Queer & There

Chapter Eight
Surprise

After the conversation in Draco's kitchen, everything happened very quickly and simultaneously until finally, a week later, Harry was staying in the spare bedroom on a permanent basis - which incidentally made it not a spare bedroom anymore. Both the room and the apartment were soon littered with the other man's things; his magazines, money and clothes.

The first thing Draco noticed was just how neat Harry was; he was much better at cleaning and tidying than Draco would ever hope to be, and so Draco was quite satisfied to keep him around for a long time as it saved him hiring a maid. The image of Harry Potter in a small black dress and a white apron was not appealing, but the idea of free service was more than enough to make Draco positively glow.

Draco had heard Harry finally phone Hermione the day after he moved his things into Draco's flat, much to everybody's surprise. Hermione and Ron both rushed round to make sure he was okay and that Draco was not planting secret chips in his brain to manipulate him, because this was the immediate conclusion drawn by all parties ever since anyone had heard the two men were friends. Draco had stayed out of the way the best he could, but eavesdropped from a safe distance because it was obviously his right as the host.

"Harry," Ron said in the flattest tone Draco had possibly heard in his life after having been there about half an hour. "Are you insane, mate? This is Malfoy. You do not want to live with Malfoy - he's evil!"

Harry laughed a little and, although Draco couldn't see or hear it from his position behind his bedroom door, Hermione clucked her tongue and gave a disapproving look that said everything all at once - that Draco would surely corrupt Harry, that he was nothing but trouble, and that she was still utterly crazy about him. This part hadn't really been implied, but Draco was sure it was true all the same.

"Ron is right, Harry," Hermione agreed, sounding very put out and motherly at the same time. "It's not going to do you any good just staying here - what about your own house? You spent a long time doing that up, and Dom spent even longer helping you find it!"

Ah. This caused Draco to raise his eyebrows, because this was new information. Harry had told him he'd known Dom before they had started dating, but had not shared that he had been the person who'd found his house. No wonder Harry was so keen to move out, there were probably sore reminders in every room. Draco silently cursed Dom, because there was always a reason to, and carried on listening.

Harry's voice could be heard defending Draco for a very long time, a few hushed words were shared that Draco couldn't make out, and then he heard the front door close .He hopped away in case Harry came inside, making sure to look as natural as possible in the process. Predictably (in Draco's opinion), Harry did enter the room, knocking on the door and poking his head round. Obviously surprised to see Draco standing nearby, Harry frowned a little and said finally, "Well, they're gone. They're not very happy."

Draco nodded a little, glancing down at his fingernails for a moment before looking back to Harry. "I heard. Weasley is certainly very imaginative with his insults-"

"Oh, he didn't mean half of it," Harry replied, blushing a little and also glancing down, apparently embarrassed. "I mean, he did, because he doesn't like you - but I'm sure he probably wouldn't turn you into a duck billed platypus given the chance... even though he said he would. He's not even that good at magic, anyway."

A smile spread across Draco's face at this; one thing that he still enjoyed despite himself was Harry feeling awkward, but now it was more out of a sort of fondness than a chance to mock the other boy. "Calm down, Potter - it's not like I'm jumping up and down to impress the prat anyway."

"No," Harry mused with a little concentrated frown as he looked back up and around the room. "I suppose not."

Draco wandered forward and, as he had done many a time now, pushed Harry back towards the door lightly with the palm of his hand. Opening the door with his free hand, Draco gave a quiet laugh as he spoke. "Come on, let's get you a bit plastered. We can go and reintroduce ourselves to our old professors at the Leaky Cauldron-"

Harry rolled his eyes, but allowed himself to be led. "You are such an alcoholic." There was a pause. "Alright, let's go."

* * *

Now that it was officially summer for the Hogwarts students, there were a lot more sightings of the teachers, staff and parents around Diagon Alley and the small streets surrounding it. Draco had so far seen Professor Flitwick, who was still going strong as the Charms teacher, Madame Hooch picking up her newly-shined Quidditch balls from a cleaners that took the dirt off anything you requested, and finally Professor Dumbledore.

