For @drarrymicrofic, prompt: Silver, with additional words from the Summer Bingo Card. Words: 475.
This is my life now, he thinks, sitting on the branch outside Potter’s window, watching Potter look back at him. This is it.
At work, Draco overhears him in the Ministry cafeteria
“At first it only turned up every now and then, but now it comes almost every day,” Potter tells Granger.
“I’ve never seen a bird like it. It’s so pale it’s almost like silver. I wondered if it might have leucism. Can birds have that?” Potter asks Lovegood.
“I think the bird likes me,” Potter tells Finnigan. “I’ve called it David.”
Draco even starts singing. He hadn’t known he could, but his bird body knows things Draco doesn’t. It comes as naturally as speech.
Some days, he has trouble transforming back. Being human feels strange afterwards. His skin is a little too fragile. The bathroom tiles bite into the soles of his feet and his clothes feel too heavy.
He prefers Potter’s window, where there is nothing and he is no one.
Potter has started opening it for him, leaving seeds and nuts on the sill. He talks to him, too. Calls him David, sweet thing and precious.
“Are you all alone, sweet thing? Like me?”
“I’m tired, David. Are you tired? I know I don’t have a right to be.”
“Sometimes I’m back in the woods, and it makes me happy.”
Draco doesn’t always understand what Potter is talking about, but he likes to listen.
“Sometimes I feel like I know you, David. Weird, isn’t it? Were you there? In the forest? Is that why you’re here? Sometimes I think that’s why.”
Draco sings in response. What else is there to do? He often wonders what really happened there. What makes Potter want to go back.
It’s a Tuesday when Potter doesn’t come home after work. Draco waits outside the empty room until dark.
He comes back the next day. And the third. He even stays there all night, calls in sick at work.
By the fourth, he shows up and starts listening at the Ministry. He knows where to go. Where the rumour lives.
“Curse damage,” someone whispers, “Something went wrong on a mission. Poor thing.”
Draco transforms in an alley behind the Ministry and flies all the way to St Mungo’s. The wards bounce him straight back. He tries again several times, but the wards clearly recognise Animagus magic.
Furious, Draco transforms back and storms inside. He flashes his Ministry credentials and says “Unspeakable business” with enough conviction that no one asks questions. It gets him through three sets of doors and past an increasingly suspicious Healer.
Potter is lying very still, his face turned towards the window. Draco stops beside the bed, all his certainty suddenly gone.
Then Potter opens his eyes. He looks straight at Draco.
“David,” he says. “I knew you’d come.”
(Words from bingocard: Animagi and pining.)
***
A huge thank you to @fluffyunderneath for proofreading this story. You are so very dear to me. I also wrote this as a little ode to Pierre, the puffin with leucism from her lovely fic Salt, who has a very special place in my heart.
No bingo yet, maybe next time?