Chapter Text
It was announced, just as the Triwizard Tournament had been, at the start of term feast.
A year-long, international Quidditch varsity match — the inaugural Wizarding Academy Cup. All the brightest young athletes from wizarding schools around the world, all competing against each other in what the International Confederation of Wizards was rather hysterically hailing to the press as, “The most inspirational display of magical cooperation our world has ever seen.”
Hogwarts was hosting, supposedly because England had billed itself as a central location, and because part of the ticket sale proceeds were meant to refurbish the school’s continuing reconstruction efforts.
The real reason, Draco thought, was more likely that everyone wanted a chance to see it, to crane their necks and get a good look at where it happened: the spot where Potter killed Voldemort, the stones where the Dark Lord fell irreparably scalded and black — his final Dark Mark.
And then there was Potter. Once they’d seen Hogwarts, next they’d want to see the man — the boy, Draco told himself — who finally fucking did it.
Because, naturally, Potter would play Seeker for the Hogwarts team.
The team tryouts sheet was posted outside the Great Hall the next morning, and when Potter wrote his name down, several people laughed. Draco watched him flush; for a moment, it felt like years ago — when they were all young, and stupid, and everyone thought Potter was a nutter. When Draco was a prefect, and his arm was unmarked, and he had the blissful happiness of ignorance, of a place in the world he’d been told he deserved.
Watching Potter be laughed at felt so unexpectedly normal that Draco lost himself for a moment, shouldering his way to the front of the crowd, craning his neck to see the look on Potter’s face when he signed on the very next line:
Draco Malfoy - Seeker
Potter watched him in silence, eyes narrowed and arms crossed, until someone in the crowd scoffed, pushing Draco back into the fray as they said,
“You’re out of your bloody mind, Death Eater scum!”
Draco had been preparing himself for this moment. It would only take one person making enough of a statement — and then a witness to the lack of response Draco had decided it was only appropriate for him to have — to kick off a chain of retribution that would stick to him like a Crup biting at his heels for the entire, Wizengamot-appointed year.
Despite his preparation, Draco flushed at the taunt. Even worse, he found himself looking inexplicably back to Potter, whose gaze he could feel still on him.
Potter’s mouth was set and his eyes were hard, and he looked at Draco for what felt like an entire lifetime before he addressed the crowd in a calm, clear tone of voice Draco had never heard from him before.
“We’re not doing that, not anymore.”
Everyone stilled.
“I get it, believe me,” Potter continued, with a smug little half-smile which made a few people laugh and Draco clench his fists in the pockets of his robes. “But we’re not pulling that shit this year. No one at this school is a Death Eater. I was at all of their trials. I know where they are.”
“Good as fucking dead!” someone called.
“Better than they deserve!”
“For some, yes,” Potter agreed, speaking over the crowd. “No one’s going to forget, and I’m not asking you to forgive. But we are going to at least be decent to each other here, or else what was the point of everything? What did everyone die for?”
At the mention of death, everyone’s eyes rose to the archway above the Great Hall, where the names of the fallen loomed down on them, freshly memorialised in stone. Draco could smell the dust of the rubble, the smoke and the harsh crack of Unforgivables, the air charged with them still, like lightning.
“If anyone feels otherwise, you know where to find me,” Potter said, looking to everyone in turn.
Draco didn’t think Potter meant it as a threat, but by that point, those who hadn’t been there to watch Potter kill Voldemort had at least heard about it. It was hard to argue with a man who’d recently committed murder, even if it had been in everyone’s best interest for him to do so.
And so it stopped, more or less, all the trauma Draco had been prepared to experience. All the skin he’d been planning to flay off his own back; all of it over, almost before it even began.
+++
The team tryouts were that weekend, and Draco flew like his life depended on it, because he wasn’t sure that it didn’t. He appreciated Potter’s bizarre little speech, but Draco had never once relied upon Potter for anything, let alone his social — and perhaps literal — survival, and he wasn’t keen to start now.