It always gave Draco pause for thought that the old head of Hogwarts could just walk up and down Diagon Alley without showing any concern for himself or keeping his head down. He never seemed to mind when little children ran up to him and tugged on his robes, never blinked an eye when the older students shouted after him. He just continued humming, eating his sherbet lemons and greeting familiar faces. Draco thought it was very unusual.

Harry and Draco were now sat outside the Leaky Cauldron at one of the small tables provided for those who wanted to enjoy the sun, Draco drinking back a cold Jack Daniels and coke, Harry a small glass of lemonade that his friend had turned his nose up at.

"What?" Harry asked, as Draco still looked at the glass as though offended. "It's the middle of the afternoon, Draco, I'm not going to drink straight vodka or anything."

Draco pouted. "What about vodka and something? Vodka and anything? I took you out to cheer you up, not to bloody sip at granny's fresh squeezed orange juice."

"You do realise it's actually lemonade, don't you?"

"Oh, fuck off." Draco grinned despite himself, knocked back the last of his own drink and got to his feet. "I'm getting another drink. Do you want something a bit stronger, or will you be satisfied with that lesser thing in your hand?" Another grin flickered on his face again as Harry looked a little taken aback, and he took this as a no, and headed back inside and over to the bar.

The bar was littered with a varying group of people, the majority older men who had taught at Hogwarts at some point, and Draco jumped a little as someone tapped him on the shoulder as he was waiting for service. Turning around, he was greeted with the slightly older, but still very recognisable face of Minerva McGonagall.

Looking around as though he might not be the person she really wanted to talk to, Draco raised his eyebrows. "Uh... did I queue jump or something?"

Professor McGonagall looked as disapproving as ever as she shook her head. "Not at all. I just wanted to see how Harry's getting on. I didn't want to go outside and interrupt your conversation, you looked very-" She paused.

"Bored?" Draco filled in hopefully. "Annoyed? In the middle of an exchange of insults? All of the above?"

McGonagall considered, and shook her head with a slight smile. "Cosy," she settled for finally. "It's almost unbelievable, but it's very nice to see Harry settled down. Even if it is with you."

Draco gaped for a long moment, cleared his throat and took a deep breath that was very much needed before he spoke. "Potter and..." He stopped, wondering the best way to go about this to make his point as clear as possible. "We are friends. Ish. Maybe not even that. He's just living with me." He paused again as McGonagall looked like she was going to die of some weird Gryffindor pride that Draco hoped wasn't contagious. "Not like that. Potter is in the spare bloody bedroom, and he is definitely just my bloody friend. I'm not even gay." McGonagall looked unconvinced, much like other people had when Draco had said this, and in the same way as always, he insisted, "I'm not."

"Mr Malfoy," McGonagall said with a smile as she retrieved drinks that Draco wasn't entirely sure how she had ordered when she'd been talking to him and hadn't had a chance to do so, "It's quite obvious that he likes you very much. He's taken a shine to you."

"Well, I'm a bloody nice guy," Draco affirmed, and then got a bit confused as to what exactly the old professor was getting at. It was entirely possible that she just meant Harry liked him as a friend, but that wasn't what her face was hinting at. "Wait a minute. Look, there's nothing going on with me, or with Harry. He doesn't like me, there is no shining, nothing." As though feeling the need to emphasise this, Draco insisted, "Nothing." He then turned around with a 'hmph' and tried to catch the bartender's attention.

When he did after another five minutes, after McGonagall had apparently taken the hint and disappeared, the man behind the bar smiled - and winked at him suggestively. When the drinks came, they came with a piece of paper that had a telephone number and 'Dave' scrawled on it in messy handwriting. Draco wanted to cry, and he finished his drink inside, remaining at the bar for a while - company suddenly didn't seem like an appealing option.

The whole world was against him.

* * *

"I'm not going to help," Hermione insisted, glaring at Draco from her seat across from him. "There is no way I'm going to help."

