Temptation on the Warfront

17

The evening is bright, filled with the glow of street lamps and giant, glaring signs hanging off of buildings. Muggles teem past where they stand, waiting by the Statue of 'Eros,' as Potter called it, and every now and then a straggler bumps elbows with the elderly man whose skin disguises Draco Malfoy. Draco clenches his teeth, only to find the old man is missing most of them, and sighs into the cold air.

Beside him, Harry Potter is a middle aged man, and the lines around his eyes do not boast of age as much as worry. Potter hasn't said anything since arriving, but Draco watches his eyes, blue and unfamiliar and all-wrong, constantly scanning the face of every person who passes them by.

Every few minutes Draco gets the urge to reach out and touch Potter's hand, to let him know that it's alright — a grandfather comforting his son. But then his anger will come crashing down, anger at what they are doing, ready to welcome back two people who walked out on The Chosen One. Anger at what is most definitely not jealousy boiling in his stomach.

Draco stares at the cement beneath their feet, and suddenly it hits him that he is waiting for Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, and despite his selfishness and his jealousy, for Potter's sake if nothing else, he hopes that they are okay.

There was a time, several years ago, when the day had been hot and sweat had beaded on the back of Harry's neck. To his left, Ron was scrawling in the margins of his homework, and on his right, Hermione was filling him in on the gaps of what Professor Burbage supposedly hadn't said in Hermione's muggle studies lecture. Harry didn't know why she thought he cared, but he listened anyway, because her hushed whispers were easier to keep up with than whatever Professor Binns was droning on about the Goblin Rebellion.

Hermione was appalled, because the most famous muggle sculpture in England wasn't the-thing-Binns-thought-it-was-which-had-a-name-too-long-for-Harry-to-remember, it was apparently the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain in Piccadilly Circus. Harry nodded, yawning, as Hermione insisted she knew this because every year her family would do their Christmas Shopping there, and at six o'clock they'd meet back at the Statue of Eros, with gift-laden bags on their arms.

Harry never knew that three years later he would end up needing to know this, would understand exactly where his friend wanted to meet. Three years ago, he never would have thought he'd be about to kiss Draco Malfoy either, but Harry has learnt not to question the way his life turns out.

Now, he waits with his heart in his throat, half expecting to catch a flash of orange hair or wide brown eyes. He looks into the face of each muggle for too long, searching for a trace of his best friends. Some turn back to glance at him suspiciously, and with each departing back, Harry's resignation increases with his disappointment.

Malfoy is silent beside him, and Harry delves his hands into his pockets, otherwise the temptation to grab onto Malfoy's is too strong. Because even though the person next to him looks like a stranger, Harry's only comfort is that they are Draco Malfoy.

And as the hours grow upon eachother and the sky darkens, with still no sign of Ron or Hermione, Harry wonders when things began to seem so backwards.

Harry disapparates them when the streets have cleared and their bodies are beginning to turn back to how they should be.

Behind him, Harry hears Malfoy setting up the tent, spells soft murmurs on his lips, but all Harry can do is stare into the glistening creek, willing his tears to stay away.

Draco tries to tell himself that he's glad, because that's the kind of person he is, but he can't distract himself from Potter's haunted looks, the gaunt tiredness beneath his eyes, and more than anything he is pissed off, because Potter is too much of a bloody Gryffindor to be angry himself, so the task is left to Draco.