Draco thought if he made the team, then he could build a buffer of sorts, could let himself be swallowed up by a tide of goodwill and general sportsmanship and escape the year unscathed. So he flew like he meant it, and when he landed back on the ground, the ICW judge looked as though he was thinking quite hard, which seemed better than nothing.
Potter was sitting on a bench by the changing rooms, sweating and bent over, his elbows on his knees. Long tendrils of hair were escaping from the knot he’d thrown it up into, clinging in wet stripes at his temples and all down his neck.
Draco stared at it, remembering what that hair had looked like as Potter was kneeling before him, disfigured and terrified, at Easter. It had been disgusting then, gone wild with knots, matted and reeking.
“Nice effort, Malfoy,” Potter said, registering his presence with half a nod.
Draco, who desperately wanted to crumple to the ground and lie there forever, used all of his high-bred composure training to keep his legs from shaking, to steady his hand as it slid sweatily down his broom handle. He pasted on his best sneer, a bit rusty from misuse.
“Were you watching?” he asked, ignoring the river of cold sweat running between his shoulderblades. “Good. Maybe you’ll pick up a thing or two.”
“Fuck off,” Potter said, all the sting of it missing.
Of course, Potter made the team. Starting Seeker. Emphasis, the press would come to say, on star.
Draco made relief Seeker and slept through the night for the first time in three years.
+++
A few days later the team were sat on the pitch, waiting for the Hogwarts coach to arrive, and Draco wondered if this was all some sort of elaborate prank. Perhaps it was a set up to kill him and make it look like a flying accident, a tactic which had been rather fashionable in the 80s amongst the murderous set and was overdue for a comeback.
“I heard it’s Krum,” someone said from behind Draco, startling him out of his thoughts.
“Thicko,” someone else said. “He didn’t even go here.”
“Surely he’s coaching for Durmstrang,” a third voice chimed in.
“What do you think, Harry?” one of the someones asked.
Draco thought he recognised this one. A Ravenclaw, Michael Ceiling or something.
“Any hints, Harry? My dad says he saw you at the Ministry at the weekend. See anyone from Games and Sports?”
“No, and I dunno,” Potter mumbled. “Would be cool if they brought Wood back, though.”
Draco groaned, an involuntary sound.
“Something to add, Slytherin?” the first someone asked.
“Yeah, actually,” Draco said. He’d considered, all the way up on the train, how to best keep his nose down and clean, but something about Potter’s brief support had wiped all that away, changing the stakes of the game. Besides, Draco thought if he was going to die in a flying-related assassination attempt, he might as well go out doing the other thing he loved, which was bothering Potter.
Draco turned around then, and as he was looking for Michael Chandelier his eyes flashed to Potter, who was crouched and sullen, drawing a shape in the dirt with the thick end of his wand.
“Go on,” Michael Crevice said, smiling unkindly. “Enlighten us.”
Draco scoffed.
“Nevermind,” he said. “I can see my opinion would be wasted on this lot.”
There was a titter of laughter from the group, and Draco’s eyes flashed to Potter again. The line of his mouth was flat, as though it was costing him to ignore the conversation. Draco wondered if someone told him off for interfering, as though the notion of minding his business had ever stuck before.
“Say it, Malfoy,” Potter said, quietly and without looking up. “Who do you want to be captain?”
The idea that Potter — that anyone — cared what Draco thought, let alone what he wanted, was laughable. Except no one was laughing. They were all just sitting there, waiting and staring, and so Draco raised his chin — an embarrassing, self-conscious habit he couldn’t seem to break himself of — and said,
“Flint.”
Potter’s head whipped up.
“Marcus Flint?” he asked in a tone of utter disbelief, his voice gone high, as though Draco had suggested they be coached by a Blast-Ended Skrewt. “Are you mental? Does Flint know how to run a single play without cheating?”
“Oh fuck you, Potter,” Draco said, slipping easily into old stomping grounds.
But even that felt different. Gone two or three years back they’d have been on their feet, fists clenched and faces red, hot with fury.
