The Scent Of Malice | drarry

thirty one | stolen sketches

Harry decided it was sensible to wake up before Malfoy that morning (who had finally drifted off to sleep sometime around 6:30am) and intended to creep back to the Gryffindor dorms before he could be subjected to Draco's comedown temper.

He really had meant to leave. Truly. He could so easily have turned his back on the sleeping angel - no, devil by now - and headed safely up to his own bed in the Gryffindor dorms. At least, that's what he told himself later.

But some Slytherin instinct in Harry, the part recognised by the Sorting Hat in First Year, came over him and insisted it would be a good idea to sneak Malfoy's sketchbook out from its hiding place under the bed and have a quick peek at what he'd missed the last time. It had to be interesting; Malfoy was very defensive of it.

The pictures are mostly of you anyway, the snake in his head wheedled. You have a right to know what he's drawn about you.

Harry gave in pretty quickly. He peeled the sheets tentatively back, keeping one watchful eye on the sleeping boy beside him, and then he was on his knees and fumbling under the oak slats of the bed for the precious leather book that contained access to Malfoy's mind.

Almost immediately, he realised why Malfoy hadn't wanted him to see all of it.

There was a little inscription on the first page that he opened, in Malfoy's looping script.

It's always him, he had written. Why is it always him? Why can't I draw something else, think of something else? Even when something isn't about him, I make it so that it is. Everything I do comes back to him him him him him and my mind won't fucking stop-

Harry's heart thudded in his ears. It was about him, he recognised that at once.

He recognised it, because right there on the page was a description of exactly how it felt for Harry to be in love with Draco Malfoy. Even when something isn't about him, I make it so it is... it all comes back to him - it was eerie to read Harry's own thoughts down on paper in his lover's words.

The first picture that caught his eye following the inscription was an intricate drawing of a hand. It was unmistakably Draco's own: those exquisite fingers had found their way to Harry's face and throat enough times for him to know it anywhere.

Besides, there were the rings.

Harry could see the real ones to the right of his head, discarded for the night on Malfoy's bedside table, but in the picture they were perfectly in place. The signet, the silver serpent, the jet stone, and the wide band with the Malfoy family motto looped around the inside - Sanctimonia Vincent Semper - Harry's skin had known them all by name for a while, and prickled at the sight of their reflections on the page.

And around the hand's crooked little finger, beneath the signet ring, was sketched a tiny body.

It was dark-haired and weak and wrapped round and round the finger, and as Harry watched, the body flailed wildly. It didn't take a genius to work the metaphor out.

Why doesn't he stop me from doing this?, Draco had written underneath it, in messier writing than his usual style.

Harry had an answer for that question, though Malfoy never liked to hear it. "It's because he fucking loves you, idiot," he whispered to the page.