Draco

It upsets him, that he’s still good at this.

It’s like that no matter how much you try to fight against it, some part of you grows up to be the person that your parents were. That no matter how much you want your life to be different, destiny has a way of binding you by the wrists and dragging you to your fate anyways, like it doesn’t matter what choices you make or the things you try to feel. That even when you are working desperately towards bing something more, you look in the mirror one day and find that the future you have been planning for is already here, and it looks nothing like you wanted it to.

Like one day, you get dressed up for a party that you friend invites you to and you happen to glance up in the mirror as you are doing up your tie and realize that somehow, despite your best efforts, you have turned into your father.

Draco wants to rip off the suit as soon as he notices, because he does not want to be the type of person who knows how to keep up appearances anymore, and he does not want to be the kind of guy who looks like he is always preparing for a photoshoot. He doesn’t want to spend tonight at the ministry, either, because he will inevitably fall back into the steps of a conversation he had learned long ago, a lesson that was bought by his parents’ money, back when everyone knew their names, even if this time, he would circle the room with Harry by his side. It is still too much of the same—the same place and the same people and the same conversation he had memorized back when he was a child and Draco himself, still the same.

“You look amazing.” Harry meets his eyes in the mirror. “Truly.” He bends in to press a kiss to a spot right below his ear, a spot that he had found last night and seemed overjoyed to have discovered. They still are not talking about it, when they do things like this, like they really have convinced themselves that this means they are only friends. Or maybe they shifted from friends to something more without Draco noticing, and he was the only one confused about the labels. “Amazing.”

He hands outpliments like they don’t cost him anything. At breakfast, out shopping, when they climb into bed. Harry loves easy. Draco wishes he could say the same.

“We don’t have to go.” Harry adds, after Draco had done nothing but stare at him for a few moments, long enough for Draco to redo Harry’s tie and cufflinks, because after eighteen years of wearing nothing fancier than a sweater, he seems to have refused to learn how to put those on properly. “We could stay home. Hide.”

It was tempting, except for the fact that Hermione was giving a speech and wanted Draco there to see it, and this was on personal invitation of Percy, who he was actually fond of him, and Ge would be there, and Ginny said that these things were easier for Ge to take with Draco by his side.

(Draco’s grown very fond of Ge. they’re actually friends now, honest to god, the ones that sit in a pub and talk even when they don’t feel like drinking themselves to death. Draco would like to think it’s his natural charm, but more likely, Ge was just grateful for someone who had never known him as an attachment of Fred.)

And also, he was a Malfoy. And Malfoy’s don’t run away, no matter how much they may want to.

“Of course we’re going.” He makes himself smile, but Harry just rolls his eyes and ducks down for one more kiss. “It’ll be fun.”

You really were the perfect son, when you went to these. Draco thought sourly, even as he leans further into the arm that Harry had put around his shoulders to guide him through the crowd. They had said hi to everyone and dodged all the waitstaff that were attempting to be the one to serve The Boy Who Lived, and now Harry was dragging them both in a beeline towards Ron and Hermione. The perfect heir, the perfect Malfoy, the creator of the perfect legacy. You could have been something great.

He trips, just a little stumble over the edge of someone’s dress robes, but Harry’s arm was around him and he did not fall, just felt the tightening of Harry’s fingers around his waist, a silent reminder that they were in this together.

“Draco!” Hermione wrapped him in a hug so tight that it knocked the air out of his lungs, and Draco found himself with a mouthful of bushy hair. He could see Ron from over her shoulder, shrugging at Harry exasperatedly while balancing a plate piled high with cookies. “I didn’t think you wereing!”

“Of course I came!” Draco pried herself off with some difficulty and passed her onto Harry, who was a bit more practiced at suffering through her hugs. “You think I would miss this?”

Beside them, Ron shrugs. “She’s been like this all day.” He has his voice lowered to mutter in Draco’s ear, apparently deciding that they’vee to a momentary truce until Hermione gets a grip. “I just hope she doesn’t freak when she gets up there.”