But now, now Potter lazily flipped him the v, rolling his eyes as the team lost interest in their conversation. They were sniggering and pushing each other, all pent up energy and anticipation, and even Draco had to admit that the heat just wasn’t in it anymore.
Perhaps because it felt like there was less to stand up for, less to say without saying it. They had defended their sides to their foreseeable ends, and for once, for the first time really, the argument was about what it was actually about: Wood was just Wood and Flint was just Flint.
Draco made a ruder gesture back, offering a visual suggestion for where exactly Potter could go get himself fucked, and one of the Hufflepuffs sitting near them stiffened in response, looking to Potter for a reaction.
Potter’s opinion on being penetrated would have to wait for later, however, as at that moment their coach arrived, and all of them turned to look as Oliver Wood stormed his way across the pitch, a parade of notebooks, gear, and ten different chalkboards trailing behind him.
Draco twisted back around to glare at Potter, as he could feel the smug arse smirking at the back of his head.
“I win again, Malfoy,” Potter grinned, and Draco ignored the little voice in the back of his head remarking how Potter’s tone was almost playful, how the whole exchange had been borderline friendly. He really didn’t have the strength to handle a companionable, playful Potter.
“Don’t get used to it,” Draco sneered, unable to stop himself. Some things were truly immutable. “I’ll beat you one of these days. Mark my words.”
+++
Draco thought it a good job Wood never switched sides during the war. He had an uncanny propensity for finding a person’s weakest spot and poking at it, picking at all of them on the team like scabs until they broke, until they were less athletes and more a pile of pieces he could put back together to his liking.
For Draco it was the running, so much fucking running, more running than seemingly anyone had ever done, or ever needed to do.
Wood started each practice with laps, which wasn’t something they ever had to do before, not when Flint was captain, not when Draco’s team was just Slytherin.
To add insult to injury, Wood set his practices for six am sharp, unlike Flint, who had never seen an hour before eight, and likely did not realise six am even existed. The early start meant Draco was actually up at four-thirty, because they had breakfast, which he never ate as it made him feel sick, and after that the extensive stretching routine, which made him feel tired and slow.
And then, thrice weekly, fifty circuits around the pitch, no stopping, no walking. If anyone was late — and that was Wood’s definition of late, which meant anything less than fifteen minutes early — they were made to run double.
Draco did not consider himself adept at feats of stamina. He’d always preferred short bursts of energy, controlled explosions. Despite his family’s best attempts, he’d never been able to dig deep, never found the joy in testing a limit.
He felt the ache of that particular failure keenly, having gone through the gauntlet of endurance all through sixth-year, and then again last year, waiting out the shadow of his actions until Potter came round and fixed it for all of them.
Beyond the daily fear for his safety and the pressure of having his parents’ lives in his hands, the general stress of premeditated murder — or at the very least, what he’d bargained down to in the end: being an accessory to it — it was exhausting to wake up to the same problem day after day, opening his eyes every morning to greet the weight of his circumstances. It was always there, the life he’d found himself living, always taking its pound of flesh, greedy and uncaring.
The torture of sixth-year had, of course, been helpful in the end, when everything fell somehow further to shit than they could have possibly imagined it would. When he was torn between the mind-numbing fear and disbelief of what was happening in his own home and the soul-crushing slog of being at school, of pretending he believed they were going to win, of looking straight ahead and focusing on living up to the Malfoy name, for all that it had briefly meant.
Draco thought about these things when he ran; he couldn’t seem to stop them from rising to the top of his mind. The sharp clutch in his chest and the pounding of blood in his ears reminded him forcibly of the panic he had tried to crush down every single day since fifth-year, to varying success.
Because of this, and because running was an awful activity — pedestrian and demeaning — Draco found it wasn’t his strong suit.
Pansy suggested it would behove him to be seen with a weakness — image rehabilitation and all — but Draco thought there was a difference between seeming fallible and making a right tit of himself. He also thought, whilst running, that it might be quite nice to just fall over and die, and save his would-be assassin the trouble.
