The Red Room

The Red Room

When Draco Malfoy was a very young boy, he used to hide. He liked to hide; he was good at it. He hid from his father when the man was angry. He hid from his mother when she was fussy. He hid from Crabbe and Goyle because they were just so stupid. He hid from Pansy Parkinson because she was clingy and annoying. He hid from everyone and no one in particular. He hid when he was just bored. A majority of Draco's childhood was spent hiding.

Malfoy Manor was an excellent place for a child to live, if he loved hiding. There were over a hundred rooms, numerous corridors and secret passageways. Since there were only two humans, other than Draco, and six house-elves living there, it was highly unlikely that he'd run into anyone. Especially if he was hiding.

Out of the hundred rooms, numerous corridors and secret passageways, Draco's favourite childhood hideout was one of the guest rooms. It was far from being the largest in the Manor, but it was still very big. It was actually the third smallest guest room, though it was roughly the size of an average two bedroom flat. Draco didn't care about its size, however. He liked to hide there because the room was warm. Not temperature-wise, yet it had a warm feeling.

The room was furnished with deathly expensive things, like all the other rooms in the Manor. It was different in that things didn't seem untouchable or off-limits. The bed, the wardrobe, the dresser, the mirror - everything seemed to be usable. Draco didn't feel like he had to be on his guard with everything he touched. The only other room in the Manor that he felt comfortable in was his bedroom. Of course, he couldn't very well hide in there. It was too obvious.

The walls of the room were deep, deep red. Draco would have called it scarlet or crimson, except that those words reminded him of darker reds that he would rather not think of. Everything else in the room was some varying shade of red. The large four-poster bed had rose-red and cream sheets and pillows. A dark red Oriental carpet covered the floor. Hanging from the window were drapes the color of expensive red wine, and the leather sofa and chairs were a brownish burgundy. Even the wood furniture was a warm red colour.

This guest room, the Red Room, was the only room in the Manor with such a colour scheme. Most of the other rooms were black, or green, or a combination of the two. Occasionally, a room was done in blue or white, but no other had red as the dominant colour. Draco figured out why by the time he was six. One of the ghosts in the Manor told him it had been her room. She had been the only Gryffindor in Malfoy history; her room was decorated accordingly. The ghost, Marie-Annette, loved her room and had stayed behind as a ghost to ensure it was never redecorated. Draco always thought it a bit much to stay behind for a room, but he never mentioned that. Angering a Malfoy ghost was never a good idea.

No one ever went into the Red Room, besides the house-elves who cleaned it at night. No one ever expected Draco to go there, either. Due to that logic, Draco was never found when he wanted to hide. So Draco spent most of his pre-Hogwarts life playing imaginary games alone in the Red Room.

When Draco was a student, he couldn't hide. There were too many people. He needed to impress some of them, show indifferent respect to some, and put others in their place. There wasn't any time to hide. Crabbe and Goyle needed to be ordered around. Slytherins needed to be impressed and suitably controlled. Hufflepuffs needed to be tormented and Gryffindors needed to be humbled. Ravenclaws could be ignored or socialized with, but they were rather unimportant to Draco. He was a busy boy, after all.

Draco met the first person he had any interest in when he was eleven. He had been getting his robes fitted when a young boy his age walked in. The boy was small, with dark messy hair and bright green eyes. Draco had never seen anyone like this boy and immediately wanted to know him. So he did what his father always did with new people. He bragged. Years later, he would realize that bragging had been his first mistake, but eleven-year-old Draco was pretty proud of himself.

Later, when the boy refused his hand of friendship, Draco was hurt. No one had ever refused him something before, especially when he was offering something in return. The boy didn't want his friendship or his help. Draco did what most eleven-year-old boys, and all Malfoys, do when they are hurt - he got angry.

There are a fair number of truths known amongst old pureblood families. One is that Blacks can hold grudges that last beyond the grave. Another is that Malfoys are petty and vengeful when rejected. Draco was both a Black and a Malfoy. His longstanding, petty, revenge-driven schoolboy hatred was really only too natural.

Upon returning to Malfoy Manor after his first year of school, Draco found that the boy affected even his home life. His previous habits, which he had clung to for eleven years, were suddenly destroyed. Draco could no longer spend time in the Red Room. It reminded him of Gryffindor, which reminded him of Potter, which made him angry. To make matters even worse, the green rooms were off-limits as well. They were exactly the same shade as Potter's eyes. Draco spent most of his school year vacations in his dark blue and black themed room, blaming Potter for this unfortunate turn of events.

When Draco was a young man of eighteen, just out of Hogwarts, he was forced to hide. 'Safe houses' they were called. Draco never felt particularly safe in them. He knew that at any moment it could be compromised; at any moment, he could be fighting for his life. Though, he always supposed that hiding was better than living a (short) life as a Death Eater.

After turning from his father and fleeing his childhood home, Draco traded his father's secrets for protection. It was with no small sense of irony that Dumbledore sent him to hide. After all, Draco had always been good at hiding. Furthermore, there were important people who needed protection. Unfortunately, the people he helped protect didn't trust him. Being a high security target, it only made sense that Draco hid with and helped protect the other high security targets.

