Blackmail

Chapter 8

There were still several students remaining in the Gryffindor common room by the time Harry had returned from the detention with Draco. Hermione and Ron were among them, sitting across from each other in two of the large, red armchairs that littered the room, deep in conversation.

Mostly everyone looked up as the portrait swung open and Harry stumbled in, slightly sweaty and panting hard.

Hermione threw an alarmed look at Ron. "Stay here," she mouthed at him. Ron nodded. He looked concerned but kept silent as Hermione stood up to meet Harry.

"Hello, Harry," she said cautiously.

Harry looked up and gave her a small smile. "Hi, Hermione."

"Rough detention?"

Harry nodded as he flopped onto a couch with a sigh. "You could say that."

"Problems with Snape?"

He shook his head. "No, Snape was only there for the first ten minutes to tell us what we had to do."

"Us?" Hermione echoed.

Harry swallowed with difficulty. "Draco and I."

"Oh, I didn’t know that he had detention with you."

Harry laughed hollowly. "Yeah, I didn’t either."

"Did you two have another big fight?" she asked, somewhat disapprovingly.

Harry shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Not exactly…"

They sat in silence for a minute. Hermione waited for him to explain, but when it became evident that he wasn’t going to say anything more, she asked, "Want to tell me what happened?"

"I… I made a mistake, Hermione."

Hermione watched as he shifted in his seat once again. "What kind of mistake, Harry? Something with Malfoy?" she asked, becoming more and more concerned for her friend’s strange behavior.

"Uh…" Harry averted his eyes as a slight red tinge appeared on his cheekbones.

Hermione stared at him some more. And that was when she finally understood. The odd glances, the huge fights, the cryptic conversations (or lack thereof)… and now, with the flushed cheeks after coming back from a detention spent with Malfoy… Harry was acting like… like…

"You’re in love with him," Hermione said simply.

Harry jerked his head up, his eyes filled with disbelief. "How… how did you know?"

"Just your behavior over the past couple of weeks, Harry. The things happening between the two of you…" she shrugged. "Something was obviously going on."

Harry looked like he didn’t know what to say.
"So… are you? In love with him?"

"Yes," Harry whispered. "At least… at least I think so."

Hermione nodded and leaned back against the arm of the couch, looking thoughtful.

"When did you figure it out?" Harry asked quietly.

"It’s been bothering me for a while, but I didn’t realize it until just now. It all seemed to click into place, what with your reaction to the detention with him, and your facial expressions…"

Harry immediately looked away, feeling his face with one hand. "That obvious, eh?"

Hermione looked sympathetic.

Harry sighed. "Well I suppose it would have had to come out eventually."

"How did it start, Harry? I mean, he’s supposedly your worst enemy, after You-Know-Who. How did it happen?"

Harry’s shoulders slumped. "Trust me, Hermione, when I say that you really don’t want to know."

"Okay, so you don’t want to tell me. I understand. But Harry, I’m not sure of the problem here. I mean, if you love him, and he loves you-"

"But that’s just it! I don’t know how he feels!"

By that point, Ron had made his way over and settled himself down on an armchair across from the couch. "So, what’s going on?"

Hermione ignored his arrival and continued softly, "Does he know how you feel?"

Harry slowly shook his head. "It’s not that kind of…" Harry seemed to struggle with the right word. "…relationship, Hermione. We don’t… we don’t tell each other that kind of stuff."

"Well there’s your problem then," Hermione said triumphantly. "You have to let him know of your feelings. You have to tell him you’re in love."

Ron made a sudden jerking movement. "Harry’s in love?" he asked incredulously. He looked back and forth between the two of them. "Why didn’t you tell me? Wait a minute…" he stared at Harry. "HIM?"

Hermione at last acknowledged Ron’s presence by tossing him a dark glare. "If you have a problem with it, Ron, then-"

"He’s right!" Harry broke in. "I mean, that’s part of the problem, Hermione! What if I’m… I’m…"

"Gay?" Ron suggested helpfully.

Both Harry and Hermione looked exasperatedly at him. "Yes, Ron," Harry said, almost bitterly. "Gay."

"Harry…" Hermione started.