By their tenth practice, late in September, Draco thought he might be improving, if the definition of improvement included distracting himself into staying upright. He found if he took the focus out of his burning lungs and redirected it outwards, latching his brain onto a subject outside of himself, then he could push through.
Conveniently, Potter made a habit of running directly in front of him, despite Draco’s propensity to lag to the back. Potter showed up every morning in shorts, and sometimes Draco got close enough to see sweat beading down his back and into the waistband of those shorts. Potter’s sweaty arse was the perfect distraction from his imminent demise, as it was absolutely the worst thing Draco had ever seen, worse than dissected Flobberworms, worse even than the time he had to watch that wretched snake eat his teacher.
After the running Oliver gifted them five beautiful, perfect minutes to catch their breath and kit up before drills began in earnest. The drills themselves were ruthless, and thus far they’d yet to see a practice end without injury, but at least they’d be running them in the sky, and they involved actually playing Quidditch.
Draco fell to the ground, lying spread-eagled against the grass. The morning dew mixed with the sweat pouring down the back of his neck, and it felt so good Draco closed his eyes, willing himself to sleep for exactly four minutes.
He was enjoying his new favourite hobby, feeling sorry for himself whilst smelling bad, when a shadow moved over his face, which he could tell was still red and blazing with exertion.
Draco pried one eye open, lamenting internally at how even his eyelids were sweating.
“Hydrate,” Potter said, hair wild and backlit, glowing with sweat of his own.
“Lost my water bottle,” Draco replied, because it was sort of the truth. He was certain someone had stolen it.
Potter, who had probably just been waiting for an excuse, snorted and dropped his squeeze bottle — emblazoned all over with bright orange Chudley Cannons stickers — directly onto Draco’s balls.
+++
Play schedules were given out the first day of October, and if he had to go back and pinpoint it, Draco would say that this was when everything started to change.
The first tournament match was to be held at the end of the month, against Beauxbatons, and after that they’d play at least one school a month straight through until spring, when the playoffs began, at which point they’d start playing weekly. Presuming, of course, they made it that far, but everyone was talking as though it were certain; Draco had to admit, with Potter on the team it did seem likely.
He didn’t mean to belittle everyone else, as they were really quite sharp as a group. But Potter was, well, Potter. There were a lot of things he’d been unfairly lauded for over the years, his head heavy with the weight of laurels, but his Quidditch prowess had never been exaggerated.
Draco did think it rather mature that he could look at Potter now and admit that he was talented, certainly the best of anyone at Hogwarts. Although admitting it didn’t stop jealousy from filling him up like a kettle screaming.
“If Potter’s the best, and I’m Potter’s relief, then that means I’m technically second best,” Draco said to Pansy one night, and then the next night as well, and a few more nights after that. “Can you at least acknowledge how good that is?”
“No,” she said, painting her nails.
“Cow,” he grumbled.
“Moo.”
Wood, to his credit, didn’t seem to give two shits when Potter feinted at impossible speeds and angles, spinning on his broom in what looked like wild freefall but was, Draco knew, perfectly controlled, every single thing happening because Potter wanted it to, not in spite of him.
Wood pushed Potter just as hard as the others, yelling and fretting and adjusting, and because they had history — or perhaps just because he was Potter, who Draco was learning had a swotty little temper — Potter sometimes pushed right back. He ignored half the suggestions Wood threw at him, and in a truly disturbing series of events, had started finding Draco’s eye when Wood went all red and apoplectic about Seeking techniques, pulling faces behind Wood’s back as he ranted and raved on proper shoulder carriage and the concept of aerodynamics.
At first Draco responded to Potter by furrowing his brow, trying to look unimpressed, to impart to Potter how much of a distraction he was being — and immature besides — but every time he made that face Potter grinned, and even worse sometimes giggled, hiding behind his hand. Draco really didn’t know what to do with that.
