Moving On

Harry stepped quickly out of the rain, shaking the droplets off his umbrella as he entered the small, steamy café.

He didn't know if he should have come, knew it was probably a bad idea, but something in Draco's voice - still weird to hear it over the telephone, still weird to think of Draco as ever not simply turning his nose up at something Muggle, but of course they'd all changed so much - had made him think, maybe.

It wasn't hard to spot Dro in the corner booth, sipping his coffee - same hair, same upright posture. There were some things that war and trauma and experiences that ripped your life apart still couldn't change, like the strength of a drummed-in aristocratic upbringing, and incurable vanity.

Harry almost smiled.

He quietly made his way across and sat down on the seat across from Draco. "Hi."

Draco looked up, the corner of his mouth quirking up in that painfully familiar way, that called an answering tug somewhere just below Harry's chest.

"Harry. You came."

"Yeah."

It was easy to tell they hadn't spoken for a while - the easy familiarity they'd had was rusty, and they spoke like strangers.

"I haven't seen you in a while." Draco's expression had always been easy to read, try as he might to hide it, and now Harry could see the thinly veiled hope in Draco's eyes as he spoke. Clear as day. Harry sighed.

Draco looked down at his coffee. "I just wanted to see you again. I just...we've been through so much, Harry. You're - you're an inextricable part of my life now, and I don't feel whole when you're not around."

"Draco--"

It was true, but that was their old life, the old shape of things. War, death and panic, that was the lives that they were a part of together. Things were different now.

"Look, Harry, I know - I know we...stopped seeing each other for a reason--"

shouting, fighting, not letting go. Raw memories stirred up, always too painful, always too much.

"--but we work well together, Harry. We - it's always been us two."

Cold lonely face all alone at the Slytherin table, then a new face at Order meetings. Surprise and suspicion and finally grudging respect, an enmity changing to desire, to friendship, to more, to Harry and Draco, who won the War, together, who couldn't have done it without each other. Who fell in love in amongst the blood and green light, who couldn't have lived without each other, who saved each other, in all ways.

"We used to hate each other." Harry didn't know what he meant by that, but it came out anyway.

Draco smiled. "Yeah, we did. Funny how things change."

Harry smiled, a tight, small smile that was more pain that any real humour. "Exactly."

Funny how things changed, from that first forbidden kiss. From mutual suspicion to trusting each other with their lives. From love, through the spectrum to resentment and unhappiness.

Because was how it had gone. They didn't work together in normal situations. They were far from normal people who had come together in extraordinary circumstances, and couldn't Draco see?

Extraordinary circumstances indeed - they'd needed someone in the middle of the loss, desperation and uncertainty that surrounded them as the tide of the war swung unpredictably from one side to the other. They'd found each other at a time when they were lost and alone, and the inevitable sparks between them filled and warmed them and made them both feel alive, and soon hostility morphed into desire, and as they became more wrapped up in each other a desperate needy love wound itself round them - gave Harry fuel to keep living, gave Draco something to keep going for when he felt he'd lost everything he'd once believed in.

It had been everything Harry had dreamed of, and he felt safe in the eye of the storm of Draco's desperate love, and it was obvious to everyone except Harry and Draco that they were unhealthily dependent on each other - but to each other, at the time, all they needed was each other and it would be that way forever.

But it had rapidly changed once it was over, the war, once they had to try and live a normal life.

They got a flat together, of course, a place on the outskirts of London not to close and not too far from the centre of rebuilding the wizarding world, and started to build their lives together, of course. They had to be together, didn't they? It was unfathomable that they would ever live apart.

They were still wrapped up in each other, of course, at least at first, but it just didn't work anymore. It didn't work sleeping together in a neat and tidy bed, rather than curled up together on whatever spare part of rocky ground or makeshift bed was available in the brief lulls of battle. It didn't work, making love on soft sheets instead of desperate fucking in the nearest illusion of privacy, however cramped or uncomfortable. Didn't work living simple domestic moment to simple domestic moment, instead of clinging to each other in the heat of battle, spells flashing by, lives on a knife-edge.

They'd survived, before, on grand declarations of love, knowing they would die for each other, in an environment when that was a possibility; in a situation where such declarations had resonance, where each second with each other might be their last - but seemed empty and meaningless said across a neatly laid breakfast table.