"Why is it always me?" Harry asked softly, to no one in particular. "I’m the only one who survived the Killing Curse… I defeated Voldemort when I was only one year old, and despite the fact that nobody knows how or why, I’m still hailed as some sort of hero. I even have that stupid ‘Boy-Who-Lived’ title of all things. People are constantly staring at me just because of this bloody scar on my forehead."
"Harry-"

"No, listen to me, Hermione," he told her fiercely. "If I do turn out to be… gay, that’ll be just one more reason for all of them to stare, won’t it? But not the worshipping, kissing the ground I walk on type of staring. It’ll be the ‘Oh, yes son, that IS Harry Potter. He used to be the savoir of the wizarding world, but then he turned gay, and things went all downhill from there’ type of staring." He lifted his head and stared at his friends. "I don’t know if I can handle that."

"Harry," Ron started weakly. "It came out all wrong when I brought it up. I didn’t mean for it to sound like that. I don’t care whether your gay, or straight, or whatever. And I’m sure most people won’t, either."

"But they will, Ron. Even if they pretend they don’t, they will," Harry sighed and ran a hand through his already tousled hair.

"Listen, Harry," Hermione said softly. "You shouldn’t worry about that just yet. First you need to figure out your feelings for him, and his feelings for you. And that will only be able to happen if you two talk. You have to talk to him, Harry," she urged.

Harry drew his knees up to rest his chin on them. "I know, Hermione. I know. But what if… what if he-"

"Harry," Hermione interrupted, still speaking softly. "Talk. That’s all you need to do right now."

Harry nodded slowly. "Okay," he said quietly.

"Great!" Ron stood and clapped his hands together once. "Now that that’s all resolved… someone tell me… who’s the ‘him’?"

* * *

It was after dinner the next day. Harry lurked in a gloomy corridor near the entrance to the Slytherin common room, waiting for Draco to come down from the Great Hall. Why had he waited all day to approach him? Simple answer: it took this long for him to get up the nerve.

Harry absently played with a thread on his robes and sighed. Draco would most likely reject Harry. If they even got the chance to talk, that is, because Harry was sure that Draco would just walk away altogether when he spotted him. Life can never be easy, can it?

He froze as he heard voices approach. Draco then came into view, rounding the corner with Crabbe and Goyle on his heels. "So then," he was saying casually as the other two Slytherins nodded dumbly, "I told her no, I’m just not interested. It’s been years, she really needs to just move on with her pathetic life. I mean, I know that most girls worlds revolve around my charming self, but really, she needn’t have charmed my alarm clock to read her god awful poetry to me that morning. Honestly, if she tries something like that again, I’ll just have to-" Draco stopped abruptly, both in motion and speech, as he caught sight of Harry. Goyle wasn’t paying attention, and he stumbled right into Draco, but the blond didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were on Harry.

Harry gulped and stepped forward. "Draco," he acknowledged uncertainly. When Draco didn’t say anything, he pressed on. "I…I think we should talk."

Draco studied him for a minute, then slowly nodded his head.

"Alone," Harry said, looking warily up at Crabbe and Goyle.

Draco seemed to agree. He turned to the two other boys. "Go."

Crabbe started forward hesitantly. "But Draco-"

"I said go," Draco told them harshly.

"Right," Crabbe said instantly, not wishing to invoke Draco’s wrath. He grabbed Goyle, who was staring interestedly at an insect crawling up the stone wall, and dragged him away.

Once they had walked off, Draco jerked his head toward a door that led to an unused classroom. "In here."

Harry nodded, entered the classroom and sat on the edge of a desk as Draco pulled the door shut and put a locking charm on it. He turned to Harry as he put his wand away in a pocket inside his robes. The two boys faced each other for several long moments, neither of them speaking. Draco, surprisingly, looked away first. He started playing with a stray string on his robes, just as Harry had been doing not five minutes ago.

Finally deciding that nothing was being accomplished, Harry drew in a deep breath and said, "This… this thing we have between us… it isn’t really about blackmail anymore, is it?"

Draco raised his head and trained his calculating gaze on Harry for a second, before slowly shaking his head. "No," he admitted softly. "It’s not."

Harry sat down heavily on the edge of a desk, his shoulders slumped. "Draco… I… I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say. This is too much to handle." His hands, tightly clasped together, were now physically shaking. "We can’t keep going on like this," he continued, his voice wavering slightly. "I mean-"

"Do you really think my eyes are beautiful, Potter?" Draco interrupted him.

