Work Text:
He hadn’t always been beautiful. When he was eleven, Harry Potter had been gangly, all elbows and knees and hideous glasses that were too large for his gaunt face.
At fifteen, Potter had been angry, his brows a furious dark slash over flashing green eyes, his mouth pressed into an unforgiving line.
At seventeen, he had come out of hiding with Granger and Weasley, the lot of them hollow-eyed and dirty, little more than zombies. And yet they had been victorious, hobbling the Dark Lord enough that Potter was able to kill him—and change the course of Draco’s life.
Harry Potter hadn’t always been considered beautiful. Except to Draco—he had been.
Their first year, Draco made a mission of ignoring Potter. But his pride was a small wounded animal requiring constant reassurance and care. Draco would have given anything—even his newest broom, his singularly most prized possession—to have had Potter accept his offered friendship. Potter was simply always there—laughing with his friends, being praised by their teachers, worshipped by the schools’ entire population. He seemed to have everything Draco had ever wanted.
Puberty hit, and Draco noticed Potter in other ways. The shape of his hand as it gripped his wand during Defense class, or the stretch of his tacky jumper across the widening expanse of his shoulders. That he was the first of them to manage a full Patronus—just one more reason for Draco to envy Potter. But the knowledge of it also made him shudder as he took himself in hand in the lonely black of night, bed hangings drawn tight to contain his private noises. His family had taught him to respect and appreciate power; his father had always gravitated toward powerful wizards. Somehow Draco’s traitorous mind had warped this propensity to include being attracted to them. Or at least, to one in particular. Was that all it was?
After the Battle, Draco wrapped his defeat around himself like an ill-fitting cloak. He sank into himself; perhaps if he were quiet and small, they would be less likely to take notice of him, less inclined to condemn him to imprisonment or worse. He tried not to look at Potter at all, a feat he’d never succeeded at even once in his miserable life.
Eighth year brought new revelations. Potter didn’t want to talk about the war, had no interest in continuing to play the hero. He wasn’t even interested in who had been on what side of things, said he just wanted to move on and live. When Harry got down on his knees for Draco in the darkness of their shared dorm room, saying he just wanted to forget, just wanted to feel, Draco let him. As he sighed above Harry in the inky black, draped around his beloved, resurrected body, Draco found, finally, that he too had been reborn.
Harry Potter hadn’t always simply been beautiful. He’d also been captivating and infuriating, maddening and gorgeous. He had made up the background—or perhaps the foreground—of every single day of Draco’s adolescent life. And if he allowed himself to dream in the silent moments before day broke—holding Harry in the fierce circle of his arms—he hoped that Harry would continue to be ever present, his always; would be Draco’s future, not just simply his destiny.