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“No.” Draco crossed the room and pulled his work away from him, and Harry made a half hearting grabbing motion, but let it slide away. If he had really wanted to stop it, he could have. “It doesn’t. The world won’t stop turning just because you took a break for an hour.”
“But—”
“You deserve a break.” It felt like they were married. This is what it feels like all the time, like they are married and in love and do everything that couples do, accept for kiss and admit that they’re a couple. It’s quite frustrating. “Come hang out with me, just long enough to have dinner.”
He felt like a house wife, tearing his busy husband away from his work just so they could spend time together before the kids got home from their mothers. It’s a bad analogy, one that would get him a lecture from Ginny about sexism and gender roles, but it’s the one that he keeps coming back to.
“Come on.” Draco shoves Harry’s coat at him, and then vanished the papers for good measure. They’re just on top of a set of cupboards, but Harry clearly doesn’t have the motivation to go look for them. “For me?”
Harry wavers, and Draco can see when he makes the decision. “Alright.” he grabs the coat and shrugs it on, then wraps his own scarf around Draco’s neck, ignoring the flinch when Harry reaches toward him. “But only because you asked nicely.”
Chapter 19
Harry
He’s at the pub with Dudley (a gay sports bar, because as Dudley said, there’ll be something for you and something for me and no evil wizards likely to look for you there) to celebrate his birthday when theyr relatively easy friendship comes screeching to a halt.
See, the thing is, Harry still isn’t really sure if he wants to be friends with Dudley, because there are a lot of memories from when they were kids that he doesn’t want to think about. Like getting his head shoved into a toilet, like the whole class turning on him in dodgeball and ending up with a broken nose, all the times that Dudley’s friends pinned Harry’s arms behind his back and let him get used as a punching bag. He’s learning that the bullying aspect of their relationship wasn’t as strange as he had thought (turns out a lot of siblings were cruel to each other when they were younger and grew up to be just fine), but he still can’t forget all the things he watched and didn’t stop—getting thrown into the cupboard, being hit with Aunt Marge’s cane so hard his knuckles bled, being starved, being left alone for as long as he could remember.
So he was tentative, the day he went back to walk down Privet Drive for the last time and ran into him. He hadn’t known what to say, but thankfully Dudley didn’t either.
“Hello.” He was thinner, but still very large, more like a walrus instead of a whale. “You lived, then?”
Harry snorted. “Yeah, Dudley.” He rocked back on his heels and stared up at the room that used to be his. You could still see where they fastened the bars on back when he was twelve, but it didn’t look like something to be afraid of anymore. “I lived. The bad guy died. Life goes on.”
Dudley nodded, long and slow, like he was trying to give them both as much time as possible to chicken out of this conversation. “Cool.”
They did end up talking, grabbing food in the local diner, which Dudley paid for. Harry let him, because a part of him thought he was owed that much, one shitty diner burger and fries after everything this family put him through. But then they were walking out into the sidewalk to their separate cars, and it hit Harry that after eighteen long years, this might be the last time they would see each other, and Harry realized that maybe he didn’t want that. Maybe he wanted something like a real family, even if it’s just the one person.
“Hey.” He took out a dollar bill because it was the only paper he had and scrawled his phone number on it. “This is my number. Call me, and we’ll get together sometime, alright? I want to keep in touch.”
Harry hadn’t thought he was going to, but then one week later, they were meeting up at one of those Japanese places where they cook the food in front of you, at a private table that Harry paid extra for just so they could talk freely about all the wizard stuff. Dudley actually seemed interested and it was the first time that Harry realized that even though Uncle Vernon was afraid and Aunt Petunia was jealous, maybe Dudley was just a little bit excited about having a wizard in the family, even if he never thought he could show it.
That starts a trend. They go out, hitting every restaurant in town, never going to the same one twice. They go to a place where they serve salads so big he has trouble fitting them on the table, to a burger joint with a hamburger the size of his head, to a place twenty minutes outside of the city where they serve the hottest wings on earth, even to a tea shop that Dudley said Aunt Petunia was forcing him to test out before their cousin’s bridal shower. After a few weeks, Harry finds he’s actually looking forward to their meetings each week. It’s like they’re actually on their way to becoming friends, or turning into the family they should have been all along.
(And that pisses him off, what they could have been if Uncle Vernon hadn’t been such an arse.)
“So I was thinking,” Dudley started, and Harry groaned. Whenever Dudley started to think, they always found themselves in trouble. “No, really, I was thinking that you should come to my birthday dinner with mum and dad this Thursday.”
Harry laughed, but then realized he wasn’t kidding. “What? Come on, Dudley, they hate me.”
“No, they hated magic. And they hated your dad.” Dudley titled his beer bottled towards him, pausing to wave at some guy across the bar that might have been checking Harry out but certainly wouldn’t anymore. “But they tolerated you.”
“Gee, Dud.” Stupid. “Way to make a guy feel special.”
“Listen, I know it’s not your idea of a fun evening, but I think we need to move past this. They’re willing to try if you are.” Dudley acted like it was that simple. Maybe in his world it is. Like, okay, here’s my check list: get into college, get a good summer job, find a girl that puts up with me and is hot at the same time, did all that, now we’re going to create warm fuzzy feelings between my parents and the kid they repeatedly abused. Sounds like a plan. “You can even bring Draco, if you want. I want to meet him.”
