Friendly Competition

[11] Speaking In Shadows

Harry's mood was back to being a bit low, as he sulkily laid on his best friends' sofa.

The message from Draco on his birthday had perked him up an embarrassing amount, but they had only exchanged a few notes total. Draco had been extraordinarily slow with a response the first time, and then hadn't replied to Harry's second response at all, and Harry was left feeling a bit weird again. He wasn't used to this odd sense of...longing.

It had only been a little over a week since his birthday, but the week without a response to his last note had been more than enough to bring his mood back down.

Andromeda had certainly noticed, though she didn't quite seem to think it was her business to ask. He tried to be involved in Teddy's life as much as possible, but he and Andromeda weren't exactly close.

Ron and Hermione, however, were just fine with thinking it was their business.

The problem was that they knew him a little too well, and no matter how much Harry had insisted he was merely missing school and being productive, they had slowly started to become more pointed in their assertions that it was very clearly because of Malfoy, Harry.

Harry, for his part, had no clue how they had come to this conclusion. And just because they were right didn't mean he was going to admit it — he'd embarrassed himself quite enough on the subject of Draco already by telling them what had happened at the End-of-Term Feast.

At the time, Ron had just laughed his arse off, but Hermione had gotten that look, the one he didn't really know how to put a name to, but in this case had her saying, "I know you were pretty...isolated—"

"Shoved in a cupboard by nutters!" Ron had interrupted

"—Yes, that, but you had access to Muggle news your whole life until you were an adult when you weren't at Hogwarts, right? I mean, maybe patchy, but even just hearing people talking..."

Harry had cut off her rambling with a confused "Yeah?" and she had simply made a noncommittal noise and elbowed Ron, before blatantly changing the subject. It had definitely given Harry the feeling that this mystery would come back to bite him later whenever she decided to finish the conversation.

Unfortunately, he was afraid that moment may be now.

Ron looked at him. "You can't really believe you're fooling us, right? All you talk about is 'Malfoy, Malfoy, Malfoy', all the bloody time. Half of your Floo calls during the school year were entirely about him, and you still natter on about him at every given opportunity!"

Hermione elbowed him.

"I do not!" Harry protested, but he felt his face heating up. Did he really? Now that they mentioned it, he wasn't so sure... "It's just— It's relevant! There wasn't much to do at Hogwarts besides classwork and bothering him! And I'm— It's just a bit weird to go from seeing someone every day to not seeing them at all, and we did sort of become friends, but I'm not weird about it."

They both opened their mouths to speak, but they were interrupted by a tapping at the window. Their owl order dinner had arrived.

"I'll get it." Harry leapt to his feet, eager for an escape to the conversation.

"Alright, sorry, let's change the subject," Hermione said.

Harry shoved open the window for the owl, hiding his small sigh of relief that he had managed to dodge that conversation once again, and then rummaged in his pockets for payment.

"Do you remember what I told you last summer about finding a future partner?" Hermione asked, and Ron shot her a look behind Harry's back. She just gave him a small half-shrug, as if to say 'worth a try'.