Once Draco tried looking particularly stern and Potter snorted, and it was so loud that it stopped Wood’s lecture. Potter had immediately looked at Draco like it was his fault, and they both had to run extra laps. Draco had been so angry he thought he would explode.
It made the running a lot easier, being furious, but he didn’t let Potter — who looked miserable and guilty — know that.
At dinner that night a note landed in Draco’s trifle that said Sorry in pedestrian chicken scratch. He waited until Potter was looking to set it on fire, a tiny flame dancing in the palm of his hand.
After that, instead of pulling whatever face Potter found so amusing, Draco just refused to look at him. He sat with his back straight and his eyes forward, his arms crossed in front of his chest, ignoring the hot glare of Potter’s gaze so hard that his entire body ached with the effort of feigned nonchalance.
This had the added benefit of somehow catching Potter off guard, making him blush high across his cheekbones, which Draco noticed as he watched for Potter’s reaction out of the corner of his eye once he was sure Potter had turned away, biting the inside of his lip to keep from smirking.
Draco was so caught up in pretending not to care that he missed it, the first time Wood assigned him as Seeker. Everyone turned to stare at him, including Potter, whose mouth fell open in a rictus of shock. It should’ve been a wonderful moment for Draco, but in fact it was mortifying, because all that meant was that everyone was staring directly at him as he was forced to ask Wood to repeat himself.
Wood had warned them, at the end of the last practice, that they’d be staying an extra hour once a week for a scrimmage match. He also warned them that he’d rotate them through every position, saying they couldn’t possibly understand what it meant to play as a team without experiencing what their teammates actually do.
So it shouldn’t have been a surprise, really, that Potter was assigned as Beater for Team Red and Draco was assigned as Seeker, but somehow it was, as though everyone but Wood got the message that rules didn’t apply where Potter was concerned.
“What are you still sitting here for?” Wood asked. He’d been given a whistle at some point and kept it almost always halfway in his mouth, ready to blare at a moment’s notice. “You have your assignments! You’re wasting a quality wind gust! Seekers! Potter! Malfoy! I want you studying wind patterns between practices. You should be pushing the team to time plays with the wind and…”
Wood’s voice faded out into a jumped up hum as Draco pulled on his scrimmage kit, a musty red jersey that’d definitely lived most of its sad life in a Gryffindor lost & found. He grabbed his broom and his gloves and his shinguards, lacing them up too tight as he watched Potter struggle into the unfamiliar and worn-in looking Beater padding they kept in the big box of practice gear no one ever really used, all the good stuff having been claimed and squirrelled away in lockers by the regular position players.
Potter’s fingers — always so rough-looking, all callouses and bit nails and random scratch marks — grappled with the straps on the side of the shoulder pads, his knuckles gone pale with the effort of pulling everything in close to his lithe form. For one delirious moment, Draco imagined himself getting up and walking over to help, but before he could even begin to interrogate himself on why he should care, Ginny was at Potter’s side, smiling at him and batting his hand away, making him laugh. The corners of his eyes crinkled with humour, and it was so pleasing Draco forced himself to immediately forget what it looked like.
Ginny was set as Seeker for the Green Team, which meant Draco was playing against her. They kicked off above the pitch, circling each other, Draco keenly aware they were both pretending they weren't watching Potter watch them.
Draco sat back on his broom, stretching his arms overhead, half his attention on Ginny and the glint of the Snitch, half his attention on the chaos unfolding below. It was an interesting idea, in theory, rotating positions. He could follow the logic in it, at least.
Maybe it worked in the pro leagues, where Wood had seemingly spent every second of his life since graduation, but for them it became quickly apparent it wasn’t working. They were too young, too tied up in the roles they’d been given and never had to sway from.
Draco recalled the sour drop in his stomach when they’d learned the eighth-years would be dorming together; no more safety to be found in the separation of houses. They had even been stripped of their house assignments and given new uniforms. The new design was garish, insignia from all four houses mashed together on a single crest, everything fighting for space.
