Draco Malfoy x Reader One Shots

Right Here

Warning: this is kinda sad? No spoilers, but yeah. Just a head's up.

~ ~ ~ ~

The postbox closed with a snap, sending fresh snow flakes spiraling down to the icy ground, and you sighed softly. Another year, another card met with silence.

It had been five years since the incident between yourself and the person you had considered yourself closest to in this messed up, stab you in the back world, and every day that passed felt like eternity.

Christmases were especially hard, given how much the two of you had enjoyed them, and though by this point, it was safe to say that Draco could be anywhere, you refused to give up on them - on him.

So, every December, come rain, shine or snow, you picked out a card, wrote a message within, highlighting the events of that year and telling him how much you missed him, and then you hiked down to the rusty old postbox at the end of your street.

And every New Years would come and go without a response.

You missed him so desperately - so pathetically - you often felt incapacitated by the despair. He had meant so much to you - maybe a little more than he should have, for over the many nights spent talking until the sun rose, you had grown an attachment to the blond that softened your heart and weakened your knees.

The love you felt for him was deep, not solely a caring or appreciation of him as a friend, but a desire to hold him, to know how his lips felt against your own. It was an aching lust for a fantasy, and a resonating warmth that rendered you seemingly unconsciously - yet most decidedly and unwaveringly - loyal to him.

And so, no matter how many years went by filled with silence, you would stay. You would be right here, where he left you, and you would send those cards.

You would tell him that you were still here, that you'd always be here, even though his parents - and himself, as you had, to your sorrow, discovered - didn't want you to be. Or at least, not as closely as you had been. And when you didn't know how to step back, how to stop loving him, they had disappeared.

Nothing could change the guilt you felt for that. Nights were spent staring up into the darkness, agonizing over the downward spiral, and blaming yourself for it. You had thought you were helping. You had thought that it was Draco and yourself against the world - but that had been your mistake, your very undoing, as apparently you were something else entirely.

That's what his parents had said, had spat in your face while you looked on with confusion and grief, and that's all you had left. That's the last memory of him you had to hold on to, and the cold ache that sapped from it would kill you, for you couldn't let it go.

Somehow, you wound up at a coffee house. The coffee house. The place where they had said goodbye.

The bell overhead rang as you stepped in with a burst of cold air, and you walked without thinking to the ripped up booth at the back, the one that sat by the edge of the window, and overlooked the street from an angle that had, as a child, felt as if you were hidden from sight.

You took your seat as a waitress took your order, and then you pulled the snow covered gloves from your icy fingers, rubbing your hands together briskly as your gaze travelled through the glass.

Time had passed, breaking down old buildings and piling up new ones, changing trees and pavements and storefronts, and yet, nothing felt more altered than you.

A young, happy, and ambitious kid, made brave by the friend at (his/her/their) side had turned into an older, more subdued and forlorn young adult, beaten down by the world and afraid of the things in it, and you didn't know how you were meant to come back from that. Some days, you weren't sure you wanted to.

But then, amongst the sharp and callous cold, came a warmth. It was heat rising from a mug, the aroma of coffee and a pastry, mixed with a cologne of faint vanilla, and a voice. No, the voice. Soft, laced with a posh accent and the hint of a smirk, even when there wasn't one, and so familiar it made your heart drop out of your chest.

"...Draco?"

Your voice was quiet, vulnerable, but as you stared up at the man, tall and slender with sharp features and the most deep and ever changing eyes of mercury, you felt both those things and a million more.

You didn't trust yourself to say more. Didn't even trust yourself to know that he was really here, that you hadn't finally lost the plot.

But there was that smirk, slight and signature, but too perfect for your mind to ever make up in such accuracy.

"Hey."

You watched with wide eyes as he slid into the seat across from you, explaining as he did so that he had come back, that things were messy but he didn't care, and he was hoping you'd come in one of these days, and you bit down on your lip, attempting to keep your emotions at bay.

He was here. All those years of pining and crying, sending emails that bounced and cards that never got responses, and he was here. He'd been here all along.