Chapter Text
“Harry, mate, you don’t have to do it. It’s Malfoy, for Merlin’s --”
The words fall short from Ron’s mouth as Malfoy surges forward and curls his fist in the front of Harry’s sweater, planting a solid kiss on his lips with a crease between his brow and his shoulders stiff. Immediately, a chorus of gasps, some disgusted and some delighted, ripples through the crowd of returning eighth-years. Harry’s eyes are wide, shocked ovals, staring at the much too close face of Malfoy. The light dusting of freckles over his pale skin. The set violet smudges beneath his eyes. The flutter of long, platinum eyelashes. Harry sits there, frozen in… fear? Repulsion? He doesn’t have time to consider what effect this is having on him before Malfoy suddenly draws back.
For a brief moment, their gazes lock, and Harry takes in the collected expression on Malfoy’s face. No, not collected -- he looks inconvenienced , with a little tick of irritation evident in the narrowing of his eyes. This revelation instantly aggravates Harry, who, feeling encouraged by the liquor thrumming in his blood, is ready to throw Malfoy an accusation that he finds kissing him unpleasant -- a claim that virtually helps neither of them in this situation.
But Malfoy sweeps away before Harry realizes it, pulling with him Pansy, who calls back a thrilled “Ciao!” to the crowd before they disappear from the Gryffindor common room. The room is void of sound, an impressive feat given how many students are drunk past their wits. It isn’t until a long, low whistle comes from the circle that the babbling begins.
“I didn’t think Malfoy had that in him!” someone says.
“You’re joking, right? Have you seen him?” another voice murmurs in response, amused.
“I’m totally pulling that one out for the Pensieve,” says a girl, who is rewarded with a plethora of sniggers.
Harry stares at the empty Firewhisky bottle that sits at the center of the gathering, its neck pointed at the now-empty spot where Malfoy had been perched. Without thinking, his tongue darts out between his lips, tasting the press of alcohol Malfoy had left there. It’s this moment that finally draws a reaction out of Harry, and a hot flush rapidly creeps up his neck and burns his face.
Malfoy kissed him. Kissed him, like, with his mouth. Harry couldn’t determine which was worse: the fact that it had happened at all, or the fact that Malfoy beat him to it. After all, it had been his turn of spin-the-bottle, not the Slytherin’s. Did his hesitance make him look cowardly? Did Malfoy’s lack thereof make him look gutsy?
A gentle shake to his shoulder from Hermione stirs Harry from his spiraling mind, and he helplessly looks up at her from where she kneels. He hopes he doesn’t look as sweaty as he feels.
“Are you alright, Harry?” she asks, genuinely concerned for him. The back of her hand reaches up to push his hair back and feel his forehead, which he bats away with embarrassment as he realizes how many eyes are on them.
“I’m fine,” he mumbles, fixing his hair back into its mess. “It was just a kiss. That’s the point of the whole game, isn’t it?” Harry glances over the faces of his peers as he says this, hoping to remind them that this shouldn’t be any different than another pair of students kissing by the bottle. A few of them dart their gazes elsewhere guiltily, because, yes, in theory, that’s exactly what the point of the game is. But Harry and Malfoy kissing? That hadn’t been considered an option until it happened.
“Come on, let’s keep playing,” Harry says a bit stiffly, sitting up and subtly wiping his palms on his jeans. A few students murmur in agreement, and eventually, the game has picked up once more.
The rest of the night plays out. Hannah Abbott kisses Neville. Neville kisses Parvati. She kisses Dean, who kisses Seamus, who kisses Hermione, who kisses Ron, and so on. Harry gets kissed, too, but truthfully, his head isn’t in the game anymore. Not since Malfoy left. Why is that?
The late hour sends students back to their respective rooms. Everyone staggers a bit as they go, slurring and giggling down corridors and up staircases. Harry, Ron, and Hermione stay back to help clean up the common room with a few others, with Harry shoveling empty bottles in concentrated silence and Ron and Hermione sharing solicitous glances over his head. While the energy in the room is somewhat foreign this time around, this is routine for many of the eighth-years. At the end of every week, one of the four houses will host a gathering for the returning faces within the eighth-year class, usually in a common room, but on occasion in Hogsmeade or another empty space of the castle. Not every student attends, nor are they obligated to, but the majority has taken to these little parties, perhaps for the promise of alcohol, or instead for the comfort of others’ presences. Regardless, friendships have been both established and strengthened between old faces. Mostly.
