#eigth year

Then Comes a Mist and a Weeping Rain by Faith Wood (faithwood)

Summary:

It always rains for Draco Malfoy. Metaphorically. And literally. Ever since he had accidentally Conjured a cloud. A cloud that's ever so cross. Rating: Explicit Word Count: 21,139 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234222

The first time Harry found a sheet of thick parchment with paragraphs of elegant french writing he thought it was a mistake. It was mixed in with a pile of his own notes on the table in the library. 

Always on guard, he actually looked at a french dictionary, translating the first few sentences. It seemed to just be herbology notes, so he left well enough alone.

Well, as much as he could. He didn’t recognize the elegant handwriting, so he kept his eye out in classes, but didn’t find a match. But something in him wanted to hold on to the parchment, so he didn’t ask around. 

The second time, he was highly suspicious, but he tried to remember that the war was over and Hermione’s lectures about not jumping to conclusions played on replay in his mind. 

He still translated a bit of it though and this time it was potions notes. 

By the sixth time, he stopped translating, but he knew that someone was messing with him. His french boy was getting bolder though. Last night he had found the notes on his bed. Therefore, it was an eighth year. 

He could tell they were just notes from class, because they looked like all the rest. 

Two days after the eleventh time, he was back in the library with Ron and Hermione silently studying for a charms exam when Hermione made an unusual sound and looked up at Harry in shock. 

“Harry, who is this from?” He didn’t know why, but Harry instantly felt his cheeks pink. 

“Why are you going through my things?”

“I was checking to make sure you were- that’s beside the point, Harry!”

“They’re just notes...” “Harry you don’t even speak French!”

“Well... I...  used a dictionary?”

“Harry! Who is it?”

“A friend?” he offered weakly.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me someone was writing you love notes.”

Harry’s heart stopped. 

“I mean whoever she is, she must be in our year, because this is from class last week...”

“It’s a boy,” Harry said before he could stop himself. “But, I don’t know who it is they just keep appearing.”

“Why do you think it’s a boy?”

“Why do you think they’re love notes, I translated the first bit and it’s just class stuff.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Harry, honestly, I’ve spoken French for three years. This whole last bit here is about your eyes and your hair and wanting to kiss you senseless.”

“Potter! Looks like puberty has yet to hit you at age 17?” Harry turned around to look at Malfoy, look up at Malfoy, “Still as short as you were when you were a mere firstie, aren’t you?”

Harry fought the blush coming up on his cheeks, he hated it when Draco teased him about his height. But it was inevitable, with it being one of Draco’s favourite taunts ever since they were dating. Draco was a half a head taller than him and he loved reminding him of it everyday. 

Pushing Draco further from him so their difference wouldn't be so apparent, he resolved to find a way to grow taller than Draco, or at least lessen their height difference, they had magic for a reason right?

“Watch it Malfoy, your words might come back to bite you in the back!”

 /break\

Harry found himself being put on a vigorous routine by Hermione to facilitate his growth. Sleep at ten sharp and wake up at six, a full eight hours of sleep. Then, laps around Hogwarts ground, jump-roping, followed by a short session of yoga. His meals now contained a healthy portion of proteins, whole grains and vegetables.

He had a feeling that Hermione’s participation in his plan to increase in height was mreo out of motivation for him to shed the abuse from the Dursleys rather than spite Draco. But as long as the end result was that he could gloat about his new height in front of Draco, he didn't mind and Hermione on his side was always helpful. 

He liked the routine too, it made him feel like there was something to look forward to each day, it helped him cope with the sudden red light the end of the war brought to him. Don't get him wrong, Voldemort dying was great, but with the last year being filled with a marathon of one death threat after another, when everything stopped he felt restless. This was good for him, plus he was getting ripped.

/break\

A month and a half into this new muggle-wizard mixed routine and he was seeing progress already, mentally and physically. Harry Potter was no longer the scrawny boy who wandered into Hogwarts halls seven years ago, he had finally grown into his body.

Casting a spell to measure his height again, he sighed, looking at the same number that had been staring at him for the past week or so. Hermione had told him that the growth spurt would stop at some point of another, and he was fine with it, if the height he stopped at was taller than Draco. 

But luck was yet again not on his side, he was an inch shorter than Draco, which meant he needed at least two more inches to have a notable height difference than Draco. Damn.

Carrying his books, he set off towards the library, hoping to catch Hermione on one of her many visits there to ask for any more pointers that could help him gain the last few inches he needed.

“Harry! Wait!” Stopping in his steps towards the library, he saw Ginny coming out of the Gryffindor dorms. “ You’ve stopped growing.”

“ A very rude way to start a conversation, but yes thank you for pointing that out.” Harry replied, irritated that someone had pointed it out to him, was it that obvious?

