Sentimental Magic

Sentimental Magic

The moment Ron caught sight of the box, having just arrived home from work, he knew there was going to be trouble. Clutching briefly at his hair as a desperate man might, he couldn't quite prevent a muttered ‘fuck' from escaping his lips as the apartment door closed behind him.

Draco was sitting on the couch, quill in hand, having the air of being completely absorbed in one of his curious number puzzles but Ron was quite sure that he'd been waiting for him for some time now.

A fleeting succession of options ran through his mind. Ron really didn't want to ask, not yet, and so he could check his owls, feed the fish, put away the groceries and start dinner or talk to Draco. The latter was an inevitable, unpleasant prospect but since he'd done the shopping this week, it wasn't his turn to deal with food.

However there was no guarantee that Draco wouldn't be poisoning his dinner later that night.

Ron inwardly sighed and deposited his bags down next to the couch.

‘What are you doing?'

Draco didn't look up. ‘Are you stupid or blind, Weasley? What does it look like I'm doing?'

There was a dangerous edge to his words that Ron hadn't heard in what seemed an age ago, not since Hogwarts. It was the tone he would use right before pulling out his wand and hexing Ron with it.

‘Looks like you had nothing to do today and decided to go through my personal stuff,' replied Ron as calmly as he could. It was bullshit though, they both knew it since neither had ever been capable of disguising anger towards the other.

‘I didn't purposefully go nosing around.'

They both looked at the box sitting innocently between them.

‘I didn't touch it,' said Draco.

‘But you know what's inside,' accused Ron. ‘What were you doing in the back of my closet?'

‘I was cleaning.'

‘Liar. You never clean.'

Draco scowled. ‘And of course I know what's in the damn box, it bloody well reeks. I'd have to be a right idiot or a muggle, or Longbottom, not to smell all the fucking sentimental magic pouring off it.'

Ron flushed. Taking a moment to formulate an appropriate answer, he sat down on the couch, kicked off his shoes and propped his feet up on the coffee table just because it would annoy the blond.

‘Move your fucking feet off the table, Weasley, or you'll never walk again.'

Ron occasionally wondered why he'd given up women for Draco, when sometimes it was just the same. He left his feet where they were. Ron was, after all, a true Gryffindor and they were courageous (and stupid, Draco often added).

‘You've got no right to be shitty at me.'

Draco stood up. ‘No right?'

‘Look, let's not pretend we don't have pasts, ok?' Ron snapped back. ‘Call me naïve, but I thought perhaps we'd dealt with all of that.'

‘Yeah, Ron, but the difference between you and me is that I'm not still living in it!'

He wasn't sure whether he would have been more surprised if Draco had punched him in the face (after all he'd done that a few times before). Then again it was true that truth tended to hurt; while he couldn't say that Draco was completely right in this case, he wasn't completely wrong either.

Ron wasn't the kind to let things go without a struggle. In a way, the box was the physical manifestation of that part of his personality. He didn't like having his weaknesses laid out in the open any more than Draco did, although Malfoys knew how to hide theirs and Ron had never learnt the secret.

However, flaws aside, he probably owed Draco an explanation.

‘Open it.'

‘Fuck, Ron, you're such a-what?'

‘Open it, if you want to that badly.'

Draco stalked out of the apartment, the slamming of the door echoing in his wake.

‘It's all right,' Ron told the two goldfish who were opening and shutting their small, pouty lips in alarm. ‘He'll calm down, eh?'

Jacob and Constance stared at him uncomprehendingly, and Ron couldn't help feeling quite alone. He'd so been looking forward to sex and not having to cook dinner.

After he'd finished the dishes and put half a lasagne in the oven to keep warm, it was late and he could barely keep both eyes open. Swearing to never speak to the bastard again if he came home drunk, Ron decided to call it a night and climbed gratefully into their bed.

*

He half expected to be woken up at some ridiculous hour of the morning, but Ron slept on until long after the sun had risen. Shuffling into the lounge, he was alarmed to see Draco cross-legged on the couch, surrounded by scatterings of ribbon, parchment and a dozen other of Ron's dearest possessions. Draco was sitting in the middle of a lifetime's worth of heartache.

‘Did you sleep at all last night?'

He ignored Ron's question, instead holding up the empty box. ‘None of his stuff was in here.'

Ron idly scratched the back of his head and took a seat next to Draco. ‘What did you think you would find?'

‘I don't know, maybe disgusting love letters, like these ones from Granger?'

Ron shook his head and laughed.

‘I guess,' Draco said, picking up a miniature teddy bear wearing an orange scarf and hat, ‘your memories of him would hardly fit in this box.'

‘I, uh, got a birthday card from Harry yesterday.'

Draco raised an eyebrow but didn't look at him. ‘A little early. Has he been gone that long?'

Five years. Sometimes it felt like ten or twenty, thought Ron, but didn't say it out loud.

‘He's coming back for my birthday next week. Back to stay.'

There was a long silence. Ron rubbed his thumbs nervously together until Draco finally said in an odd, expressionless voice, ‘I see.'

Ron stood up and disappeared in to the bedroom. He returned a moment later with another box, identical to the one Draco had unearthed. All those mementos, gifts and messages from his previous loves lying in the very depths of his wardrobe. He'd pretty much forgotten they were there until seeing Draco with it yesterday.

‘Now open that one.'

Draco, curious, obliged him. Inside were the tickets from the first Chudley Cannons match Draco had taken him to and the muggle ballet which Ron had hated every second of. All the ridiculous notes Draco had Owled to him whenever he was bored at work (which was often) that tended to make Ron's blood run hot and resulted in the loss of his concentration for the rest of the day.

Draco fished out a couple of twigs. ‘What the hell are these?'

He coloured a little. ‘Remember last Christmas at the burrow, when we made that snowman for Bill's kids?'

There were a dozen or so other pointless objects like that which he'd collected and treasured over the course of their unexpected relationship. Draco stared at him in awe, looking a little like he wanted to laugh.

‘You're such a fucking sentimental idiot. But you can keep my mother's handkerchief if you want, even though I've been looking everywhere for that damn thing.'

Ron shrugged. ‘Harry…he left me a long time ago. It was what he needed, and I couldn't ask him to stay. Not when he was suffering like that. I still love him, I always have. But I don't want him, if that was what you were wondering.'

‘You don't want him anymore,' Draco corrected.

‘No,' he agreed. ‘I don't.'

Draco clasped either side of Ron's face and kissed him, deep and hard the way he liked it best, the way he'd done the first time at Padma Patil's twenty fourth, effectively turning Ron's world upside down when he'd thought he would never feel much of anything again.

‘I love you, even though you are an idiot,' Draco muttered.

‘Is that right?' Ron grinned, pulling at the buttons on his boyfriend's shirt. ‘Because I kind of suspected as much.'