Pleasant Little Kingdom

Pleasant Little Kingdom.

The two men sat opposite from one another, separated by the length of the narrow mahogany table, the brown warp of the wood tinged with a deep red. Harry sat idle, the flat of his palms against the surface of the table. He briefly shoved his glasses back up his nose, his green eyes displaying his measured curiosity. On the other side, Draco sat, one hand curled around a crystal wine glass, his body screaming with the effort it took to look this relaxed. The two men watched each other for a few minutes, then finally Harry spoke.

"You look well, Draco."

Draco smiled, and sipped some of his red wine. "Thankyou," he responding, his manner betraying no emotion. "So do you."

There was another long pause, and Draco topped up his wine glass, using it to gesture. "Tell me, please," he began, with a trace of caustic humour, "do tell why you asked to see me, now, after all this time."

Harry looked at him as if Draco were patently mad. "After all this time? You mean you honestly don't know?"

"I assure you, I'm about as blank as, well, something that is very blank," Draco assured him, still smiling thinly.

Harry took a deep breath and looked at the other man, sighing. "You blocked Ron's transfer to the British Quidditch team last week. Again. The board's in your damn pocket and you got them to shaft him. Just like you have every frigging year for the past decade!" He finished with a near-roar, and slapped the table with his hand. Draco didn't flinch.

"Honestly, Harry, if he's not talented enough, then really shouldn't you just accept it and-"

"That's not it and you know it," Harry shot back. "Ask any decent coach who's the best strategist in the world league and you'll get Ron Weasley, every time. He's helped Ireland to the World Cup final nine times in the past ten years, and they've won four of those! I mean, I knew you hated him at school, but isn't this a bit childish? Why do you do this to him? What did he do wrong, that you can't forgive him for it?"

"Oh Harry," Draco chuckled, low and slightly husky, like melted chocolate on the tongue. "Really, I'm surprised you haven't figured it out yet," he murmured, loftily, one finger tracing the circle of the glass. "But then I'm surprised that no-one has realised it: not you, not the Weasel, not even my Pansy." He looked down at his lap and smiled briefly, sadly, a smile that seemed to reach inside Harry, break his heart and remake it in an instant. Draco looked up at Harry, unashamed, that joyous sadness still shining in his eyes. "I've been in love with you since Fifth Year, Harry. If I don't like him, it's because you chose him. Yet again."

It seemed that the expression 'his jaw dropped' was intended solely for the look on Harry's face, as his mouth first opened and hung there, stunned for a few moments, then made variously feeble attempts to close itself, and then open and shut noiselessly a while longer. "You what?!" he finally exploded, leaning back in his chair.

Draco couldn't help but laugh at sight opposite him. "Calm yourself, Harry, and drink some of this wine. You look constipated, you really do, all scrunched up like that."

Harry scratched at his hair, then rubbed his forehead, them he sighed, resting his curled hand against his mouth. Then he opened said mouth, ran his index finger along his teeth, and finally closed his mouth around it, biting slightly. He removed the finger, curled his hands together, blew into them for no apparent reason (it wasn't cold), and finally, rubbed them together.

Draco watched, enthralled. Out of all the possible reactions, this desperately off-kilter nervousness on Harry's part was the least thing he'd expected.

In a vain attempt to control his rather obvious body language, Harry slammed his hands down on the table in front of him, fingers entwined and white with the effort of holding them down. Draco could see they wanted to be moving, reacting, saying in fidgeting the things Harry felt he couldn't say in words.

Harry mumbled.

Draco leaned forward. "I'm sorry, what was that?"

Harry looked at him, hurt and angry and embarrassed, and then looked away, even more ashamed. "I had a crush on you for two years," he said tersely, looking everywhere but Draco.

Draco thinned his lips. This was not a revelation he had anticipated. "You never did anything about it," he said, somewhat accusingly.

"Yes, well," Harry returned, bitter. "You never did anything either and you're in love with me, so who's to blame then?"

There was a long pause, and both men looked around the room, admiring the fine tapestries and furniture Pansy had chosen for his London townhouse, and seeing none of it.

"Do you ever think about what it might have been like if-" Draco began, but was cut off by Harry, eyes blazing.

"I might," he admitted, oh-so-grudgingly. "And then I stop myself thinking about such things!"

"Harry, I-"

"You don't have the right!" Harry burst out. "You don't have the fucking right to come into my life and tell me things and make me doubt everything I ever thought I wanted!"

Draco chuckled to himself. "I do all that with a sentence, eh? It seems I haven't lost any of my ability to get under your skin," and took a sip of his wine.

Harry looked at him, disbelieving and shocked for a few seconds, before his mouth quirked into a smile, and soon they were both laughing so hard that Harry had to wipe away tears.

"Why did you tell me?," he asked gently.

"You asked," Draco proffered with a wry smile. "And when the man you love asks you a question, you generally tend to answer it."

"Ah, Draco-"

"I know. You couldn't do that to him."

"I do love him," Harry confessed, not seeing the small wince of pain that appeared briefly on Draco's face. "It's nice, and comfortable. Do you know how long I've waited for something to be comfortable?," he almost begged.

"All your life," responded Draco, simply. "I know these things about you, Harry. And truth be told, I couldn't cheat on Pansy, either. She's stood by me too long now to be repaid with betrayal."

