all, it had only been a desperate hope, the sentimental idea that we might get back to what we had before. But we didn’t. We never really did.
Back in class he still teased me, but although the act was still perfect, it was obvious his heart wasn’t in it. The taunting became shorter and sillier until eventually it stopped altogether.
It still hurt a little, while it lasted, but mostly it was just because it reminded me of before, and made me feel stupid and wretched.
Sometimes I still woke up excited on Wednesday mornings, and was very happy, if just for a few seconds. Of course, then it would all come back to me, and I would feel slightly sick, and that dull, painful ache, the little part of me that wanted him back so badly, that thought about him all the time, would return. But just for a few seconds I was transported back to the time when I was fidgety every Tuesday and happy every Thursday. And it was the best part of the whole week.
My schoolwork got worse. No matter how hard I tried, I ended up more distracted in lessons. He still sat on the opposite side of the classroom, and despite my efforts, we were never quite alone together. I didn’t know what I could say to him if we were, but I so wanted to say something.
On the whole, Ron and Hermione left me alone. It was probably Hermione’s idea – she probably knew more than anybody else – but whoever it was, I was grateful for it.
On one occasion, though, when, I noticed, Hermione was not in the room, Ron glanced around and then asked me about it.
“Look, I’m not stupid,” he said, and I resisted the urge to comment because he looked so serious, “I know there’s something going on.”
I looked at him, trying to judge what to say, if anything at all. He frowned, and then leant towards me, and said, in a conspiratorial whisper:
“Is it… is it about a girl?”
I nearly smiled. I opened my mouth and said, in the same serious tone of voice:
“… Sort of. It’s…” and suddenly the seriousness fell away, and my voice came out as a whisper. “… It’s complicated.”
Ron nodded, knowingly. “I know what you mean…” he said, suddenly absent-minded, as if he’d drifted off to somewhere different. I wondered what he was thinking about. He shook his head, and returning to the present. “Good luck,” he said gruffly, and I stared at him.
“You too…” I said, as he hurried off to get some work done. Hermione had just come in, and was standing by the door.
I had rather forgotten that everyone else had problems to deal with, too. After that, I began to feel a little better. It wasn’t much, but it was something, at least. I tried to bury myself in schoolwork, to get myself worried about that, instead, and it worked, to some extent. I started talking to people more, and managed, at least, to act more cheerful, even if I still felt the same.