Harry almost choked on his drink, but since Dudley was rummaging in his pocket to pay the bartender, he missed the look on his face. “Really? You want me to not only bring a wizard as my date, but a male wizard?”
“They won’t care that you’re gay.” Dudley almost looked offended. “Really now, what did you think? We aren’t bigots, Harry.”
The irony of it almost hurts.
Draco
When Harry asks him to go to dinner with his muggle relatives, Draco had said yes, fully expecting him to cancel at the last minute. But as it turned out, Harry stuck to his commitment, even if he gets considerably jumpier as the week goes on, prone to becoming pale at odd moments and become so startled that he drops whatever he’s holding.
It’s a strange look on him, to see him afraid, and for the first time Draco is able to really get an idea of how horrible it must have been for him to grow up the way he did. They must have been really bad, if he was more scared to sit through a dinner than he was to fight death eaters.
“You don’t have to do this.” Draco said, after the third time that Harry tried to tie his tie but couldn’t because his hands were shaking so bad. Draco stood up to do it for him, so he can see the way that it pains Harry to think about backing down. “You don’t owe them anything. And I’m not going to think anything less of you for it.”
He finishes the tie, and then works at the cuffs of his shirt, buttoning up the cufflinks that he had bought him for Christmas, then steps back.
“I promised Dudley. It’s his birthday, and he wants me there.” His voice was trembling, and his eyes were darting around the room, and Draco wanted more than ever to tell him no, that this is one thing that he will not watch him torture himself over. “It’s only one night.”
Draco stays quiet, but even as he goes up to get ready to leave, he can’t help but think that this is going to end very badly.
Harry
The restaurant is incredibly fancy, just like he knew it would be, and Harry is terribly glad that he brought Draco with him, because he’s completely out of his element.
Draco, though? He seems to stand straighter the minute he walks in, as if picking up on the fact that tonight Harry was going to be following his lead. People moved aside for him, and since Draco was holding Harry by the hand, he didn’t have to fight through the crowd of people around the hostess who were vying for a table. “Hi.” He leans over the podium and smiles, charming and in control. The hostess, like she recognizes that this is the kind of person who can actually afford to eat here, turns away from the others trying to get a table that wouldn’t be there and smiles at him. “I think our party already went back. Table for Dursley? Or maybe it’s under Potter?”
“Vernon?” She’s got very white teeth, which makes the lipstick stain stand out that much more. Harry can’t seem to stop looking at it, but Draco doesn’t seem to notice.
Draco looks back for confirmation, and Harry nods mutely. “That’s the one.”
He keeps up a steady stream of chatter on the way to the back of the room, and Harry takes a moment to gather his bearings. This is nothing that he hadn’t done before. He held his tongue and played his part for seventeen years, he could last one evening for Dursley’s sake. And this time, Draco was with him. He would have someone in his corner.
“Hello.” Draco smiled, winningly, giving no sign that he had heard anything bad about the Dursleys. Dudley stands up first, and after exchanging a look, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon follow suit to shake Draco’s hand. “You must be the Dursleys. I’m Draco.”
(Harry can practically feel them calculating the price tag on Draco’s suit, and for once, even though it doesn’t matter and Harry doesn’t care about the suit outside of the context of how good Draco looks in it, he’s horribly glad that it cost much more than either of them would dare spend.)
“I’m Dudley. Heard so much about you.” Harry winces, but other than a slight smile in his direction, Draco doesn’t comment. “And this is my mother, Petunia, and my father, Vernon.”
Harry stays silent through the introductions, watching. Aunt Petunia is in a garishly green dress dotted with pink flowers, her neck just as long and bony as ever, but her hands looked worn down, the skin pale and ripped raw. Uncle Vernon was just as gruff as ever, dressed to impress, like he could bully his way through dinner just like he did every other aspect of his life.
“And you, boy?” Boy. The word still stings. Even now he doesn’t deserve a name. “Seems like you’re doing well for yourself.”
A compliment. Harry didn’t know how to respond to that—if he should play it down and have Vernon say that he was avoiding conversation, or agree and immediately be turned down. He had forgotten how every word with them was like walking through a minefield, not knowing which step was going to blow up in his face.
“He’s working on a presentation with the ministry. All about the war heroes.” Draco sounded proud, but Harry was still tense, waiting, waiting, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“And Draco’s a potion master. Making very large advancements in their medicine, from what Harry tells me.” Dudley nudged Harry under the table and winked, and Harry finally, finally relaxed, thinking that maybe they were going to make it through tonight. “Getting a lot of recognition.”
“Oh?” Aunt Petunia’s beady eyes were focused in on him, but for once, Harry was glad that she knew something about the wizarding community. She could pepper Draco with questions (they would never be rude to a guest like Draco, he looked too much like power for them to let their hate get the best of them) and act as translator for Vernon, and hopefully they would walk away from tonight thinking it hadn’t gone that bad. “In what area?”
This is fine, Harry thought, relaxing just enough to contribute to the conversation, sharing a few war stories just to impress Vernon and teasing Dudley about his new girlfriend, even agreeing to come back to the house for some dessert pudding. Maybe, after everything, he had it in him to forgive them. He knew it would be better to walk away, but the part of him that was still that little boy locked in the cupboard wanted this so, so badly. This is fine.
