Chapter Text
“Put your wand down, Malfoy. If you blow this door off its hinges, Umbridge will have us both hanging in the dungeons by our ankles.”
The fifth-floor broom closet wasn’t designed to hold two teenage boys who despised each other. The air was suffocatingly tight, smelling of dust, floor wax, and the green apple shampoo currently giving Harry a headache.
A breath away, Draco was hyperventilating, his grey eyes flashing in the pitch black. The silver Inquisitorial Squad pin on his chest dug into Harry’s robes every time the Slytherin leaned forward.
“I would rather face a lifetime of detention than spend another second trapped in this box with you,” Draco hissed. The tip of his hawthorn wand was pressed directly beneath Harry’s jaw, shooting off angry red sparks. “Move.”
“No.” Harry’s voice was deadpan; he didn’t flinch. “Peeves locked it from the outside. Alohomora won’t work, and a Blasting Curse will just bring Filch running.”
“I. Don’t. Care.” Draco’s chest heaved. Small, dark spaces always made him lose his mind, and Harry standing there so solidly made his blood boil.
“You’re panicking,” Harry stated quietly. He didn’t bother reaching for his own wand. Instead, his left hand moved slowly, wrapping around Draco’s wand-wrist.
“Don’t touch me!” Draco snapped, jerking back, but Harry’s grip locked him in place with the sheer, unyielding strength of a Seeker.
“Listen to me,” Harry breathed, stepping forward until Draco’s back hit the wooden shelving with a muffled thud. “Take a breath. Your magic is leaking everywhere, Malfoy. My robes are about to catch fire.”
“Let go of my hand, Potter, or I swear to—”
Clip. Clop. Clip. Clop.
Footsteps echoed down the corridor, followed by a horribly familiar, high-pitched throat clearing. Umbridge. Draco’s eyes blew wide. He opened his mouth, half-ready to shout a desperate lie to save his own skin, but Harry moved faster.
In one fluid motion, Harry slammed his palm over Draco’s mouth, using his body weight to pin him flush against the shelves.
“Shh,” Harry hissed right against Draco’s ear.
Draco thrashed instantly, shoving against Harry’s chest, but Harry was a brick wall. He let Draco burn out his nervous energy, effortlessly holding him down. Draco’s heart hammered a frantic rhythm directly against Harry’s chest.
Outside, the footsteps slowed to a halt. A shadow blocked the sliver of light at the bottom of the door. Harry held Draco’s frantic gaze in the dark, issuing a silent, lethal warning: Don’t move.
For ten seconds that felt like an hour, they froze. Slowly, the shadow shifted, and Umbridge’s footsteps faded down the corridor.
Harry didn’t let go immediately. He stared straight into the storm of Draco’s eyes—a violent mix of adrenaline, fury, and something much darker.
With agonizing slowness, Harry lowered his hand from Draco’s mouth, but he didn’t step back. Not an inch. Instead, his fingers trailed down, lightly ghosting over the tense line of Draco’s jaw.
“Are you done throwing a tantrum?” Harry whispered. There was no mockery in his tone, just a quiet, grounding authority.
Draco swallowed hard, his chest still rising and falling rapidly. His lips were parted, robbed of their usual venom. He hated how calm Harry was. He hated the smell of cedar and rain clouding his brain. And most of all, he hated that his racing heart had absolutely nothing to do with panic anymore.
“You,” Draco breathed, his voice rough and unsteady, “are an absolute git, Potter.” Harry gave a sharp, very un-Gryffindor smirk.
“A git that just saved your shiny little badge?” Harry tilted his head, hovering a breath away from Draco’s. “Now, are you going to cooperate while I figure out how to pick that lock, or do you need me to shut you up again, Malfoy?”
~~~o0o~~~
The afternoon sun was impossibly bright, washing the vibrant green grass of the Transfiguration courtyard in a harsh, cheerful light that felt like a personal insult to Harry’s foul mood. He was exhausted, his scar was a dull, constant throb, and he just wanted to get to the library in peace.
But Draco Malfoy, it seemed, was on a warpath.
Ever since the incident with the locked door three days ago, the Slytherin had been overcompensating with a vengeance. The quiet, heavy tension they had shared in the dark had been replaced by a loud cruelty, as if Malfoy needed to prove to the entire school—and himself—that he was still the untouchable predator.
“Going to cry to Dumbledore again, Potter?” Draco’s voice sliced through the ambient chatter. He was lounging against the ancient stone arches of the cloisters, flanked by Crabbe and Goyle like gargoyles. “Oh, wait. He won’t even look at you these days, will he?”
Harry kept walking, his jaw locked tight. Ignore him. Keep walking.
Beside him, Ron’s ears were already turning a dangerous crimson, and Hermione was gripping her books tight enough to turn her knuckles white.
