Draco doesn’t know when he stopped trying to get Potter to leave him alone.

He just realizes that he has one day during lunch when an unfamiliar owl drops an unsuspecting letter on his lap. It’s not his first time receiving hate mail, and so he’s not really surprised when he opens it and sees one line:

Leave Harry Potter alone.

What surprises him is his reaction, his conviction, as he thinks strongly to himself, No. I don’t want to.

He looks across the room, to the Gryffindor table, where Potter sits, laughing at whatever inane joke Weasley had said. He looks happy, surrounded by his friends, with no weight of any Dark Lord pressing down on his shoulders.

And then Potter looks up, catches his eye, and then sends him the most dazzling smile, and Draco thinks, with his heart dropping to his stomach and his fist crumpling the note, No. Don’t take this away from me.

It bes frequent. Daily, even. Sinceing to Hogwarts, he had already asked the Headmistress to ban the Howlers, but if people are sending him Owls under the guise of innocent, enveloped letters, then that would definitely be harder to stop.

Instead, Draco stops reading them in the Great Hall. He pockets them, like dirty secrets, and reads them at night, before Potteres. It hurts, of course it does, and at first, he had read them with the goal of finding out who they were from, but in the end, he realizes that he had been reading them like an act of penitence.

But it’s during one night that he opens a letter with a hidden Stinging Hex, and the pain from the welt on his wrist makes him wonder, Why am I doing this again?

And it’s when Potteres in, stumbles on him sitting on his bed with a mess of opened letters scattered around him and cradling his wrist that he remembers what Potter had said: You can ask for help, you know.

Potter frowns at him as he enters, obviously taking in the scene and trying to understand what’s happening. He glances at how Draco’s holding his wrist that’s covered by the sleeve of his robes. “What’s wrong?”

And Draco had expected it to feel like tattling, or like giving up, but when he says it, he finds that he’s just really, really relieved to finally be able to share anything with this man.

“I’ve been receiving letters.”

“Oh?” Potter asks curiously, taking off his robes and throwing it on his bed without preamble, as if he lives here. Draco likes it.

Potter peers at the letters, but they’re all folded, and so Draco hands him the nearest one, the very first one.

The way Potter’s face darkens at the message warms him from the inside. It’s fucked up, but he likes knowing that he can affect Potter like this.

Potter unfolds another letter, then another, then another, until he’s gone through all of them, and he crushes the last one in his fist with his lips curled in distaste. He throws it in the garbage bin, and glares at the remaining letters on the bed. “How long has this been going on?” he demands.

Draco starts to gather the letters into a neat pile. “A week, maybe more?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Potter’s angry, and Draco wants to kiss his frown away.

It’s hard when Potter’s sweet enough to get angry for him. Draco closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before he does something stupid like confess.

When he opens his eyes, he looks straight at Harry’s and says, “I’m telling you now.”

And he knows, with the way Potter’s tense shoulders slowly relax and the furrow in his eyebrows ease, that Potter understands the trust and humility that he’s giving in that single act of telling.

“Give that to me,” Potter mutters instead and snatches the pile of letters from Draco’s hand. He turns back to his robes on the other bed, and shoves the letters inside one of its pockets with a grumble. “I’m giving these to Professor McGonagall. Have you read all of them?”

“Yes.”

“Stop reading them.” Potter sighs, fingers pressing on his temple. “Why do you even keep on opening them?”

Draco smiles slightly at the frustrated figure Potter’s back makes. “Thought it might convince me.”

“To what?”

“To leave you alone.”

Potter whips his head back to look at him, stunned and hurt at his admission. “Why would you—”

And Draco cuts him off, because he’s ready for this, he’s been ready with these words for so long, and he just needs to try, one last time. “I’m not someone you should be friends with, Potter.”

“Malfoy.” Potter says, like a warning. “You’re starting with that crap again.”

“It’s not crap,” Draco affirms. He can feel the well of emotions rising up again, the shame, the guilt, and the need to escape from it, and it’s making the edges of his vision go dark. He inhales sharply, struggles to keep himself here. “It’s…People are obviously going to talk, you know. This isn’t going to be the last time, and there’s really nothing else that they can say about me that hasn’t already been said, but you—you’re going to get the worst of it. Harry Potter being friends with an ex-Death Eater, someone who’s a little insane—”

A hand closes around his fingers, grips them tight and firm. Draco pulls himself back, fights his way back from thefortable darkness in his head, towards the grounding, exhilarating reality of the hand holding his.

When he returns,pletely returns, Potter’s sitting on his bed, still holding his hand, and looking straight at him.

“I don’t really care about what Harry Potter those people are imagining,” Potter is murmuring. “This Harry Potter wants to be friends with that ex-Death Eater, someone who’s a little insane.”

Draco chuckles, smiles at him weakly. “Salazar, Potter, you didn’t have to agree with the insane part.”

Potter smiles back at him. “Your words, not mine. And look. You fought it off, didn’t you?”

He did. He did. And he doesn’t know if it’s because it’s the first time he’s managed to stop himself from falling in the rabbit hole his mind has made, or if it’s because of the pride in Potter’s eyes as he looks at him, or Potter wanting to stay with him, that he finds his eyes bing warm.

“Yeah.” His voice is shaking. “Thanks.”

Potter still hasn’t let go of his hand. “Well then, has it convinced you?”

It’s making Draco have a hard time concentrating. “What?”

“Have the letters convinced you to leave me alone?”

And Potter’s too close, too near, and there is a traitorous hope crawling up his stomach and swelling in his chest at Potter’s proximity, his words, the way he’s looking at him. “No.”

“I’m glad.” There’s a crinkle at the corner of Potter’s eyes when he smiles, and Draco hates it, as much as he hates the way Potter’s thumb is slowly tracing circles against his palm. There is pink colouring Potter’s cheeks and he hates that, too. “I, err, I suppose this is a good time to tell you that I don’t have exactly innocent intentions in, uhm, being friends with you.”

And it’s like a blow to the chest. Draco laughs, stunned and breathless, and he ducks his head, tries to stop the well of tears from falling.

“Stop. Stop,” he says, voice trembling. “You don’t get to say it first.”

The thumb stops. There is confusion in Potter’s voice. “What?”

Draco grips Potter’s hand back. It feels right, Potter’s hand in his. “Give me a moment,” he says, and it’s almost a plea. He doesn’t want their first kiss to taste like tears. He takes a deep, shaky inhale, and musters the courage. “Give me a moment and then I’ll kiss you.”

A sharp intake of breath. And then an usatory “…You don’t say that and expect me to wait a moment.”

And Draco laughs again, giddy and warm, and he wipes his eyes with his other hand, the one hit by the hex, and it still hurts, that one, but it’s nothingpared to finally, finally getting this.

“Goddamn, Potter, you really have no patience.”

And he swallows all the hesitation down his throat and pulls Potter down for a kiss.

Dear Harry,

Consider me surprised to see a picture of you and my son in an alleyway in Hogsmeade.

I am writing to spare you the suffering of wondering about my thoughts on the matter.

I would love it if you could join us for the holidays.

Love,

Narcissa

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