Rolling her eyes at him, Ginny thrust a bottle of green liquid towards him, “ You’ve been trying to out grow Malfoy at height right? And I’ve kept an eye out for your progress, you haven’t grown at all in the last week.”

“Is there a point to this conversation or are you just going to continue upsetting me?”

“ This is a growth potion, it’ll help you gain like two, three inches instantly. That’s what you need right? A few more inches to be taller than Malfoy?”

“Why do you have this? Why didn't Hermione give it to me first place?”

“ It isn’t exactly the best option to go for, the Ministry banned it some time ago. There’s an ingredient inside that might cause hallucination if you have too much of it. That’s why it was banned. People wanted to grow taller desperately and over-consumed, But you won’t do it, yeah?”

“ Yea...yea, i survived Voldemort… I’m not dying because of some stupid potion. But why?”

“ Harry, you’re like a brother to me and now that you're dating Malfoy, I can't directly assault him. So this is me, assaulting his ego through making you taller than him, like a side ‘fuck you’!”

/break\

He paced in the abandoned classroom he had asked Draco to meet him at. After ingesting the potion Ginny had given him and marvelling at the effects it brought, he had immediately asked Draco to meet him here to gloat.

He couldn't decide on the one-liner to use to show-off his new height, there were just so many options. But apparently he didn't have time to make a choice, Draco had arrived. And without a solid line to go on, Harry decided he would just stand and let Draco stare.

And stare Draco did, Draco stared up at him, a memory that Harry needed to possess forever. But he didn't seem too bothered by the fact that Harry was taller than him, in fact Draco maintained that same ol in infuriating smirk on his face, sauntered over to him and planted a firm kiss on his lips.

Leaning down into the kiss, Harry marveled at the need to lean down to kiss Draco, but he was confused, why wasn't Draco more concerned with the new difference in height?

Slightly reeling from the spectacular kiss he was given, Harry watched doe-eyed as Draco pulled a potion out from his pockets?

The potion was green and looked exactly liked the one Ginny had gifted him. No, no,no. He watched horrified as Draco gulped down the potion and grew exactly three inches taller. 

No.

No fucking way. 

“ You really thought that you could be taller than me Potter?” Draco’s smirk seemed to grow larger as Harry had to look up him again, “ I had a back-up plan all along, I overheard Ginerva’s plan to give you the potion and decided that it would be smart to have one myself.”

“No.”

“Yes, Harry. But I must say I am appreciating your new physique.”

Pissed off that he would be stuck shorter than Draco forever, he pouted petulantly at his boyfriend. Well, he tried to pout at his boyfriend, before his lips were captured in a kiss by said boyfriend, before he had to tilt his head up to kiss said boyfriend again.

Damn it.

Pansy: *pointing* He’s behind the curtains.

Pansy: Fuck! Why do I keep doing that?

~

The dream starts with screaming, like it usually did.

Harry screws his eyes up; he’s on his back in the Forest, bleeding out slowly from the huge gash on his chest. The air smells like smoke and dirt and the bitter edge of magic, like gunpowder on a freezing cold day. He gasps - he can’t get enough air in his lungs, every breath making his chest ache.

He’s been through this dream so many times before but terror still flood his body as he grits his teeth. “Get up,” he whispers, hands clenched at his side. “Get up, they’re coming - “

Every time he thinks he’s prepared for the noises, the visions. Every time he’s wrong.

It starts off with screaming - Sirius, Remus, Fred, the ones who died and the ones who were burried. Harry closes his eyes, as if that could somehow block out the sound, every muscle in his body straining as he fought to pull himself off the ground, before -

It’s a chorus of people - Hermione and Ron, Ginny, the walls of Teddy and the sound of his parents, his parents who he couldn’t remember and yet still dreamt about anyways. He’s panicking now, thrashing around wildly as another voice enters the fray and God it hurts, hurts so much as Draco’s voice fills his head.

He didn’t scream - Harry’s never once heard Draco scream, but it’s the sound of his voice that gets him, breathless and desperate, spoken through gritted teeth. “Harry, please, I don’t know how much longer I can bear this, please Harry - “

“I’m trying,” Harry yells, the pain redoubling as he fights to pull himself free. “I’m trying goddamn it - “

The sound of Draco’s pained moans fill the air and Harry’s thrashing again, pulling himself desperately even as that small bit inside of him hates himself for how easily Draco Malfoy lead him astray, how easily he would follow him.

“Harry - “

“Fuck!”

“Harry - please - “

“I’m trying - “

“Harry wake up.”

Harry jolts upright, his arms flailing, the air freezing against his bare skin. He looks around wildly - he’s in the 8th year dorms at Hogwarts. Not in the forest. Not surrounded by the ghosts of all the people he had lost.