That comes back to Harry, nibbling at his thumbnail as he wandlessly spells crumbs from the plush carpet of the common room, his thoughts stuck only on Malfoy. Malfoy never attended the eighth-year shindigs -- not since the academic year began just over a month ago. Seeing him there tonight had surprised many of the regular attendees and put off the others. While house unity seemed stronger than ever, it was still barely scraping by, and much of the student body could wordlessly agree that Malfoy made them uneasy. He’d been let off the hook -- with limitations -- in his trial after the war, his father receiving the brunt of the punishment with a life sentence in Azkaban. Deemed innocent enough and returned to Hogwarts, Malfoy wasn’t necessarily anyone’s desired friend. And he didn’t act like he wanted friends, so there seemed to be an unspoken agreement between him and the entire student body to just leave him alone.
But he’d still been there in the Gryffindor common room, looking uncomfortable, practically stitched to Pansy’s side the whole night. She had probably forced him to come with her. It wasn’t until the Firewhisky was brought out that he seemed to relax just an inch. And then he was roped into spin-the-bottle, and then he was kissing Harry, and then he was gone.
“I think the pillows are fluffed enough, mate,” Ron says behind Harry, startling him from the deep web of thoughts he’d been weaving for the last several minutes. Harry looks up to see that he’s been aggressively prodding a loveseat pillow between two fists the entire time. He tosses it to the sofa.
“Right. Bit drunk,” Harry says, and it’s not a lie. He turns around to face Ron and Hermione, who has just sidled up beside him. Any of the other students helping them clean up have since disappeared to their rooms.
“Perhaps we ought to get to bed,” Hermione suggests. “Especially you, Harry. Didn’t you spend most of the evening on the Quidditch pitch?” There’s the gentle implication that she’s worried about him and what happened this night, but Harry doesn’t challenge her on it tonight. Instead, he nods and scrubs his hands through his hair.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll head up. Ron?” Harry says, stepping back and waiting for Ron to join him.
Ron lingers by Hermione. “I’ll be up in a minute. Just want to make sure the common room’s clean and whatnot…” he says, and it takes a great deal of strength for Harry not to be snippy with him. He isn’t an idiot, nor is he blind, contrary to what his need for glasses claims. Ron and Hermione’s little romance hasn’t gone unnoticed by him. He’s always sort of known about it, even before it really happened. He just wished they would stop trying to keep it on the down-low around him.
Harry turns around, waves a hand in dismissal, and goes up to the boy’s dormitory in silence. He briefly struggles to get out of his clothes with his head swimming in Firewhisky, but he manages himself into his pajamas and bed soon enough.
With the sound of both quiet and loud snores around him, Harry stares up at his bed canopy and thinks.
Malfoy. Kiss. Bottle. Drunk. Kiss. Malfoy. Good. Really good.
Wait, had that kiss actually been really good? He sits up, startled by his own revelation.
Yes, the kiss was good. Malfoy’s lips had been soft and insistent on his own -- the right amount of pressure. He’d also looked good, with those ridiculous eyelashes and his porcelain complexion. Harry found himself imagining what it might have been like had he even tried reciprocating it, and then he was blushing all over again. Surely it was only his touch starvation that had him dwelling on it; his last moment of real intimacy had happened before the start of the war, as his relationship with Ginny had crumbled within the battle. Truthfully, it had been over shortly after it started, but how was one meant to break up with their girlfriend in the middle of a war? Ginny had the graciousness to end it for the both of them shortly after the storm subsided, thankfully, but that was the last time Harry had… well, anything.
He remains upright in bed, staring down at his blurry hands while his heartbeat thumps noisily in his head.
He is drunk. And he wants the kiss to happen again. Maybe if he were sober…
Harry collapses back into his bed to bury his face in his pillow, trying to will away every thought in his stupid head. Seconds later, he hears Ron creep into the dorm and climb under his respective covers. He starts snoring within the minute.
Envious of Ron’s ability to turn his brain off like that, Harry rolls onto his back and squeezes his eyes shut.
If he were to fall asleep anytime soon, it would be with the afterthought of Malfoy’s kiss on his lips.