Draco sighed. "You have to help, Granger. You're good at all that adding up stuff, we need someone like that to do all the- money things."

"No way. I refuse to be a part of this little scheme. Harry will grow out of this within a week, he would never have agreed to it if he had actually given it some thought. If he wasn't so soft, he wouldn't even consider it, you know." Hermione paused to give Draco another disapproving glance before drinking a little more of her coffee. "Opening a bar, honestly."

Draco had thought this was a good idea until he had actually opened the door to a disgruntled, angry looking Hermione. Asking her to be the accountant for a club that didn't yet exist or have any ground work was not his best plan, he had to admit, particularly when she was still quite mad at him for lying as to whether he knew where Harry had been all of last week.

Sighing once again for what must have been the tenth time at least in the space of this five minute conversation, Draco bit his lip thoughtfully and looked down. Hermione probably read this as him being ashamed or feeling guilty, but it was really more about catching a glance at the woman's legs. She was wearing a fetching black skirt that was definitely shorter than the skirts she wore around Ron, and Draco took this to mean she was desperate for an affair. Whether or not he would act on this, he was not sure, because it would surely end up with him in a lot of trouble with Harry, especially now that the other boy was living with him.

Currently, Harry was out packing up some more things from his old house and showing it to prospective buyers, and so Draco had invited Hermione round to see if she would take to giving up her job, whatever it was, to do the accounts for the club he and Harry were now almost definitely seeing about opening. Harry had handed in his two week's notice at the Ministry a day ago, and Draco had told his mother, who had scowled and told him to grow up.

This was much the same as Hermione's attitude. There had been silence for a few moments now and, apparently uncomfortable, Hermione shifted in her seat and said coldly, "You're going to run him astray, Draco."

"Why does everyone talk about us like we're an old fucking married couple?" Draco retorted, and then added for good measure, "Which we aren't. Married or fucking. Or old, for that matter. And I'm not even-"

"Not even gay," Hermione supplied for him in a bored tone. "I know. We all know, everyone knows. You make a point of saying it every time somebody walks into a room and looks at you the wrong way, it's something you seem very insistent about."

Draco paused for a moment, slightly taken aback, before nodding and folding his arms. "Well, good," he replied with another pointed nod. "I am insistent about it. When you live with someone gay, everyone usually jumps to the wrong conclusion, that's all. And it's not that there's anything wrong with it, I just don't go down that road." He cleared his throat awkwardly.

Hermione gave a half smile, seemingly softening for a reason Draco couldn't determine, and he also thought she looked secretly amused, much like Professor McGonagall had done in the bar earlier that day. "Alright, Draco. You've made your point."

"Will you help then? With the bar?" He looked hopeful and gave his most winning smile, before taking a moment to glance at her breasts, just because they were there and she didn't seem to be concentrating on his face to catch him out. When she did look at him, he caught her eye and gave another little smile.

Returning this smile with a little more enthusiasm, Hermione replied, "I don't know. I'll see what work says about getting a bit of time off every now and again." She finished her coffee and set the cup down on the table. "Ron will not be pleased about this."

Draco held her gaze still. "I bet he's not really happy about you being here, either."

There was a silence, and Hermione looked down. Draco concluded that she absolutely looked guilty or ashamed, and was probably feeling it (unlike Draco earlier in the same conversation). "He doesn't know I'm here, actually." She stood, and smoothed down her skirt. "And I should go."

Following her to the door, Draco looked down at her as she stopped, her hand on the door. "What kind of game are you trying to pull, Granger?"

Hermione looked up at him, and retorted quietly, "No game." She sighed, and then added, "You wouldn't be interested even if there was a game."

"How do you know that?" Draco asked, raising an eyebrow. Hermione didn't reply, but instead opened the door and left Draco standing in the hallway alone, an annoyed expression on his face and some confusion playing around in his head.

* * *

When Harry got home, Draco didn't bother to look up. He was in a bad mood, after the conversation with Hermione, which had once again turned into a suggestive exchange of glances. Once again, Draco had felt the need to jump on her, and once again, Hermione had given him nothing except an 'I'm a good girl' glance and a door slam.

