Draco woke up before sunrise, wide-eyed and nervous. By the time the other boys rose, such a knot had tied itself in his stomach he thought he might be sick. He couldn’t bear the thought of food and skipped breakfast altogether, opting to wait outside, at the same spot where he and Potter had stood last night, till the crowd poured out and carried him along. Pansy found him and clung to his arm all the way to the stands that had appeared in the woods overnight, chattering excitedly to his absent nods and smiles, while he imagined the worst. What if Potter were to die, and last night had been the final chance Draco would ever have to… do something? Make his feelings known, for better or for worse?
Vince was acting oddly. He and Draco stood next to one another in Charms, doing the Accio-Levioso combination drills with cushions magicked to whine and squeal when dropped. Vince’s cushion was moaning non-stop. He seemed to struggle with the wand gesture, the most trivial part of the exercise, holding his arm out at an awkward angle.
“Does it hurt?” Draco asked in a whisper. “The bubo?”
He had been thinking about it every day, torn between morbid fascination and the distasteful intimacy of it all: of asking to look again, of the disrobing, of the sights and smells of Vince’s bare body. He wasn’t about to miss this chance to sate his curiosity.
Draco caught himself smiling unwittingly several times during lunch as the Oxalis adventure replayed in his mind, the images fresh and heavy with emotion. It took a herculean effort to keep his gaze on his food and on his fellow Slytherins, and not glance even once in the direction of Potter’s place on the other end of the Great Hall, though his eyes were drawn to it like the needle of the compass to the north. He spoke and laughed louder than usual, brimming with excitement, till he noticed Professor Snape’s watchful eyes on him. Draco toned it down, then. But the golden glow in his chest persisted, pulsing with his heartbeat.
It still simmered, ready to burst out as laughter or theatrics at the slightest provocation, when he knocked on the door of Professor Snape’s office after the afternoon period.
In which Draco fails to make Harry’s life miserable.
Friday, November 20, 1994
As the Slytherins queued for Potions with the Gryffindors the next day, Potter stood a few paces ahead of Draco, who couldn’t resist his curiosity, and carefully cut the distance short. Freshly shampooed, Potter’s hair had a deep, dark luster and smelled softly of strawberries and mint. The collar of a standard issue white shirt gleamed clean and crisp under the silken curls. His robes seemed straight out of laundry, impeccably pressed and giving off the familiar, faint scent of lavender. Even his glasses, which Draco could see through from behind, were free of greasy fingerprints, polished to a shine brighter than ever.
The doors swung open to reveal the unwelcoming scowl on Professor Snape’s face, and the crowd poured inside. Draco gave Potter one last glance as he passed him by. Among all the signs of unusually thorough grooming, Potter’s tie stood out the most. It looked… entirely adequate. Draco couldn’t help lifting his eyebrow in silent appreciation.
Their eyes met, and Potter lowered his at once, then slowly lifted them again, oddly insecure. His cheeks darkened. And Draco understood, in that inscrutable way he sometimes understood things about Potter, that it had been his own unscrupulous, judgmental scrutiny, cataloging the details of Potter’s unkempt person yesterday evening, that had triggered this remarkable transformation.
Where a whimsical and macabre plot device is introduced.
Thursday, November 19, 1994
Draco drew the barbs of his crow-feather quill back and forth over his lips. His half-written History essay swam languorously in his unfocused vision, lit by the dappled, green-tinted sunshine that filtered through the lake outside the window. The tickling sensation had a strange rapport with the fickle, dancing light, especially when he teased the very tip of his upper lip. With perfectly measured pressure, he could make the tingling travel all the way down to his toes.
In his mind’s eye, it wasn’t the feather tickling his lips, but the soft, barely-there baby hair on the nape of Potter’s neck. Draco had seen it a few times, lighting up like a golden halo when the sun struck Potter’s profile just so in the Transfiguration classroom, even though Draco usually sat on the other end of it. Unlike Potter, Draco had exceptional eyesight.