“You kidding? She’ll be fine.” He snags one of the cookies off the plate just to test the boundaries and then considers it a good sign when Ron keeps the plate within his reach. “We just have to hope that she doesn’t sneak in something about spew.”

Ron laughed, and then clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t give her any ideas.”

Voldemort was great, Draco adds, slightly calmer, like this little piece of conversation was all it took to snap his skin back into place, to let him stop feel as if he was too big for his body. His father would not have been able to talk to people like that, as if they were friends. His father would never have known how great they were because he was blinded by his own bigotry. He was great and he did horrible things and he made people bow down to him because the only other option was to die and he never knew what it was to be loved, not really. Sometimes being great isn’t the best thing, if the only memories you leave behind are scars.

He’s sitting between Ge and Harry, two tables away from Hermione, so when she gets called up to the podium by Kingsley, he has to bend around Ge to reach out a hand to her. She pauses just long enough to hold on, long enough for three squeezes, their little sign that everything will be okay, that they will figure everything out.

(It had started back with the potions, when Hermione would get to frustrated with not knowing the answers that she seemed ready to throw it all out the window and let all her potions burn to nothing but a caustic heap. Draco hadn’t known what to say, but he had known enough to do this. It’s be their thing, ever since.)

“You’re going to be great.” Draco whispers, in the time it takes for those three pulses to travel from him to her, one, two, three, and then she lets go, climbing the stairs to stand beside the minister with a sense of grace Draco thought would be hard to miss, even though he had missed it for seven long years. It’s easy to see what you want, when you’re blinded by hate.

He’s not staring at her like everyone else is. They’re all watching her with rapt attention, but Draco is looking around at everyone else, all the other tables, so he can tell her who laughed when she made that joke in the opening (he helped here up with it. It took them three hours. neither of them were that funny.) and if anyone cried when she talked about those she had lost. She had been at his house (Harry’s house? He can probably say it’s his house) until after midnight last night, practicing the way she enunciated every word and the dramatic effect held in each phrase, making sure she knew when to pause for eye contact. They had even made up a bunch of signals for Draco to give her, should he be watching and see people looking confused, for her to know if she is too loud or too quiet, too fast or too slow.

He’s listening, but he isn’t watching, which is why he sees it before anyone else does.

How the entire cateringpany had seemed to melt away into the shadows when the speech started, but there was still one man dressed in their uniform edging towards the front of the crowd. How his wand was dangling from his fingers, even though they had been made to check their wands at the door for what they claimed to be security measures. How even as Hermione was still speaking and the crowd was still watching, the chandelier above her started to sway, just a bit, enough to send scattering of light reflecting off the crystals and dancing over the faces of those watching.

One of the beams of light catches Hermione across the eyes, bright enough that she loses her focus and half raises her hand to block it. It’s the only reason that anyone notices it at all, and there is an awful sense of de ja vu, the way Draco can hear Ron screaming for Hermione to move out of the way and how the chandelier was falling, falling, falling down to her, and she would not get out of the way in time, and it was just like that night at the manor only there was no Dobby to save her now.

There was no one to save her, actually. Ron was too far away, and no one had their wands, and even Kingsley was not close enough to save her. Caught off guard, none of the others had even started to move yet.

But Draco had known. He had seen. And he had been the first to move, so by the time everyone else was just pushing back their chairs, he was lunging across those last few feet of space, shoving her so hard that he is half worried he might have hurt her, but he knew that it would not have hurt as bad as having an entire chandelier fall on top of you.

Ha, he thinks, even as he hears her scream. He has enough time to notice that she has cleared the wreckage and to curl up in a ball, enough time to cover his face with his arms and catch sight of Ge barreling towards him, leaping over Draco’s fallen chair, but he was not fast enough. Seems like I’ve done something great after all.

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