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“Is this real?”
Harry practically jumped out of his skin from where he was sitting on the sofa in the eighth year common room, staring into the fire and trying to ward off the nightmares. He hadn’t even heard anyone else walk into the room. “What?” he asked, looking over to see Draco Malfoy, of all people, standing there in his pajamas, face drawn and ashen.
“Is this real?” he repeated.
“Is what real?” Harry asked, looking around to see what he was talking about, unease creeping up his spine. Well, even more unease than he’d already been feeling from the nightmares.
“This,” the other boy whispered, sounding terrified, as he gestured vaguely at everything.
And that Harry could understand, he knew what it was like to wake up and not be sure what was real and what wasn’t. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah, this is real.”
“Are you sure?” he whispered, his right hand rubbing his left forearm.
A surge of pity rushed through Harry, he knew this year (the past couple, for that matter) had been hard for Malfoy. And honestly? He just didn’t have the energy to hate him any more. “Yeah,” he said softly.
Malfoy looked at him, “Do you swear?”
“Yes,” Harry assured.
“Would you swear with a wizard’s oath?”
Harry nodded at him.
“What’s the muggle’s version of a wizard’s oath?” he asked suddenly. “That’s something I wouldn’t know,” he muttered, more to himself than to Harry.
And in that moment, Harry’s (sleep deprived) mind blanked and he blurted the only thing he could think of, “Pinky promise.”
“What?” Malfoy asked blankly.
“A pinky promise,” Harry repeated. “You can’t break them. Here,” he said, holding out a pinky to him. “You just take your pinky,” he said, grasping Malfoy’s hand and tugging it toward him, “and wrap it with mine.”
Malfoy entwined his pinky with Harry’s, looking carefully at where their hands were joined.
“I pinky promise that this is real,” Harry said dutifully. Then he added, “You’re okay,” softly.
Malfoy looked up at that, his stormy grey eyes met Harry’s and he let go of his finger like he’d been scalded. “I-” Malfoy started.
But Harry just shook his head and turned to look back at the fire, “It’s alright. You don’t have to apologize or feel embarrassed. Why do you think that I’m sitting here in front of the fire instead of sleeping in bed?” he asked wryly. “It’s hard for me too.”
Malfoy was silent for a few minutes and Harry let him be, he just stared ahead into the fire and waited. For what he wasn’t quite sure.
“Can I sit with you?” Malfoy finally asked.
“Yeah,” Harry replied, glancing over at him.
Malfoy sat gingerly on the opposite end, tucking his bare feet under him and wrapping his arms around his thin torso.
“Are you cold?” Harry asked.
“A bit.”
Harry scooched toward the middle of the couch and put the throw he’d been using over Malfoy’s legs, too.
They were quiet for long moments before Harry asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” There was a brief pause, then Malfoy hesitantly asked, “Do you?”
“Godric, no.”
Nodding, Malfoy slipped his hand across the few inches between them and entwined their pinkies once more. Then the two of them just sat there in the quiet, listening to the fire crackle and pop until the sun started to peak through the window. They returned to their beds and Harry tried not to think too much about what had just happened.
————
It happened again the next night, and the night after that, and the night following that, and so on. Malfoy stopped even asking and Harry just started reaching out his pinky for him the moment the other boy entered the room.
Sometimes one of them would drift off while they were sitting together and wake with a start, and Harry for one, found it very reassuring to wake to Malfoy’s pinky grounding him to the here and now. He wondered if Malfoy felt the same.
Nothing changed for a few weeks until one morning when he came down for breakfast and saw Malfoy sitting by himself. This wasn’t unusual, but one look at the other boy and he knew something was off. Malfoy’s face was even paler than usual, his shoulder length blonde hair covering up half his face as his fingers clenched and unclenched. He knew those signs, he knew what his body language meant, and so instead of heading over to sit with Ron and Hermione, he moved toward Malfoy.
He sat down across from him and Malfoy looked up, eyes wide, “What are you doing?”
“I pinky promise,” Harry murmured and slid his hand across the table toward him, pinky extended.
Malfoy’s hand shot out toward him like he was reaching for a lifeline and he wrapped his pinky around Harry’s. Harry watched as he visibly relaxed, his shoulders lowering, and brow smoothing out. After a beat he looked up at Harry, “You didn’t have to-”
“I know,” Harry said, leaving his left pinky looped through Malfoy’s right. “I don’t mind.” Malfoy opened his mouth to say something but Harry continued, “Could you pass the sausage?”
Malfoy’s jaw clicked shut and he did as Harry asked. They sat in silence, eating their breakfast and drinking their coffee, fingers still linked.
————-
Sitting together at meals became habitual, too.
Ron and Hermione moved to join them eventually. They’d asked Harry about it but he honestly didn’t know what he was meant to say. He had no idea what he and Malfoy were doing, it just felt like the right thing to do and in some weird way it felt like Malfoy was the only one who understood him.
Having Ron and Hermione join them was completely surreal and Harry had no idea what to say.
Fortunately, Ron started talking first.
Harry had thought it would be weird to talk to Malfoy, and it was in the beginning, it was awkward and stilted and Harry had mentally cursed Ron Weasley for his extrovert nature. But after a few weeks the four of them managed to have what resembled normal conversations.