They started to realise they couldn't held their relationship together in such mundane circumstances - Draco grew whiny and demanding, and Harry became irritable and isolated, and it was clearer and clearer that their years of animosity could not be so easily brushed aside.

And Harry'd begun to see what he'd been so blind to - that they weren't healthy for each other, that the intensity between them could only burn them before sputtering out, leaving a chill.

And looking at Draco, Harry could feel that chill creeping up his spine - that this wasn't right, they couldn't go back.

"Draco - you know we can't. It won't work. We don't work."

They'd dragged each other down and rubbed awkwardly against each other's different expectations and needs and it hadn't been pretty, at the end, before Harry had gone. Even though it hurt to turn his back on who he'd thought he couldn't live without.

Draco's jaw set and he looked like he was about to launch into a long speech, but Harry spoke before he could start.

"You know we're not good for each other, you know. I can't -I don't want to go back to that."

Leaving Draco had been the best and worst thing he'd done, tearing his heart out but giving him a new life and reminding him of all the things he'd given up when he'd plunged himself entirely into Draco - his friends, people who cared for him.

"It's not fair on me, what you want - you want all of me, like we were, and I can't do that. I have other things - a life to live. I didn't care about anyone else when it was you and me and it wasn't a good thing! I never even got to mourn Ron properly. It was like he didn't even matter to me--"

He tried to catch back a sob but it escaped and immediately Draco took his hand, silvery eyebrows drawn together in concern, but Harry snatched his hand away.

"No. Just - it's not fair. On either of us! Look what I've done to you - you left everything behind and put everything into me, and now you don't have anything or anyone else - and you don't, I'm sorry, but I can see it - and that's not healthy, Draco!" He realised he was shouting and tried to calm down, but it was hard as Draco stared at him, eyes fierce with emotion.

"I don't have anyone but you, Harry, and that's why I need you! You're everything--"

"Draco, I'm not. You need to make your own life and forget about everything before. The war, and everything you went through - as long as I'm around you can't let them go, and you need to, else you'll never live--"

Draco reached over and slipped his hand around Harry's neck, and before the goosebumps had even began to rise on Harry's skin, pulled him into a harsh kiss.

Draco's lips were warm and comforting and arousing and right, and Harry bit back a moan at the familiar warmth of Draco's tongue sliding into his mouth, and oh, for all he's said and thought, he'd missed this, so much. Harry's heart beat faster and for a few glorious seconds, he wanted. He wanted Draco back, to stroke his fingers through Draco's fine hair, touch his skin, own him. To feel the heat of Draco's passion envelope him completely, protect him, and to love him back, and emotion he hadn't felt since the height of their desperate need for each other stirred in Harry's chest, and flooded through his body. This was right, it was all he'd ever wanted, love like this, desire like this and Draco, his Draco.

Draco pulled away slowly and Harry kept his eyes closed, head spinning, as Draco slipped his hand around to cup Harry's face.

Draco's voice was low and Harry swallowed as old feelings rose up in a wave. "You see. Us. That's us - we're right, we work, we need each other. Like - like before. We need each other to - to heal. We can move on together." More quietly. "I need you."

And Harry opened his eyes. That was it, wasn't it? Draco needed him, like before, and it wasn't right, whatever the tingling in his lips and roaring in his ears told him. He wasn't made for someone to be so dependent on him - he'd had enough responsibility in this life, and Draco was proud and independent and not the kind of person that he became around Harry - Draco needed his own life, to become who really was, and Harry couldn't give him that.

And Harry couldn't be held in the past like that, either. They both needed to develop their own lives and heal the wounds the past few years had torn in them, and how could they do that when the other was such an immediate reminder?

Harry knew he shouldn't have come here in the first place. It had been hard losing Draco once. He couldn't do it again. He'd had enough heartbreak for one life and he couldn't go through it again, not in a repeat of before, which he could see unfolding before him if he stayed, if he kissed Draco one more time.

He brushed Draco's hair away from those desperate eyes and sighed, and stood up before the doubt in Draco eyes could persuade him again.

He walked away without looking back and, carefully unfolding his umbrella, stepped through the low doorway and walked back out into the rain. Time to move on, indeed.