#draco character study

“I’m going to ask you a very hard question now.” 

Draco paled. “But we haven’t even got to the pheasant,” he tried to make it sound like a joke, but he really just sounded like a child.

“Did you wish you weren’t married?” He licked his lips. “To Astoria? Do you wish you’d been free to marry who you wanted? Free to marry a man.” 

Draco inhaled sharply and looked down. The plate hummed and shifted into a bowl of soup. He hadn’t had any of the tartare. He wondered if Potter noticed, noticed that he hadn’t eaten anything yet, even though he had said he was hungry.

“Potter,” he said.

“Malfoy?” Potter said gently. Draco made a humiliating sound, a whimper of sorts that should never have come from his grown frame. 

“I can’t talk to you this way. These things, these are private things. I don’t even tell my best friends these things. If you were questioning me like an Auror, I could endure it. If this were an interrogation room, I could take the blunt questions about my whereabouts or if I had a motive. But you,” He covered his face with his hands, “but you, sitting there, when it’s you, and it’s me, I can’t take it. I know you don’t mean it, I know you’re doing some sort of saviour routine, or even worse, just your job, and you don’t really care. But it’ll kill me to answer this question. Please.”

“When it’s me?” 

“Yes, when it’s you. I can’t bear it.” 

Potter was quiet. 

“You still hate me, after all this time?” 

Draco’s gaze shot to Potter, to his green eyes, suddenly filled with a strange hurt. “No, you bloody idiot. I don’t hate you.” 

Potter held his gaze. Draco sighed. “Eat your bloody soup and give me a minute.”

Draco raked a hand through his hair as Potter picked up the spoon and started to eat, as hungry as he seemed with the previous course. Draco watched him.

“To your liking?” He asked.

“I like lobster,” Potter answered in between slurps.

“Me too,” Draco said. 

Draco watched Potter eat the soup, unable to touch his own, and far less concerned with whether or not Potter noticed.

He could see the ways the Ministry could leverage against him. He was gay, and so he wanted out of the marriage. She wouldn’t bear him children, and so he wanted out of the marriage. It seemed to him that any arrangement of any circumstances could be used to find him suspicious, to find him guilty. He had two options. Trust Potter, or be handed to the Ministry and shackled for life, either by having to register his status as an Animagus, or in Azkaban. 

Trust Potter. What a foreign concept.

At least, he supposed, as the bowls of soup dissolved and shifted into plates of pheasant, perfectly cooked and drowned in a sauce that Tibs knew was his favourite, that of all the people in the whole world, Potter was the only one who kept his word. He was the only one who had never lied to Draco, pretended to like Draco, or saw Draco for his money or influence. Potter had had his nose crushed under Draco’s foot. Potter had seen Draco weep in a bathroom and cut him to shreds. He and Potter had hurt each other, hated each other, teased out the darkness in each other. 

And now Potter was here, trying to make sure he wasn’t sent to Azkaban. Because he believed Draco to be innocent. He believed Draco. 

Draco watched as Potter cut into the pheasant and began devouring it. Stupid, bloody Potter. 

“Sometimes,” he said.

Potter froze, then looked up at him. 

“Sometimes I would wonder what life could be like if I was with someone who loved me.” 

_____

just over a year since I began posting this fic.