Malfoy’s right pinky often remained wrapped in Harry’s left and Hermione and Ron said nothing about it.
The next time it happened out of (what was becoming) the ordinary was in Defense Against the Dark Arts. They’d been practicing dueling when Malfoy’s wand had clattered to the ground.
Harry’s attention had been, admittedly, divided between his duel with Ron and Draco’s duel with Dean before Draco let his wand fall from his shaking hand. Without a second thought, Harry disarmed Ron and sent a tidy little ‘incarcerous’ to bind his feet as he started moving toward Draco.
Draco was staring down at his shaking hands as Harry approached.
“Hey,” he said softly, trying to draw Draco’s attention, “Hey, look at me.”
Draco looked up at him, eyes shining with unshed tears.
“Hey,” Harry said again. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” He offered his pinky to Draco. “This is real,” he whispered.
Draco blinked at him and entwined their pinkies together. After a slow deep breath, he nodded once and released Harry so he could go back to working on his dueling.
————-
It became a habit basically everywhere after that. Harry and Draco became all but inseparable, they started to learn to talk to one another. Harry enjoyed Draco’s sharp, dry whit and Draco seemed to enjoy Harry’s sarcastic, slightly dark sense of humor. They worked on projects together, started partnering up in classes, started bickering with each other when they disagreed, and even started teasing each other.
Harry had never set out with the intention to befriend Draco Malfoy, but there was certainly no denying it. They’d become rather good friends.
One night, things changed again. Harry awoke with a start, heart pounding against his rib cage. The curtains around his bed were drawn and for a moment he’d been trapped in his cupboard. For a moment, there’d been no way out and there was no one who cared about him.
He kicked off his blankets and struggled out of bed, escaping the room as quietly as he could so he didn’t wake up his roommates. He stumbled down the stairs only to find that Draco was already up.
“Hey,” Draco said softly, looking up from the book on his lap and lifting the blanket so Harry could settle in next to him.
Harry all but collapsed, pressing his side against Draco’s and only then realizing that he was shaking.
“Hey,” Draco said, reaching for Harry’s finger, “Are you alright?”
Harry shook his head.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked softly.
He was quiet for a moment, debating what he should say, before the thought popped out without permission. “Are you ever afraid that no one will ever love you?” Harry asked.
Draco’s brow furrowed, “Am I personally? Yes. Should you be?” he asked. “No.”
“Why shouldn’t I be?”
“Because you’re Harry Potter.”
“But what if I wasn’t?” Harry asked, looking over at him. “What if I wasn’t the boy who lived? What if I hadn’t killed Voldemort? What if I wasn’t magical? What if I was just an eighteen year old kid, with no parents, and no prospects? Should I be worried then?”
“Well, setting aside all of those things that make up the reality that we live in, no. You still shouldn’t be worried.”
“Are you serious?” Harry asked with a huff.
“Yes,” Draco replied, putting his marker in his book and setting it to the side so he could turn to look at Harry. “Of course I’m serious and if this were the old you talking to the old me, I’d think that you were fishing for compliments.”
“But…”
Draco sighed, “But it’s not the old me and I know now that you really don’t see yourself clearly at all. Harry, you shouldn’t be worried because you’d still be you. You’d still be funny, you’d still be observant when it suits you, you’d still be attractive, you’d still be kind. And most of all, you’d still be good,” Draco said, voice soft and sincere. “You’d still be the person who sees trash on the ground outside and picks it up. You’d still be the person who cheers on his friends. You’d still be the person who saw their enemy hurting and reached out a hand to help.”
Harry blinked at him. They’d never really talked about this and Harry wasn’t sure he was ready to now.
“You are inherently good,” Draco said. “You’re petty as fuck sometimes and the amount of sass that can come out of your mouth is nearly lethal,” he added, eyes sparkling, “But when it matters, you are good. You choose the right thing. You choose to do good.”
“And that makes me loveable?”
“Yes. Easily,” Draco replied. “It’s very easy to love you.”
Harry blinked at the casual way he said that. “It’s,” he cleared his throat, “It’s easy to love you, too,” he murmured.
“You don’t have to say that. I know it’s not true.”
“It is true!” Harry exclaimed. “It’s easy to love how hard working and clever you are. It’s easy to love you for the way you’ve tried to fix hurts you’ve caused. To love and admire the way you came back when it would have been easier to leave. It’s easy to admire the way you care for your family. You’re really brave, Draco Malfoy, and I love that about you.”
Draco tilted his head at Harry consideringly, “Do you mean that?”
“Yes, of course I do,” Harry replied. “I’ll even pinky promise that I am telling you the truth,” he said, holding out his pinky.
Draco took it and said, “I love the way that you see me.”
“The feeling is mutual,” Harry replied and butterflies took off in the pit of his stomach. He wasn’t quite sure why but then very suddenly, they were leaning toward each other. And Harry would never really be sure who made the first move, but then it didn’t matter because he was kissing Draco, one hand cupping his face, the pinky on his other hand clasping tightly to Draco’s.
They pulled back after a soft brush of their lips. “Was that okay?” Draco asked, his cheeks flushed a lovely shade of pink.
Harry tucked Draco’s hair behind his ear and stroked his thumb over his cheekbone, “better than.”
“You’re sure?” the other boy asked, searching Harry’s face.
“I pinky promise,” Harry replied.