The first night back, McGonagall had told them they were the trial year for what she’d termed a Liberated Hogwarts. Draco understood this too in theory, but the experiment was faulty. Stripping them of the trappings of allegiance only seemed to be strengthening a desire to cling to it, as their common room split itself into fours every night, unseen lines drawn in the dust gathering between centuries’ old stones.
Draco thought the same psychology must be at work in the scrimmage match, because he’d never seen anyone, on any Hogwarts team, not even the Hufflepuffs, play quite so poorly. Thirty minutes in and the score was ludicrously high on both sides, the Keepers apparently having forgotten their left from right. The Chasers dropped the Quaffle more than they passed it, and the Beaters — Potter included — seemed to be fighting the Bludgers off of themselves.
At one point Ginny looped around from looking for the Snitch, which Draco had all but given up on, and hovered next to him, the tips of her ears red and eyes bright as she yelled,
“Can you fucking believe this? Do we have to do everything around here?”
Draco opened his mouth to respond but she was already off again, shouting at someone else, leaving behind only her voice saying we, we, we, ringing in his ears. Draco couldn’t remember the last time he’d been referred to as part of a we, at least not one that he wasn’t desperate to scratch his way out of.
The match ended shortly after Potter managed to hit himself in the stomach with his own Bludger, which sent him spinning back so far that he knocked into the Keeper, who had her arms raised to throw the Quaffle out to one of the fumbling Chasers, resulting in an own goal against Team Red. Wood was furious, yelling himself hoarse and blowing on his whistle so hard that Draco thought his eyeballs would actually pop out of his head.
Everyone was so distracted by the upset of Potter whiffing it that they didn’t even notice when Draco did them all a favour, magnanimously catching the Snitch.
Draco touched down easily onto the pitch and pushed his way past the rest of the team to Potter, who was on all fours in the grass, retching from the force of the Bludger’s impact.
“You’re welcome,” he said, tossing the Snitch at Potter.
Draco was going to leave it at that, was actually going to let the past be the past for once, but then Potter had to go and catch the bloody Snitch mid-gag, without even looking, and it was so ostentatious of him that Draco simply had no choice but to crouch down next to Potter and say, voice low and deep in his ear,
“Hurts, doesn’t it, Potter?”
“What—” Potter gasped, before cutting himself off with a retching cough.
“Being punched in the stomach,” Draco snapped, mind burning at the idea that Potter didn't even remember attacking him. “You got off easy though, I’d imagine. Feels a lot worse when it’s a person punching you, and they have the Snitch in their fist, you fucking wanker.”
Draco could hear Potter moaning as he walked away, and he didn’t care one single whit. In fact, he felt good, at ease almost, his mind lighter than it had been in a long time.
The day only improved as it went on, with an Exceeds Expectations on the Transfigurations essay Draco had mostly forgotten about and rushed through the night before, an Outstanding in Potions which he’d been fully expecting, but was nice to see writ large all the same, and then, at dinner, a note in his Yorkshire Pudding that said: I’m really sorry, but you did deserve it.
Draco waited for Potter to leave before getting up from the eighth-year table. His plan was to return the note with a rather scathing remark he’d etched onto the back, but when he caught up to Potter, he upset Draco’s plan by turning and smiling again.
Something awful was in Potter’s look this time, softening it with a pleading shine that quivered like a white flag, and which made Draco think he might not be the only one who’d been done in by too much running.
Draco crunched the note in the tight grasp of his fist, shoving it back into his pocket. He shouldered past Potter, making for the library, which wasn’t where he’d wanted to go, but had the benefit of being in the opposite direction from where Potter was headed.
Draco settled at a table near the Restricted Section to start an essay for Slughorn he had planned to work on in his room, with the company of a bottle of brandy he kept tucked beneath his bed. He made it about three inches before his mind kept threatening to wander away with the scratching of his quill, and so after a while he gave up, shoving his parchment and his books roughly into his bag.