Draco wasn't sure if the reason he wanted to have sex with Hermione was because he really liked her or because he just hadn't had sex in almost a month. This was very unlike him and he couldn't put his finger on exactly what it was stopping him from finding somebody willing to relieve him of his sufferance. Usually it was no problem to go to a club, pick up a girl and not call her the next day.

When he had been with Verity, he had been with other girls; it hadn't seemed a problem because he wasn't at all committed to Verity, and she didn't give a damn what he did when he wasn't in her office. As long as he kept her happy, she had told him, he could go and sleep with the whole of the United Kingdom for all she cared.

Now that he was being validly given the chance to do so since Verity had dumped him and he definitely had no significant other to speak of, Draco found he just didn't want to sleep with any old girl just to satisfy his needs.

He was almost certain it had something to do with Harry Potter, although if his life had depended on working out what that something was, Draco knew he would be long dead by now.

"Are you okay?" he heard Harry ask now, and there was a succession of light thuds as some boxes were dropped onto the floor. A jangling of keys was heard as Harry put his set on the table, and when Draco looked up, his eyes met a concerned green pair across the room. "You look a bit... well, you don't look very happy."

Draco shrugged. "I'm in a bad mood. You might want to stay out of my way." When Harry smiled a bit, Draco scowled. "What?"

"If I stayed out of your way every time you were in a bad mood, you'd never see me," Harry replied with a quiet laugh, to which Draco's glower deepened and he looked at his trousers to avoid looking at Harry.

Draco's tone was lazy when he spoke, as though he couldn't be bothered to put his heart into insulting the other man as he muttered, "Suits me." Harry didn't seem affected as he just rolled his eyes and wandered into the kitchen to make a snack, and Draco assumed this was because he was used to Draco's mood swings by now, which even he could admit were very frequent.

He was sure he was hard to live with, but Harry never seemed to mind. He was really quite easy going, much more so than he had been in school, but Draco supposed that was because he had less to worry about now that Voldemort was dead, and Lucius Malfoy was dead and most of the people who had posed a threat to the Boy Who Lived were in Azkaban or, well, dead.

Draco also thought that Harry was much more cheerful since he had offered to help Draco start up his club, probably because it kept him out of the way drawing up designs and looking for vacancies down The Alley, which had seemed the obvious location to put the nightclub. It was the hotspot for nights out, and there was no point opening a club if nobody was going to go in it, Draco had decided.

Trying to think of a name, and a design, and even a theme, was a very hard task, but it had given Draco something to do during the days which had started to become so very boring without a job to go to. He was pondering something neon with lots of black and even more glow sticks, with tasteful podium dancers of the sexy variety, and a very big office that Draco would retire to at the end of the evening. Draco found the last part an integral feature of the club.

It was definitely exciting, having something to look forward to, a club to run eventually, and Draco was sure he owed Harry much more than just a room in his home and company, particularly when his company was very unpredictable and a lot of the time unenjoyable.

Harry emerged now, one plate in each hand. He set one down on the seat next to Draco, and sat down with his own, saying as way of explanation, "I made you a sandwich. It's only cheese and pickle - that was all I could get out of the fridge that wasn't empty and didn't smell like something dead." He grimaced, and looked over at Draco. "I think one of us should go food shopping."

Draco didn't look up, but bit into his sandwich all the same. "Alright."

"One of us would be me, then, I suppose," Harry supplied, to which Draco nodded and continued to eat his sandwich in silence. "Yeah, definitely me." There was another long silence. "You're a lifelong surprise, Malfoy. I never know what to think when you're around."

Draco looked up. "I never asked you to know."

"I'm just saying, that's all."

* * *

Draco was still sitting alone at two o'clock in the morning, this time in total darkness. His now empty plate was resting against his leg, as he hadn't been bothered to move it, much like he hadn't been bothered to turn the light on when the living room had finally grown blacker by the second.