“You’re fine,” Draco whispers. He looks almost ethereal in the moonlight, lit up in shades of silver and grey, the shadows turning his hair into a solid curtain of white. “You’re okay.”

“My chest - “

“No,” Draco says, and a small part inside of Harry twinges at how well Draco knows him. Knew him. “You’re fine, Harry.”

Harry stares at his hands. They’re trembling, tremors forcing its way up and down his arms. He balls his hands into fists, places them carefully on his lap where he can see them.

“You came,” he whispers flatly.

Draco blinks. He’s perched on the end of the bed like a bird about to take flight, like some wisp of Harry’s imagination. He looks colder now, something done in thin sheets of metal and glass, like the distant light of a lonely star.

Harry remembers Draco back in fifth year; all life and burning fire, the desperate air of someone clawing their way back from a cliff. He wonders what had happened in all those years they were apart.

“Of course I did,” Draco finally says, his voice as calm as always. “I’m the only one who knows your dreams.”

Harry scoffs, his hands knotting into the sheets. “Right. That’s the only reason then. Convenience.”

“Harry - “

“Don’t. Don’t pretend you care.”

Draco closes his eyes. Harry traces the lines of his face, the high arch of Draco’s cheekbones and the delicate curve of his eye. He remembers pressing fluttering kisses to Draco’s eyelids, the feeling of his palms underneath Harry’s lips, the flush of colour that stained his skin as they moved against each other.

With a curse he tears his gaze away, dropping it back down to the pale fabric on his bed. He used to have a crimson blanket at the beginning of the year, before he one night woke up and thought the sheets were covered in blood.

Draco takes a deep breath. “I do care about you, Harry,” he says slowly, each word falling from his mouth like a piece of marble. “I still do. I will always care about you.”

Harry laughs bitterly. “We really going to go into this again?”

“You’re the one who brought it up,” Draco says softly. He appeared calm, his face impassive but Harry knew better. He can see the fraying edges in Draco’s calm composure - the whiteness of his fingers where they gripped the edge of the bed, the tenseness in his shoulders and the flat look in his eyes. Harry knows Draco Malfoy better than anyone else in his life, the fragile cracks in the seams.

“No. You’re the one who’s going off on your whole bullshit tangent again.”

The moonlight glints off of the silver ring on Draco’s hand as he roughly rakes a hand through his hair. “It’s not bullshit.”

“Really?” Harry spits, his temper flaring. “Because it seems like bullshit to me. Who does that, Draco? Who dates a guy for two years and then fucks off to join a man who’s trying to kill him?”

“You don’t understand - “

“Understand?” Harry snorts. “What more is there to understand? You took the Mark! You took the fucking Mark; you stood there in front of Voldemort, the man who killed my parents and you promised that you would try and kill me.”

Draco went still. The blood had drained from his face, turning him even paler, a marble statue draped in cloth. Harry tracks his body with his eyes: the shape of his shoulders, the curve of his collarbone, the faintest edge of a shadow underneath the white shirt he wore, the barest hint of the Dark Mark.

“Harry, I said I was sorry - “

“Sorry doesn’t mean shit, Draco. We were doomed - we always were doomed. And I thought...I thought I meant enough for you to - to at least try - “

Draco lets out a low laugh, the sound like a knife through Harry’s skin. “You think I didn’t try?”

“You definitely didn’t fight.”

Draco’s face looked like it had been carved out of stone, his eyes haunted and dark as he stared out of the open window. Harry took a deep breath, fingers clenched so hard he knew that he had cut through the skin.

“You don’t know,” Draco says quietly, “What happened. You don’t know what they did to me. You don’t know how long I fought, how hard I fought. You don’t know anything and you never asked.”

“Why should I have asked?” Harry says mockingly. “You practically sighed a contract to kill me and my friends. We were done.”

The faintest edge of a smile crosses Draco’s face. It looked like a chasm, Harry thought, a crack in his facade, something ripped and torn and broken. “The Boy Who Lived,” he murmurs, and it had always sounded like praise from other people but it sounded like pain in Draco’s mouth. “It was in the summer. Between fifth and sixth year. My father told me to take the Mark. I told him to go to hell.”

Harry snorts. “How hard you fought,” he mocks. “That was barely anything.”

Draco shakes his head. His eyes gleamed in the light; Harry realizes they were unshed tears. “I didn’t know. My father was given a week to convince me to take the Mark. After that...”

Unease rippled through Harry’s body as a single tear slid down Draco’s cheek. “After that my father was to turn me over to the Death Eaters. And Grayback. They...”

“Draco,” Harry breathes. He reaches out - to hold Draco, wrap their hands together - but Draco flinches back. It’s the smallest of motions but Harry immediately drops his hands, the smallest things of pain echoing in his chest.