The common room, upon his return, was mostly empty. Potter was by the fire, dozing with his mouth open and a book in his lap. He had curled up in his usual chair, which he’d sat in once and thus no one else ever used, just in case Saint Potter materialised needing a place for his Moste Heroic Arse.
A few students were huddled off in a far corner, where the Hufflepuff that all the girls said looked “like Draco but cuter” — the blond one called Smith with the curly hair and the sour attitude — was holding court, recounting their disastrous Quidditch practise.
He was miming Potter getting hit with the Bludger with obvious glee, and as Draco started to make his way to the group he found himself in the uncomfortable position of being someone who was about to experience personal growth.
“Smith!” Draco called. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Potter’s head jerking forward, startled awake.
“What do you want, Slytherin?” Smith asked, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms, playing at intimidation.
“Oh nothing,” Draco said pleasantly, smiling at the group, several of whom had turned away, intent on pretending he wasn’t there. “Only I heard you telling everyone about the practise this morning, and I was wondering if you’d got to the part yet where you hit yourself in the face with your own Quaffle?”
Smith’s mouth fell open.
“There you are,” Draco said, motioning for the group to look. “That’s exactly the face you made when it happened. Well done! Have you considered a career in the arts?”
“You’re awfully smug, Malfoy,” Smith said, his face gone mottled and purple. “For a blood supremacist who should’ve been fucking Kissed with their coward of a father.”
“At least I stuck around, you deserting cu—” Draco snapped, as another voice cut across, strong and clear and right behind him.
“He saved my life.”
Everyone whipped around to look. Draco hadn’t noticed Potter walk over, but now he was standing at Draco’s shoulder, close enough that he could feel the heat of Potter’s magic crackling off of him, as though he’d been followed by an open flame.
“Is that true?” someone asked, a soft-spoken girl with blonde ringlets Draco didn’t recognise. She looked at Potter first, and then inexplicably to Draco, who felt suddenly as though his tongue was swollen, his mouth welded shut around it.
“Why would I lie about that?” Potter asked, tilting his head.
The girl blushed furiously and shook her head. They all watched Potter walk away, towards the stairs leading up to the small single rooms they’d all been granted.
Draco stood frozen in place, his face burning, until he’d outstayed the moment. At which point he tore himself away, chasing after Potter while trying not to be obvious about it, to medium effect.
Draco caught up with Potter outside the loos, grabbing his elbow and then quickly pulling his hand back when Potter flinched at the touch.
“Why?” Draco asked.
It was woefully inefficient, but also all he could manage, and there was a comfort in that feeling, something familiar in failing and still getting away with it.
“Because it’s true.” Potter shrugged, frowning, and Draco couldn’t tell if he was joking or annoyed or both when he leaned against the wall and said, “Sorry, should I have let them keep insisting that you should be dead?”
“I don’t understand why you don’t agree,” Draco said, the truth slipping out amidst his confusion. “Why are you being like this?”
“Like what?” Potter said, knowing exactly like what, Draco could see it in the amused twist of his mouth.
“You’re going to make me say it?”
“Is that what you want?” Potter asked, tilting his head back against the wall so that he had to look up at Draco from beneath his lashes. “You like being made to do things?”
“It doesn’t matter what I want!” Draco said, voice high and irritated. “And why are you looking at me like that, Potter?”
Potter blanched, the crooked smirk falling away as his face went moon-shaped.
“I—that’s not—I don’t know why I said that—oh god—don’t tell anyone—”
“What? Are you ill? Do you need Pomfrey? You know Wood will shit if you miss a practise,” Draco snapped, confused and mildly concerned. Potter had never been eloquent, but he could usually get his sentences out, inane though they may be.
“Nothing,” Potter said, reaching behind him for the door into the loo. “It’s nothing, Malfoy. You’re right, okay? I’m just going to—to pretend this never happened—well, goodnight.”
And then he was gone, the door swinging behind him. Draco stood in the hallway and stared at the spot where Potter had just been standing, wondering a lot of things all at once, with regards to the general theme of what the fuck.