Frankly, he had never been on the Golden Gryffindor Trio's good side.

The first six months were stressful and tension-filled. Weasley was on his back every time they switched safe houses and whenever something as minor as a cup broke. Granger was icily distant and hateful. He supposed that he had somewhat earned it with seven years of blood slurs. Potter was cool, aloof and indifferent. That was the worst. Draco had always managed a reaction before, but in the safe houses, he was all but invisible to Potter. That didn't stop him from trying.

After six months, the remaining years in the safe houses went relatively well. Weasley stopped blaming him for everything. He restrained himself for the big things, like switching safe houses. Granger spoke with him in a civil manner, as if he were someone she had just met, but wasn't really impressed by. Potter started to see him. They talked. Sometimes they exchanged Dark Arts horror stories; other times they talked about trivial, meaningless things. They never spoke of the future. 'After the war' was not a foreseeable time for either of them. Once or twice, Draco made Potter laugh.

Draco's rooms were all sorts of colours. Blue, green, yellow, brown, black - they were every colour he could think of, as well as many he had no name for. He even stayed in a rainbow coloured one for two weeks. His least favourite was the red one. When he woke from his frequent nightmares, he always thought he was surrounded by blood.

When Draco was an older man, he was allowed not to hide. Four years out of Hogwarts, fresh out of a war, and a hero to boot. Draco could go anywhere. He chose to go home.

Upon his return to Malfoy Manor, Draco was shocked to see the place was practically unchanged. Everything was just as it had been four years ago when he left. His first order of business was to change it.

Draco attempted to destroy everything Dark Arts related. What survived his attempt was given to the Ministry. Next, he boarded up his father's study. He would never use it and preferred to know it was closed. He did the same with his parents' bedroom.

Instead of using the master bedroom or even his own room, Draco moved his things into the Red Room. He had expected the feelings of his childhood to return, when he came back to it. To his disappointment, they did not. The new feelings, however, were ones that he clung to as he stayed in the room. Looking around, he felt a longing - a yearning for something he never had, never could have. The room reminded him of Harry.

When Draco was a hermit, he was forced out of hiding. Not having left the Manor for a year, Draco was dragged to the anniversary party celebrating Voldemort's defeat. Instead of being allowed to spend his father's death-day unaware and getting blissfully drunk, Blaise forced him into spending it sullenly watching others dance.

Draco had never been friends with those who attended. Blaise was the only other Slytherin there. Of course, on arrival, Blaise immediately ditched him for his longtime boyfriend, Neville Longbottom. Draco noted the faces of the partygoers. Thomas and Finnigan were there, making dancing look like sex standing up with clothes on, as usual. Brown and the Gryffindor Patil sister were not, having died two and three years into the war. Anthony Goldstein was there, doing what Draco had wanted to do at home, getting gloriously drunk. Draco wanted to slap the person who made him come here on the one-year anniversary of Theodore Nott's death. Nott had been the only other Slytherin on the light side, a casualty of the final battle and Anthony's new husband.

Draco saw several other ex-students he recognized, but it was the Golden Trio that he watched. Ron and Hermione, as he had grown to call them, looked joyous. They spun around the dance floor as if fairly large number of their friends and families had not died exactly a year ago. All that mattered to them was each other and the gold bands on their fingers. Harry stayed at the edge of the dance floor, across from where Draco stood. For the most part he looked happy, but Draco saw the moments when he remembered. He could see it on Harry's face when he realized that the red-head over there couldn't be Ginny Weasley, or that the grating voice behind him couldn't be Zacharias Smith, or that the flash of a camera couldn't be Colin Creevey. Draco wanted nothing more than to cross the dance floor and present himself to Harry. But he couldn't. He was so good at hiding, after all.

Draco's heart did a funny little jump when he met Harry's eyes across the dance floor. They lit up like they hadn't done since Hogwarts. Then, he had been looking at his friends; now, he was looking at Draco. When Harry crossed the dance floor, Draco swallowed roughly. When Harry spoke, the words echoed in his ears.

I missed you.

At the end of the night, Draco ended up in the Red Room, as usual. What was different about that night was the fact that he wasn't alone. The moans he made were not caused by imaginings, but by Harry's tongue. The gasps he heard were not always his. The welcomed intrusion was not caused by his fingers, but by Harry's fingers. The hand he spilt on was not his own, but Harry's hand. Most importantly, the body that he curled into after was not imaginary, but Harry's real, warm, solid body.

Months later, after countless nights of sighing, panting, moaning, gasping, confessing, pleading, begging, and blessing, Draco reassessed his feelings for the Red Room. The room was much the same. The furniture had, by and large, remained. The drapes were the same. There were Draco's personal belongings on the bookshelves and dresser. There were Harry's things cast about all over the room, just as they were all over the Manor. As he looked around at Harry's clothes lying by the bed, their pictures framed on the desk, and Harry's naked limbs glowing in the pale early morning light, Draco identified his feelings. It was not the hatred of his school years, or the fear of his war years, or the longing of his last year. Instead, in addition to the feelings of fulfillment, belonging and love that Harry brought, Draco felt the warm, comfortable feelings of his childhood.

The Red Room had come full circle.