He had been thinking a lot; not about anything in particular, just a random mixture of subjects that ranged from Hermione Granger, to what drinks he could sell in the club, to whether he should really trust Harry with the food shopping when he would probably only buy one or two bottles of wine, and no other alcohol.

Harry was definitely only a big drinker when he was drunk, which Draco realised didn't make very much sense, but this seemed to be the same for everything about Harry Potter. He made almost as much sense as Draco did, because although he didn't have a million and one moods for every occasion, he usually only had one or two. This, in Draco's opinion, was far more confusing than anything Draco had ever done himself.

Draco was halfway through a thought about naming the bar "Snake", which he was very much about to dismiss, when the door to Harry's bedroom clicked open and disturbed him. Turning his head, he was almost as surprised as Harry looked, and a smile crossed his lips for the first time that evening at the expression on the other man's face.

"Wh- why are you still up?" Harry mumbled as he squinted into the darkness of the room. Draco wasn't sure that he had been sleeping so much as dozing, because he still looked quite awake, just puzzled. "I thought you went to bed."

Draco shrugged. "Well, I obviously didn't," he snapped after a minute, before his expression softened. "I couldn't be bothered to get up, to be honest."

"Lazy," Harry said with a slight smile, which Draco only just caught as the light was flicked on and caused both men to squint exaggeratedly and look down at the floor almost simultaneously. "If you're up then, I may as well stay up too." He moved across the room and sat next to Draco, moving the plate onto the table as he did so. "Are you in a better mood?"

Giving a slightly unenthusiastic laugh, Draco rolled his eyes. "I might be, I might not be. You'll have to just wait and see, if you're going to insist on joining me and interrupting my blissful silence. I might be in an okay mood, or I might snap and jump on you."

Harry's laugh was more genuine than Draco's at this, and he grinned as he replied, "That wouldn't be such an awful thing..."

"I'm not going to jump on you, Potter."

There was a silence - the day seemed to be full of them, Draco mused. Harry was looking at him now in a way that just assured Draco further that the ex-Gryffindor was indeed very hard to read, and he heaved a little sigh. "What?"

"Just- nothing." Harry frowned and looked off, causing Draco to raise his eyebrows somewhat and look at him with more insistence. "Nothing, alright?"

"No, you have to tell me now," Draco said with a small smirk, nudging Harry with his elbow as though to encourage him. When Harry's frown deepened, Draco couldn't help but feel slightly concerned. "You can tell me, we're friends."

Another pause. "Well, that's the thing..."

Draco sighed. "Are you going to back out of this whole club thing and move out or something? Because I would not appreciate that."

"No," Harry replied firmly, looking almost offended at this suggestion. "No, of course not. It's just- well, are we really friends? Or-"

"Or what?" Draco didn't like the way this was turning out. It was two in the morning, and Draco suddenly wanted nothing more than to go to bed, if only to be alone again. He certainly didn't want this conversation to happen, if it was going in the direction that he suddenly thought it was, and he echoed with some annoyance, "Or what?"

"It's just that a few people have mistaken us for, you know, a couple and... and well, that can't just come from nowhere, can it? I mean, people have said things to me - Hermione and Dom, and I saw Professor McGonagall today and she-" He trailed off, and when Draco didn't say anything, Harry looked even more uncomfortable as he looked down at his hands, where his thumbs were twiddling each other, a giveaway of his nerves. "I just- well... it's confusing, that's all."

Draco sighed heavily, and shocking himself and Harry at the same time, he replied, "Yeah, I'll say it is."

"What?"

Another final, much longer silence fell between them. "Just- shut up for a minute." And once again, to his own and the other man's amazement, Draco Malfoy leaned in and pressed his lips to Harry's. The kiss didn't last long, and did not give away any trace of commitment or why exactly Draco had done it, but when Harry pulled back, he could not help but smile.

"Like I said, a lifelong surprise," Harry said with some amusement before biting his lower lip thoughtfully, his voice quiet and slightly breathless as he looked over at the other man.

Draco could only return Harry's smile and say quietly, "Yeah."