“I still said no,” Draco breathes, the pulse at his throat fluttering. “So they told me. I could either take it, or...or...”

“Draco - “

Draco shakes his head. “Pansy. Blaise. Theo. Vince and Greg. Not all of us have support like you do, Harry.”

It’s like ice had been injected into his veins. Harry gasps, chokes on air, his heart pounding and the world spinning. “Why,” he breathes. “Why didn’t you tell me.”

“Because,” Draco says softly. “We were done. You had given up. You were so quick to believe that - that I would have turned on you, betrayed you - “

“What was I supposed to think?” Harry grits out, anger flaring inside of his chest. “You got the Mark, Draco! How could I have known - “

“No,” Draco says, and it’s the closest Harry’s ever seen Draco to breaking. His voice was raw and empty, tears running down his face as he got off the bed. “No. You said I didn’t fight? I did. I fought - so fucking hard and you didn’t. You didn’t even try.”

“That’s not fair,” Harry says, his voice breaking. “That’s not fair to say that - “

“I don’t care.” Draco tosses the words out with careless grace. “I don’t fucking care. We’re done anyways - you made that pretty damn clear.”

“Draco - “

“No.” Draco gets to his feet, eyes blazing, and it’s like the boy Harry fell in love with, the emotions that burned through him and made him light up like the sun. He couldn’t look away - not as it seared him, stripped the skin from his bones, the guilt tearing him up inside. “No. We’re done. We’ve been done for a long time now.”

“I didn’t know - “

Draco shakes his head. “And the worst part is that I still love you, Harry. I loved you - even through everything, even through the war. I still love you, now. But I’m done. We’re done.”

Harry takes a deep breath, fingers clenched so tightly it hurt. “Draco, please - “

@quicksilvermaid since things have been so hectic for you the past few days I figured I would be Chaotic Good and give you a small sneak peak 😘 I’m not sure if I’m being really nice or really mean cause it’s going to be a while before I actually start the whole thing

__________________________________________

Harry could feel his nerves humming with magic, a giddy excitement rushing through him so quickly he had to crunch his toes in his trainers to keep from bouncing on the balls of his feet. He’d been waiting all week to see Malfoy perform again. It was becoming an intoxicating habit, watching him there on the stage. The way he moved. The way he looked. Harry hated it but he couldn’t get enough. Never knowing what song Malfoy would perform only added to the gleeful anticipation.

As the lights dimmed, he took a seat at one of the small tables littering the great hall. If it just so happened to be incredibly close to the ‘stage’ well, Harry pretended not to notice.

“Good evening sports fans,” Dean’s milk and honey voice poured through the great hall as he swaggered onto center stage.

“In the spirit of inter-house unity, we once again have the great hall to ourselves for a little bit of recreational,” Dean chuckled, a wolfish grin stretching slowly across his face “pleasure.” He winked at the audience, pulling out a cue card and glancing at it for a brief moment. “Up first we have Draco Malfoy, performing-” Dean’s smile only increased, like he knew something the audience didn’t. It left Harry on edge. “Something extra special for you tonight.” What trick could Malfoy be pulling out his sleeve now? He already had nearly half the school eating out the palm of his hands, including Harry.

Still, as the spotlight faded from a pale yellow to a dusky purple, he played into the drama of the moment and clapped enthusiastically with the rest of them as he watched Dean saunter off stage. As Dean took his seat beside Seamus a slow, haunting guitar melody began to play.

Harry sat captivated as he watched Malfoy slink up to the stage, his hips swaying languidly in time with the eerie guitar solo until he was on the stage looking like sin incarnate. “Merlin,” Harry whispered, drinking in the sight of Malfoy’s purple leather trousers that looked painted on and mentally counting how many buttons were undone on his ruffled collar shirt. He watched as Malfoy grabbed the mic, bringing it close to his plush pink lips and letting out a low, breathy exhale, eyelids drifting shut.

Music aside, the great hall was silent, the entire student body watching on bated breath as Malfoy opened his mouth and sung:

“I knew a girl named Nikki I guess you could say she was a sex fiend,

I met her in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine,

She said how'd you like to waste some time and I could not resist when I saw little Nikki grind.” Malfoy grabbed the microphone, rolling his hips slowly over the length of the mic stand as he sang. It was melodic. Harry felt a blush creeping across his face as he watched Malfoy roll his hips over the mic stand before snapping his hips forward to the beat.

“She took me to her castle and I just couldn't believe my eyes,

She had so many devices everything that money could buy,

She said "sign your name on the dotted line." The lights went out and Nikki started to grind.” Malfoy took the mic out of the stand, roaming across the stage as his words poured out of him. His free hand slid down his body, running over the barely there tracing of his curves, up his crotch, over his stomach, his hand slipping into his shirt and ghosting over his chest as he let out a high pitched whine.