“It must be exhausting,” Draco called out, his tone dripping with mock sympathy as he pushed off the stone pillar and stepped directly into their path. “Having to constantly invent new delusions just to keep everyone looking at you. Tell me, do you actually believe the rubbish you spout, or is it just a pathetic cry for attention from a boy who realizes nobody actually wants him around?”
“Shut your mouth, Malfoy,” Ron snarled, his hand dropping to his pocket. “Ron, don’t,” Hermione warned, though her glare at Draco was lethal.
Draco ignored them, his eyes locked on Harry. He tilted his chin down, using that marginal fraction of an inch he had on Harry to assert a calculated superiority, desperate to erase the memory of being pinned helpless in the dark.
“Or maybe you just like the pity,” Draco purred, his voice dropping just enough so only the three of them could hear the venom. He stepped right over the invisible line of Harry’s personal space. “A desperate little orphan collecting strays because he knows anyone with an ounce of sense wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. You’re not a hero, Potter. You’re a liability. A walking death sentence for anyone stupid enough to stand near you.”
Something inside Harry snapped—a sharp, jagged fracture like ice cracking over a frozen lake. The carefully constructed wall of calm he used to survive Umbridge and the whispers vanished in a split second, exposing the raw nerve underneath.
The air in the stone corridor instantly dropped ten degrees.
Before anyone could blink, Harry moved. He didn’t reach for his wand. He grabbed the heavy wool of Draco’s robes with both hands and shoved the Slytherin backward.
Draco stumbled, his eyes flying wide in shock as Harry backed him hard into the nearest stone pillar. The impact knocked the breath from Draco’s lungs. Crabbe and Goyle lurched forward, but Hermione’s wand was instantly levelled at them.
“Take one more step and I’ll hex you into next week!”
Harry didn’t hear her. The rest of the courtyard had ceased to exist.
He pinned Draco to the stone, neutralizing the height difference by crowding into Draco’s space with absolute, terrifying force. His grip on the robes trembled, his knuckles white.
“Say that again,” Harry breathed. His voice wasn't the commanding baritone from the closet; it was rough, shaking, and laced with unfiltered fury.
Draco’s pulse hammered visibly in his throat. He had wanted a reaction—wanted to tear away that infuriating composure—but looking directly into the burning green of Harry’s eyes, he realized he had made a colossal miscalculation. The magic rolling off Harry was suffocating, crackling in the air like static before a lightning strike.
“Get your hands off me,” Draco said, but the sneer was gone. His voice betrayed a tremor he couldn’t hide.
“You think you know anything about what I’m dealing with?” Harry hissed, his breath hot against Draco’s pale skin. The vulnerability in his anger was devastating; it was sheer, exhausted agony. “You think you can use the people I care about as a punchline to make yourself feel bigger?”
Draco swallowed hard, his back pressed flat against the cold stone. His hands locked onto Harry’s forearms. He dug his fingers in, wrenching desperately, but Harry didn't so much as flinch at the sharp bite of his nails. Draco had aimed for the armour, but he had hit the wound, and the reality of Harry’s pain was suddenly blindingly obvious.
“You push and push,” Harry continued, his grip tightening until the seams of Draco’s robes groaned, “because you’re terrified. You hate the quiet, Malfoy. You hate it because it leaves you alone with yourself, so you have to make noise. You have to try and break me just to prove you exist.”
Draco’s breath hitched. The cruel retort died on his tongue. He looked at the harsh tension in Harry’s jaw, at the wild, unrestrained power flickering in his eyes, and felt an unfamiliar, heavy ache in his own chest.
For a brief, suspended moment, neither of them moved. Harry’s chest was heaving, his jagged breaths syncing dangerously with Draco’s erratic pulse.
Slowly, the crackle of magic in the air dissipated. Harry closed his eyes, fighting a silent, brutal war to pull himself together. When he opened them again, the fiery rage had retreated into bone-deep exhaustion.
Harry released Draco’s robes, stepping back abruptly. The sudden absence of his heat left Draco feeling unmoored, the cold stone biting at his back.
Harry smoothed his own robes with shaking hands, refusing to look at Draco. “Let’s go,” Harry muttered to Ron and Hermione, his voice terrifyingly hollow.
He turned and walked away. For several agonizing seconds, Draco just stood frozen against the pillar. His uniform was crumpled, his hair dishevelled. He pressed a trembling hand over his ribs where Harry’s fists had just been, his mind scrambling wildly to piece his composure back together.
“Fuck you, Potter!” Draco roared down the courtyard at the retreating backs. His voice cracked loudly in the open air, utterly devoid of his usual polished drawl. Turning sharply on his heel, Draco shoved violently past a bewildered Crabbe and Goyle, storming off into the stone corridors in an unraveled, furious blur.