All the Ghosts are Screaming

12

Draco

Draco wakes up the next morning on the floor beneath the couch, wearing clothes that aren't his. He has a fuzzy memory of stumbling out of the bathroom into Harry's room, and Harry saying something about never getting to have the cheesy, traditional kind of sleepover, and then the two of them trying to figure out how to have a movie night when Harry is too drunk to read any of the buttons and Draco had never even seen a DVD player before.

It was a good night, even if he's sure that it will come back to bite them in a way he can't figure out. But he's okay with that, because Harry is... Harry is somewhere, and Draco is here, and he's got all day to deal with this. He would start by cleaning up the bathroom, and then to the bedroom, and then he would sit and think up a plan of action to explain why he felt the need to climb into the bathtub with Harry (and which one of them started that? the two of them, honestly).

It was a good plan, one that made some semblance of control sink into his bones. It would have worked, too, if he hadn't rounded the corner into the kitchen for a cup of coffee and found Harry at the kitchen table, staring down at the Daily Prophet like it might hold some answers.

"Hey." Draco stops short, wanting to turn around until he has a moment to collect himself, but then thinks that it would make things even more awkward than he was already making them. The only thing for it was to pretend like nothing was wrong. "You hungry?"

Harry finally looks up from the paper. He is clearly exhausted, but he still manages to smile at the offer. "I could eat." Harry, at least, does not seem to think there was anything strange about what they did last night. Maybe Draco was the only one. Maybe this is what mates did, when they had normal childhoods.

(Normal childhoods. Right. Cause Harry definitely had a normal childhood.)

Draco just nods, and then crosses the room to get to the counter, yanking out bowls and ingredients. It would be easier to make it with magic, but Draco had found that doing it the muggle way was a different sort of soothing, almost like potions. Plus, it tasted better.

Still, it was different when it was just Draco, where he could make as many mistakes as he wanted without anyone watching, and he could take up the whole kitchen, and didn't fee strange about turning on the radio to Celestina Warbeck. When Harry was here, it was like he was always watching. Draco felt his eyes on him, like a tickle right between his shoulder blades.

He doesn't ask him why he was here. Clearly, the conversation of last night had not been drunken nonsense, but something that he had been mulling over for a while. And Draco had meant it, when he told him that maybe it was time he learned what it was like to be just Harry. He wasn't about to chase him out of his own kitchen, in case that stopped it from happening.

They stand in silence until Draco is satisfied that the pancakes are done, and the doles them out onto plates, sitting down across the table from him. He's almost nervous, sitting there, and he can tell that Harry is too.

"I sent my resignation out with morning post." Harry talks around a mouthful of food, hiding behind the paper, like that could make this less important, less life altering. "Should have got it by now."

Draco didn't really know what to do with that, but the sick part of him in the back of his head that wanted to keep harry all to himself made his breathing catch. Home. Safe. Mine. But that's wasn't right. Harry would never be safe, this place would not be a home no matter how much Draco cleaned it, and Harry would never belong to him. Would never want to belong to him.

"Good." It was a lame response. Everything Draco says is a lame response, with all these revelations Harry keeps dumping on him. "Have another pancake."