Melancholia | Drarry

take it back

For a long while, Draco doesn't say a word. He keeps his eyes on the road, hands nimble on the steering wheel, lips unmoving. Pansy wonders, bitterly, if she'll fade from his lack of attention and turn into the ghost he seems to be treating her as.

But when the car, a blue, beat-up Honda Civic, passes over the New York border, Draco finally speaks, and Pansy latches on to every word.

"I'm sorry I've been acting so strange." The headlights illuminate the letters on a route sign, and they flash silver. "Lately, I feel like something's missing."

Missing from what? Us? Pansy wants to interject, but she holds her tongue, letting the silence seep into the seats, spill across the windshield. Her knees are curled to her chest; her head rests against the window. She hasn't been entirely honest, so how can she expect Draco to be?

Pansy glances at her backpack, slumped on the floor in front of her. It carries only a fraction of the items she'd stolen, snagged from the Lockhart backroom. There were two black garbage bags full, neatly labeled with two names, one over the other: Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy.

The words, the Valentine's gift - they are not her own. Shame and anger at herself rises in Pansy, but she squashes it down. This is what she does, after all. Anything to get - and keep -what she wants.

"Maybe we can have a bit of space," Draco says. "You're still looking for another job, right? I know you've got loads to worry about."

I'm worried about you. I love you. The words, even unspoken, fall flat. Pansy merely nods.

"We should be there soon. I'll drop you off."

Cold, indifferent. The aloofness that Pansy had found herself so attracted to is now directed at her. "Fine." That's just fine.

∞ ∞ ∞

Before the kiss, Harry recalls so much more. Shyness, yes, hesitance, but a spark of adventure, too, a new willingness to try more than what's offered. The faded streak of rebellion he'd seen in Draco at school comes back in full force and color, and Harry lets himself follow it. Above all, there's friendship and laughter, so much of it filling Harry's heart that he barely knows what to do with himself.

Day by day, Harry's perception of Draco changes. He's always been annoyingly clever since school, but Harry finds himself appreciating, enjoying, even, the cutting wit and snide remarks that leave Harry's sides aching. The tenderness, though, Harry has hardly ever seen, the gentleness that makes Draco coo at a kitten in a pet store window and let a couple of kids skip the line at the fair with feigned reluctance. Draco has really come into himself, his sharp edges softened, his smiles more common.

Harry adores him.

The memories pass by like the pages of a family scrapbook - worn at the edges, fading with every turn of the page. Draco cheekily refusing to give Harry anything more than a cherry from his enormous sundae. The lunches out with Hermione and Ron, which Harry never considers to be double dates, though his friends know better. Draco changing his shirt in Harry's apartment after a coffee spill - the smooth stripe of skin, the curve of his arms, is the beginning of Harry's wonderings if he's as straight as he thinks he is. The challenge in an empty, late-afternoon football field, a slightly deflated black-and-white ball beneath Draco's boot.

Harry's hesitation keeps him at the edge of the field, but Draco's smirk and his words bring him out.

"Scared, Potter?"