Harry’s head snapped up. "What?"

The complete opposite of Harry, Draco seemed the epitome of calmness, studying him with a quizzical gaze. "My eyes, Potter. Do you think they’re beautiful?"

Harry hesitated for a second, then nodded. "Yes."

Now Draco seemed to get nervous. His voice trembled slightly as he asked, "And… and do you think that I’m-"

"Yes," Harry whispered softly. He dropped his gaze and stared at his hands. "I do."

Draco’s voice was quiet. "I see."

Harry felt his stomach turn over. He had now just revealed his innermost feelings to Draco. What was going to happen now? Would Draco just laugh at him and walk away? Because it’s not possible that Draco could return his feelings… no, not possible at all.

Lost in his own thoughts, he vaguely heard Draco shuffle over to take a seat on the desk next to him. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to happen, Harry thought dimly. He’s supposed to go away now. He needs to go away, like he always has done. He’s supposed to laugh at me and my weak display of human emotions. He’s not supposed to be sitting next to me, touching my hips with his ever so slightly, and why is he reaching over to rub his hand over mine? Why is he…? Oh.

OH.

Harry raised his eyes and stared at Draco. Draco was staring back, beautiful grey eyes intense with emotion. "You like me, too," Harry said. Not a question, but a statement.

Draco nodded, and suddenly, Harry’s hands were shaking not with nervousness but with a new kind of feeling. Draco likes me, he thought giddily.

He felt a smile spread across his face, but one look at the blond told him that the situation wasn’t resolved yet. Draco was still looking somber.

"Harry…" he started quietly, his hand still caressing Harry’s own. "How could we have let this happen? It isn’t right. We’re completely different, for one thing, not to mention the fact that… well, we’re both boys."

"So?"

Draco’s eyebrows drew together. "Harry, how can you just brush this off?"

"I’m not just brushing it off." Harry raised his eyes to the ceiling, feeling strangely… enlightened. "I think I’ve just realized something, Draco."

"Well here’s a once in a lifetime event," Draco said sarcastically.

Harry felt the smile remain on his face. Even Draco’s sarcasm didn’t bother him now. Harry loved Draco, and after all, the sarcasm was as much a part of Draco as was his intellect, his body, his soul, and everything else Harry cherished.

"What I just realized, Draco, is that it doesn’t matter. None of it."

Draco looked confused. "It doesn’t matter?"

Harry shook his head. "Nope. It doesn’t matter whether we are of the same sex. It doesn’t matter what other people think." Here, he turned and faced Draco, staring deeply at him. "What does matter is that this is destiny."

"Destiny?" Draco scoffed.

"Yes. Destiny. Fate. Whatever you want to call it. Just listen to me, Draco," he said with a new vigor. "I’ve been thinking too hard over the past couple of weeks, and you probably have, too. We’ve been obsessing over how wrong we think this is; a Slytherin and a Gryffindor, a Malfoy and a Potter. Whether we’re gay or straight, and how everybody will hate and condemn this relationship we have." He shook his head. "Draco, the only thing that everybody has in common is that they want to find that one person to be with, to share everything with. It doesn’t matter whether that person is the same sex as you are, and if the person is your complete opposite. What matters is that when you’re with that person, you feel something. You feel completed. Haven’t you felt all those charges run through us when we’re together? The feelings we have? How we crave more of each other even when our brains tell us that it isn’t logical?"

Harry paused and took a deep breath "Draco, most people are never truly happy, because they could never find that one special person," he concluded softly. "But I think we have."

Through all this, Draco kept silent, contemplating what Harry was telling him.

A long moment passed.

"Draco?" Harry prompted him.

Draco drew in a shaky breath and smiled weakly at the other boy. "I think I understand, Harry. I think I at last understand everything."

Harry closed the distance between them with a small motion, firmly covering Draco’s lips with his own. Draco let out a blissful sigh and melted into Harry. Their bodies seemed to fit perfectly into one another, and Harry briefly wondered why he hadn’t noticed that before, and then all coherent thought flew from his mind.

* * *

Later that night, one lone girl was still left sitting in the Gryffindor common room. Harry still hadn’t returned from his after dinner talk with Malfoy. The clock struck eleven and Hermione smiled to herself.