Pink Sea Shells

Pink Sea Shells

Draco gave Blaise a long, hard look. “You only want the pink ones?” It was amazing how much disgust such a little boy could inject into such an incongruous word as “pink”.

Blaise sighed patiently, “Yes, silly. The pink sea shells. Just the pink sea shells.”

Draco stared for a bit longer at his friend. “Just the pink ones? But why?”

Draco couldn’t help but wonder sometimes what sort of boy Blaise was, anyway. He wasn’t like any boy Draco had ever met before. Certainly not the same sort of boy as Gregory or Vincent that was for sure. Nor like any of the Notts boys that lived near Draco. Not like of the any of the other boys in the Wee Wizards in fact…

Mother said that those Weasley boys “weren’t the same sort,” and that was why Draco wasn’t allowed to play with them. Which was a shame, because they always seemed to be doing more fun things that Gregory or Vincent, who mostly just did what he told them to, or threw things at each others heads. Draco wondered, perhaps Blaise was the same sort of boy as the Weasleys?

Draco could see Ron from where he was standing. A tall, gangly boy in frayed blue swimming trunks, building a sand castle with lollypop sticks for flags. He could just make out the twins on the horizon, helping Millicent bury Pansy Parkinson under great big piles of sand. The sun was hitting their red heads, and burning their freckles deeper into their skin. They didn’t look like the same sort of boy as Blaise, who was what polite adults called “pale and interesting”; they looked rougher, and they were definitely louder and bigger.

Glancing back at Blaise still busily selecting shells, Draco was pretty certain that he wasn’t the same sort of boy as Ron either, even though Ron was also bright white in the sunlight and thin as a whippet. Ron wouldn’t pick up pink shells. Ron would pick up sea weed and put it in people’s hair or something.

Draco decided it was probably a good thing that Blaise wasn’t the same sort of boy as the Weasleys anyway. If he was, then Draco wouldn’t be allowed to play with him any more. Draco didn’t have many friends as it was, he didn’t think he could afford to lose the few he had. And Blaise was usually fun, even if it was a different type of fun to the Weasleys. A distinctly pink type of fun.

Looking around the beach, Draco didn’t think he could see any boys like Blaise actually. There were lots of boys like Vincent and Gregory; big, fat boys, who liked hitting things and trying to knock sea gulls out of the sky. And there were lots of boys like Ron; skinny boys who spent most of their time paddling and exploring, but no boys like Blaise.

In fact the only people, other than Blaise, that Draco could see picking up shells were Ginny Weasley and her friend. Was that the sort of boy Blaise was? The sort that wasn’t really a boy at all, but a girl?

Draco thought hard about it. Circumstantial evidence would seem to suggest his prognosis was correct. Blaise liked pink shells, not blue ones, and pink was definitely a girly kind of colour. Blaise also had pink arm bands, whereas Ron and Vincent and Gregory and Draco all had orange ones. Draco thought hard about other things that both Ginny and Blaise did. Neither was very good at throwing or catching a ball, and they had both had made a very big fuss about getting their shoes dirty in the sand on the beach. So perhaps Blaise really was a girl?

But the more Draco thought about it, the less likely it seemed. Girls were no fun, whereas Blaise was really cool. And when they’d found that dead sea gull earlier, Blaise had squished his toes around in it just like all the other boys; no way would Ginny Weasley have done that. Also Draco had been swimming earlier with Blaise and Ginny. Blaise had all the same bits as Draco, and Draco certainly wasn’t a girl. At least, Draco was pretty sure he wasn’t a girl… So if Blaise wasn’t a girl, and he couldn’t be without Draco being a girl, and he wasn’t like any other boys either, what was Blaise? A snail?

Draco was truly confused now. He’d never had to get his tiny seven year old brain around such a complicated problem before, and he wasn’t so sure how he was going to solve this one. He briefly considered asking his Mother, or Mrs. Zabini, but he had a sneaking suspicion that they would only laugh at him anyway. Also he was a bit frightened of Mrs. Z. She was awfully tall, and sometimes she and Blaise spoke gobbledygook to one another, which his Mother said was Mrs. Z’s home language. Draco was worried that he would get an answer, but that he wouldn’t understand it, and would have to ask Blaise to translate it to him. No, it would definitely be best if Draco could answer this one on his own.

The cogs and wheels churning in Draco’s head were moving so fast that he thought they might actually drop out of his nose when the answer hit him.

Blaise was the same sort of boy as Draco!

That had to be right! Draco liked being clean, just like Blaise did; and Blaise liked swimming, just like Draco did. And neither of them looked like Ginny Weasley, or liked punching rocks like Vincent and Gregory, or digging sand, like Ron and the twins. And so what if Blaise’s arm bands were pink? Winky had once dyed all Draco’s socks pink in the wash, and Draco’s Mother had been furious. Probably Blaise’s house elf had probably just dyed his arm bands!

Draco was deeply satisfied with this answer, and trotted off to help Blaise find pretty shells for the mural that Mrs. Z was helping with.

Ten years later, sat up in bed one Saturday morning, content in the awareness that their families were going to either skin them alive or disown them, or maybe even both, Blaise asked Draco when he’d realised.

Glancing up at his boyfriend over his toast, trying manfully not to spill scrambled egg over the duvet covers, Draco replied, “When you explained to me that you needed pink sea shells because they matched your arm bands better than grey or cream ones, and I realised both that you were absolutely right, and that neither Vincent or Gregory would ever have noticed something so blatantly obvious. Why?”