Two Sides of the Same Coin(DRARRY)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

"If you love the good thing vitally, enough to give up for it all that one must give up, then you must hate the cheap thing just as hard. I tell you, there is such a thing as creative hate! A contempt that drives you through fire, makes you risk everything and lose everything, makes you a long sight better than you ever knew you could be." - Willa Cather

Harry woke up to morning light. Accustomed to the window-rimmed walls of Gryffindor tower, it took him a moment to realize that there oughtn't be any morning light to wake up to. Because he wasn't waking up in his own bed, and the room he was waking up in didn't have any windows through which morning light could conceivably come in. Once his sleepy mind wrapped itself around that, the rest came flooding back. Detention. The checklist. His proposition. The Veritaserum.

Harry's breath hitched a little in his throat and he opened his eyes for real, blinking because sodding Merlin's pants, it was really bright for a room with no windows. After the residual delay from spending his formative years in a world that knew nothing of magic, Harry realized that Draco had probably charmed the room to imitate natural light patterns, sort of like the Great Hall. Draco was clever like that.

Harry thought about sitting up, but he decided he was too comfortable to move just yet. Draco's cheek had come to rest on Harry's shoulder sometime in the night, and its warmth was responsible for the irrepressible soft smile on Harry's lips. Was it conceited to think that he was finally reaping his reward for all the years of constant fear and hardship he had weathered to get to this point? If it was, he didn't care. Now that he had tasted such happiness, he'd fight harder to keep it than ever before. He just hoped he wouldn't have to.

Harry snuggled deeper into Draco's thick comforter until his face was level with Draco's sleeping one. Draco's breath brushed gently across Harry's face with each shallow exhalation from pink, parted lips. His eyelashes fanned across the thin skin under his eyes, so blond they were almost white, but longer and thicker than Harry could appreciate from his usual standing distance. The charmed morning light slanted across Draco's sleeping form and illuminated him in a wash of light so warm and magical that he fairly glowed, almost like he did in Harry's dream. But this was different. The dream had been beautiful – almost unnaturally so – but it had been scary, too, because it was so transient. This, however, filled Harry with an even more powerful sense of beauty, a feeling that was comforting rather than achy, because it was real. It was tangible. Harry reached out and stroked the soft skin of Draco's cheek, knowing that Draco wouldn't disappear as soon as he did.

Harry watched the sun rise by gauging the progression of light across Draco's body, perfectly content, but eventually decided to get up. With one last hungry gaze at Draco's relaxed form, as if trying to render a perfect mental image of it to keep in his memory, Harry pushed back the covers and swung his legs to the floor, careful to get up without waking Draco. He stood and stretched, taking in Draco's room now that he could see it in the light of day.

It was tidy. So tidy it almost seemed as if Draco were not really living here, but rather just visiting and not wanting to create too much clutter to be cleaned up when he left. Harry ambled around the room, stopping to run his fingers over Draco's belongings and examine the titles of books arranged neatly on various surfaces – the desktop, the nightstand... When he came to Draco's dresser, Harry noticed a lone glass vial on top that was out of place in Draco's otherwise painstakingly organized room, as if he had set it there temporarily and then forgotten about it. Or as if it were positioned to be within easy access for frequent use. Curious, Harry picked it up.

… & …

"Draco?" The sound of his own name penetrated Draco's sleep. It came again. "Draco?" His first instinct was to react with annoyance. It was Saturday, after all. What business did anyone have waking him up before he was good and ready? But then he recognized that the timbre of the voice was familiar – familiar and cherished. Suddenly he decided he preferred the waking world to the bliss of dreams.