Healing

Will you kiss me?

Draco got drunk. He didn't plan to, well, actually, he did. He had brought a bottle of firewhiskey, for Merlin's sake! If that didn't signal his intent, then nothing did. He had watched Harry, all evening, obsessively. The more he drank, the less he cared about how obvious he was being.

Harry seemed like a different person from the man he'd hugged in the kitchens, from the man who'd gripped his arm in the corridors, from the man who'd seen his worst fear and had needed to intertwine his fingers with Draco's afterwards for comfort. Now he talked, circulated, worked the room with a confidence Draco hadn't seen since he'd come back to school.

Oliver Wood, he assumed. Something Oliver had said, or worse still, done, had given Harry his confidence back. Draco silently cursed the man; he hated the very name. Merlin knew how he was going to face next Wednesday afternoon and the bloody Phys. Ed. lesson.

He took another swig from his bottle and watched Harry dance. Harry bloody Potter was dancing like he didn't have a care in the bloody world in the middle of the bloody year-eight common room with Pansy and Hermione to 'The Boy is Mine'. Bloody Seamus and his bloody song. Bloody Harry with his endearingly bloody-awful dancing.

Eventually, he stumbled from the room, unable to bear it any longer. He knew things were calming down, Blaise had got out his guitar, people were settling onto the sofas. It wouldn't be long before Pansy suggested 'Truth or Dare', or 'Spin the Bottle', or 'Never Have I Ever'. He couldn't bear it, so he ran away, well, more of a stagger and drunken weave, to the top of the Astronomy tower where he climbed through the iron-railing barrier and sat on the edge, peering down into the darkness.

He wondered, as he took another swig from his bottle, how easy it would be just to let himself slip from the edge. He started to edge himself a bit closer, as if slowly daring himself. He swallowed. He'd never have the courage to do it, no matter how bad things got, could he really imagine resorting to such desperate measures? He inched himself back again until his back was against the barrier.

What was he going to do? He supposed time was the answer. He just had to get through this year and they would go their separate ways and he would never have to see Harry again, never have to think of Harry again. He'd have to drop Advanced DADA and maybe Nev could teach him to cast a Patronus instead.

'Have you completely drowned yourself in that bottle or is there still some left?'

The problem was, he could never truly escape Harry.

'How did you find me?' he asked.

'Magic,' replied Harry from behind him.

Draco peered over the edge again, just making sure the ground was still a long way away.

Harry climbed through the barrier and sat down next to him.

'You shouldn't be sitting on this side of the railing in your inebriated state, I would hazard a guess that it's not the most sensible thing to be doing,' Harry said.

'Well, that applies to you to then,' Draco's languid drawl emerging through the liquor.

'Despite all the obsessive staring, didn't you not notice that I haven't touched a drop of alcohol tonight?'

'Oh, now you come to mention it...' Draco knew he was slurring slightly. He handed the bottle to Harry who promptly dropped it and watched as it disappeared into the dark before there was a distant tinkling of shattering glass.

'Oops!' said Harry. 'Well, I guess you've had enough already anyway.'

Draco didn't have the energy to be upset.