The Thousand-and-first Reward

The Thousand-and-first Reward

When we first fell in love with each other, you were in my hand. Don't think I didn't know. I knew very well. It offered temptation, you know. I, somehow have it with power. I'm an ambitious person. Someday, I want to have power.

Nevertheless, I soon noticed that this wasn't about power. That's why I took no advantage of your situation. I just want you to know that I knew.

Today, I can't tell, who of us fell for the other first. I truly can't. I can, however, tell that you were the first to realise it. And your realisation brought the change.

When I first noticed a change about your behaviour towards me, I raised an eyebrow and shrugged it away. Part of you has always been mystery to me. Why should I try to make sense of this new "you"? These looks. Some stupidity of yours to annoy me. Psychological warfare maybe? I thought.

When this all continued, these looks, this civil behaviour, this provoking manner of refusing to treat me with familiar hostility, I tried to laugh at it. This was absurd. Harry Potter completely out of character, so to speak. And I found enough people, who would laugh with me at your strange behaviour and make up over-the-top theories about "'The Boy Who Lost His Parents' AND (Finally) His Mind". I could make no sense of this. Who could?

Nevertheless, after some time, I was done with laughing. Laughter wears off with time. And when I was done with laughing, thinking about you was the only remaining option. Thinking finally broke the wall of denial, you know. But don't think I didn't try. I tried! I tried just about everything there was to it. After shrugging and laughing, I tried disgust. By then, of course, I had fully comprehended why you acted the way you did. Harry Potter had somehow - miraculously - fallen for Draco Malfoy. I tried to be disgusted with you. It worked for about a day or two.

It was my own vanity that carried me over the threshold of this stage of the "denial-protection thing" I was living to the next. My own vanity that told me, "It must have been my looks. Maybe Virgin-Potter is attracted to sin after all."

But this brought me only one step further - from disgust to "Well, screw it then, Potter. It's not mutual!"

And right then, I knew I had you in my hands. Right then I could have crushed you.

I thought about it. I thought about hurting you. The thought was delicious! I never forgave you for rejecting my friendship, when I first offered it to you. This was my opportunity to get back at you. This time I could reject you! And I could make it even more painful!

Painful...

Then I noticed that your rejection had, indeed, been painful to me.

Not in first year, of course. I was angry back then, but that was it.

But as we grew older and hostility grew fiercer, it was that burning remembrance of your rejection that made it so fierce on my part. It was burning and... painful.

Now I had the opportunity to pay you back for years of hidden pain.

And then... realisation struck.

I had opportunity to hurt you. The opportunity for sweet revenge. But I couldn't.

I found that I finally had got what I wanted. Not a chance for revenge, but a chance to get on with you. A chance. Your friendship, and even more than that.

I held not just you in my hand, but your heart.

I realised that what you offered was much more than I had bargained for with my pain. Much more than you owned me, for the pain you caused me.

I held your heart in my hand. Willingly given. Freely.

I still couldn't see how I deserved this. How you actually did fall for me.

But grace is given free, I guess.

The realisation that I held your heart and could not crush it - didn't even want to anymore - crushed something else instead. My self-deception.

I loved you. Love you. Had loved you, for a long time already. Have loved you ever since.

"You wrote this?" Harry asked, smiling silently.

"Yes." Draco came a little closer and looked over Harry's shoulder at the letter, his hands fittingly placed on Harry's waist. His Malfoy genes gracefully suppressed a flush, as he reread the last few lines of it.

Harry put the letter aside, pulled Draco's arms around his waist and turned to face him in his arms.

"When?" He put his arms gently around the other boy's neck.

"The summer we both turned seventeen."

Harry leaned in and their foreheads touched. "Thanks for not crushing my heart back then," he said, a grin playing around his lips that made him look seventeen again.

Lacking a suitable reply, Draco kissed him gently on the tip of his nose. "As I said, I simply couldn't. I always had it for beautiful things." Their eyes locked for a moment and silence arose, eventually broken by the teasing sound of Harry discovering the taste of Draco's skin right sideway down his throat for the seemingly thousandth time.

Draco moaned softly. "I never thanked you, did I?"

"For what?"

"For taking it to be shrugged at. For handling it so easily, when I made fun of you."

"I didn't handle it easily. I feared you wouldn't answer my love. I endured."

"Then thanks again. I was a real git back then. Thanks for enduring. Thanks for all the things you did that led to my realisation."

"I got rewarded a thousand times." And he leaned in into a passionate kiss. The Thousand-and-first reward.

Not the last by far.

fin