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Chapter 7

Draco

“Come on,” Harry had said. He was tugging on Draco’s hand, hair still messy from sleep and a smile playing over his face. “It’ll be fun.”

Draco didn’t want to. He didn’t want to because Harry was making him go outside, and to Diagon Alley no less, where he would be recognized, where people would stare and mutter and snarl awful things behind their hands and maybe even send tripping spells at his feet, and he would be with Harry, and if Harry saw all that he would realize what an awful mistake he had made, what kind of person he had invited into his home—but Harry was smiling down at him and touching him and Draco is quickly losing his ability to say no to things when Harry is looking at him like that, so he throws the blanket off of him (I don’t sleep very well, Hermione said when she gave it to him, thrusting a bundle of blue into his hands, so I thought I’d make you one too) and getting to his feet.

“Alright,” He had said, even though the thought of stepping foot outside this house makes his stomach curl in on itself, and Harry’s smile gets bigger. “I’ll go, you bastard.”

There was no bite in his words, and two hours later he found himself walking through the Leaky Cauldron, listening to Harry say hi to Old Tom, who despite everyone who had been lost in the past few years, was still puttering around in his bar and churning out pots of watery coffee. When they walk out into the alley, Draco has to squint against the sudden burst of sunlight, and crowds into Harry without noticing it.

“Alright?”

Draco knew, without Harry needing to really say it, that if Draco truly wasn’t alright, they would turn around and apparate home and not mention it, and Harry would spend his day off like he had spent every other day off. But suddenly, Draco wanted to be able to walk through this alleyway and squeeze his way through the other shoppers without drawing second glances, wanted to be a free man who didn’t feel like he needed to be in chains. And maybe the only way to do it is to face things like this head on.

And besides, Harry was with him. It’s not like anything was going to happen when Harry was with him.

Draco takes a deep breath, forces himself to be the one and take the first step into the crowd, even if he does search behind him and keep his fingers touching Harry’s wrist, like Harry was a life buoy and he would drown if he let go for even a second.

“Alright.” And it was.

They go into the apothecary first. That was the whole point of the trip, because he and Hermione needed new ingredients for their experiments, and when Draco had given Harry the list, he had looked faintly embarrassed and then confessed that he had no idea what to look for.

“You really like this stuff, huh?” Harry was sitting up on the counter, because the girl behind the counter was friends with him and decided she could take a break while he was in the shop (not like anyone’s going to try anything with you in here, eh, Harry?) so it was just the two of them. Draco couldn’t imagine Hogwarts Harry being the person to climb up on counters and pick up items that he had no intention of buying just to cringe at what was inside. School Harry had been much less imposing, but maybe this one had grown into his skin a bit more.

“I do.” He had a full basket beside him, full of odd bits of this and that. “It was always…soothing I guess.”

“And you were good at it.” Harry offers, and his gaze was fixed on Draco now, the moment coming so sudden that Draco ducked around a set of shelves to break it. “You always did like being good at things.”

“That was part of it.” For a moment, Draco thought they were dancing along the edge of something dangerous and thought about playing along, of turning this moment into something completely different. And he could have, god knows he’d done it before, but his throat seemed to dry up and the words wouldn’t come out. He holds up the basket to break the tension, instead, forcing a friendly smile on his face. “You want anything?”

Harry startled, jumping even more when the counter girl (Hannah?) came out of the back, the bell on the door tinkling. I was nice to know that Draco wasn’t the only one feeling the tension in the air. “No.” He scratched the back of his neck, ruffled his hair so it fell down over his scar. He was due for a haircut soon. “Not from here.”

They bounced from store to store, after that, from the book store to the deli to even ducking into Borgin and Burkes for some reason (Draco had the sneaking suspicion that Harry was either trying to include his past interests or doing some detective work while Draco’s back was turned), until finally landing in the Quidditch supply store.