Harry nodded, somewhat stiffly. "And besides, we don't know what we'd be like as a couple, do we?" he giggled, nervous. "I mean, just because you daydream something doesn't make it true."

"No," confided Draco. "We'd probably hate each other in a week."

The other beamed. "See?"

They looked at each other, smiling for a little while, and then the smiles faded. "I should probably go," admitted Harry, finally, awkwardly, and rose to leave. Draco nodded at him, and Harry stopped on his way out, one hand squeezing Draco's shoulder.

Draco took Harry's hand in his, and looking up at the other man, not young anymore, but hardly old, he briefly pressed his lips against the back of Harry's hand. Harry for his part, closed his eyes, caught between a wish to hold this moment in his memory for all time, and to banish the feel of Draco's lips - even his smell - from his mind forever.

Harry took back his hand, and tucked it away in his pocket, the other thumb gesturing down the passage. "I'll, uh, let myself out." He turned to go, and stopped, turning back. "Thankyou, Draco," he said softly. "I'll see you round."

Draco sat in his chair, and spoke before Harry could leave. "I'll take the ban off Ron," he said, looking at the dregs left in the glass, holding it up to the light spilling in from the windows as the crystal took it and refracted it along the table.

"You don't have to."

"No, I don't. But I've kept you apart for too long, for the wrong reasons," he admitted with a sigh.

Harry chuckled slightly. "We've grown used to living apart. Perhaps-" He didn't finish, but turned instead, and Draco heard a few minutes later the opening and closing of his front door, still looking at the light as the class caught it.

* * *

A few months later, Ronald Weasley was announced as the new Quidditch strategist and assistant Coach to the English Quidditch team. There was of course, a typical society do to celebrate, and as one of English Quidditch's leading sponsors, Draco Malfoy and his wife, of Malfoy Enterprises, Inc, was invited to attend.

Pansy quickly spotted the City banker to talk to, and, after sprucing herself up in the ladies' room, smiled engagingly at her husband, before grabbing two flutes off a passing waiter and going off to discuss investment capital. Ron Weasley had more difficulty grabbing drinks, and cursing slightly at the irony at the fact he couldn't get a drink at a party nominally held in his honour, darted through the crowd to wait with the throng at the bar.

And so, perhaps because they were alone, or perhaps because they could, their eyes met across the room, and they shared a sad, fond smile, slowly coming towards one another to meet amongst the crowd.

"You look well, Draco."

Draco chuckled. "You haven't exactly changed from the last time we spoke, either."

Harry joined him, laughing softly. "I suppose not."

"Is the guest of honour here?," Draco grumbled, looking around.

"Oh Ron? He's getting drinks. And your wife?", enquired Harry, doing his best to be polite.

"Chatting some banker's ear off in the hope he'll invest in the family company. I must say, Pansy's far better for the business than I am."

"Maybe you should retire," Harry joked.

"Maybe," responded Draco fondly, "but then what I do with my time?" He looked across at Harry, who blushed, somewhat uncomfortable with the emotions in Draco's eyes, much less his own. Both men looked away, before Draco spoke again.

"I hear you bought a house together, now he's living in England full time."

Harry nodded. "Just a small house, on the outskirts of Hogsmeade."

"And the teaching's going well?"

"Oh, quite. Being Head of House is a job, though. I understand why McGonagall always seemed annoyed with us."

There was another pause, this time to be filled by Harry, who leaned forward, speaking quietly.

"Are you happy, Draco?"

Draco looked at him. "If I said 'no', would you do anything about it?"

Harry was caught off guard. "Uh-" he began, and started to stammer, causing Draco to laugh in his face.

"Don't worry, Harry, it's only a hypothetical. I'm happy. Probably as happy as you are with Mr. Nice and Comfortable, He Who Fucks Like A Wet Blanket."

Harry glared for a moment before snorting, and attempting to hide his growing chuckle behind his hand, whilst Draco merely stood there, a trace of a smirk on his lips.

At that moment, of course, Ron came back to Harry with their drinks.

"Malfoy."

"Weasley."

Before any blood could be spilt, Pansy dragged Draco away to meet that City banker. It seemed that Draco and Pansy's relationship had taken a turn for the better, ever since Draco stopped travelling the world and took his business home - certainly Draco showed no hesitancy throughout the night showing Pansy off to the many who were there, often making loud remarks about her business acumen and ability to manage his estates. Occasionally his eyes drifted back to Harry, to find Harry's green eyes lazily looking at him, but that was all.

Neither was prepared to abandon ten or more years of their life as a waste, to admit that they'd stuffed up, got things wrong, betrayed the love others had placed in them. Not for a dream that made no promises, but merely mocked with the possibility that things could be different, as if different was automatically better.

They shook hands at the end of the evening, and Harry even accepted an invitation to dine at Malfoy Manor, extended by Pansy for one of her candlelit suppers. With a wry grin, Harry affirmed, whilst looking at Draco, that "Ron would not be able to attend."

And a few years later, both Harry and Draco let go of their torturous dreams. They may not have been happy, not exactly. But they were content, surrounded by the lives they'd built for themselves, masters of their pleasant little kingdoms. When they saw each other in public, they still smiled, and laughed at one another's jokes. They rarely touched, let alone anything else.

And perhaps in their crinkled eyes, green and grey, shone the kind of sad, forlorn familiarity two people can only generate when they've loved and lost.