Right Hand Red DRARRY

Chapter Three: Truth or Dare

It snowed heavily the third night at the Burrow, and Harry woke to the sun blaring off the white surfaces of everything as though the world meant to blind him permanently. The sun shot through the window of Ron's room and bounced off Harry's recently charmed Wailing Warner. He covered his eyes and rolled away, groaning.

At least he'd been able to make the bloody thing. He had been so distracted in class, trying to see Draco's face, to know what he was thinking.

Defence had been even worse. They'd all unveiled their wandless spells that day, and it brought back all the sensory memories of messing about with Draco in the clearing. When Harry had been called upon to demonstrate his spell, he'd borrowed Neville's Remembrall and chosen Wingardium Leviosa to levitate it. He'd meant it as a hidden message to Draco. Since the arsehole wouldn't speak to him, Harry tried to say it with magic: that this was what was real between them. What they'd shared mattered, not some barmy interview.

But Draco had gone up in front of the class next, his eyes hard as stones. Harry should have guessed he'd have his own message: he Depulso'd the still-floating Remembrall, smashing it to bits against the wall.

"Not again," Neville had groaned.

Harry had sighed, his heart heavy as he watched Draco stalk back to his place among his friends.

He hadn't seen Draco again before they left for the break.

The glaring sunlight finally won in Harry's battle for more sleep, and when he trudged downstairs to find Neville and Ginny groping in a hallway, he wished it really had blinded him. But he could see them all too well. They broke apart when they noticed him, but he just murmured a good morning and proceeded to the kitchen, uncaring that they were madly in love except that their hands all over each other reminded him of what he was pretty sure he'd lost.

And he didn't even know if it was his fault.

Ron insisted it wasn't.

Hermione wasn't as sure.

Ron didn't know why he cared so much.

Harry didn't feel like explaining.

Mrs Weasley greeted him for breakfast, and he ate heartily, as he had the last three days, and then he rode his broom around the garden with Ron, George, Ginny, and Charlie until lunch.

There was a pervasive comfort to the familiarity, the undaunted stoicism of this family. His family. He knew they were all worried about the morose walks he'd take for hours in the snowy countryside every day between lunch and dinner. But they let him have his space and never failed to be there for him upon his return, when he was freezing and starving and ready to smile about something again.

It felt good to be around Hermione and Ron at the same time. It wasn't until now that he realised how often he'd chosen Draco over them all these weeks, yet also how often they had chosen each other as well. Not that any of them harboured any hard feelings about it. Now that they were all at the Burrow, it felt like old times. They sat around together and talked and laughed late into each dreadfully cold night.

They were doing just that the evening of the third day, the next day being Christmas Eve, when a regal-looking eagle owl landed on the outside ledge of the window of Ron's room and tapped. Harry recognised the bird instantly, and the muscles between his ribs all seemed to tighten.

They let the bird in on a gust of blowing snow.

It flew directly to Ron and held out its leg, looking at none of them, as if it wouldn't deign.

"What do you reckon?" Ron asked. He opened the letter and read:

"Weasley,

I must sincerely apologise for the 'red-haired freak family' remark. I didn't mean it. I was just angry at Potter.