#also i really like the idea of the sectumsempra fucking up draco's bodily functions

[joonkorre]

(love) is a heartache

@drarrymicrofic prompt: hope is a heartache - léon

let it be known that harry goes through life purely on vibes. half of his reasons why for every decision at his big age are “idk imma just hope for the best”

ao3

People’s hearts twinge sometimes. For Draco, he can barely remember the last time he doesn’t have these twinges. It’s pretty normal at this point.

“No, it’s not,” Pansy says. She’s a Healer, so she’s probably right. But Draco prefers to ignore that.

“Leave it be,” Draco murmurs, lips against her scalp, “I’m fine. Say, are you free tomorrow?”

“Yeah. You want to go somewhere?”

“Mm. Sleep.”

They go out the next morning, Pansy in thick makeup and Draco practically drunk under nine layers of Charms. The air is a bit humid, which seems to get worse when the bustling street intensifies in volume into a roaring din. Pansy pulls him under an awning, yanking at his sleeve a bit to try out her disgusting sugary coffee. She always does this whenever she wants to take his attention away from something, which means he just has to look at exactly where she’s doesn’t want him to. As his lips wrap around her lipstick-stained straw, he glances up.

Across the street, a couple strolls through a gushing crowd. Fiery red hair, airy laughter, a pale arm wrapped around her fiancé’s waist. Curls of black, sleek spectacles, a protective palm on his fiancee’s shoulder. They make the perfect picture, a vibrant oil painting. Their existence is formed from bold strokes of sunlight and starburst kisses, with the focal point being a shock of phthalo green and cadmium lemon, two minute specks that make all the difference. As all good paintings do, they pin the viewer on the spot, as if the viewer himself is a thing to behold. Then they shift away.

The exhibit moves forward and out of sight. It’s closing time, the viewer has overstayed his welcome.

Something leaps in Draco’s chest and splatters on the floor of his stomach. Placing her hand over his heart, Pansy frowns at him. She doesn’t ask why Potter stared at someone who looked like a stranger to him. Only tells him to start finding answers.

Months later, on the most awaited day in recent Wizarding history, there’s a knock on Draco’s door.

He throws on a sweater, and a throw, too, for good measure. Ambling to the door, he checks the mail slot before peeking through the peephole. Nobody but a package is outside. Draco hums and unlocks his door, crouching down the moment it opens. What feels like soft satin brushes against his cheek, cool and smooth. With a flash, a pair of shiny dress shoes appear before him.

“Draco.”

Draco peers up as he rises, hands around the package. Potter has his maddening Invisibility Cloak slung over his arm, his roguish charm heightened by a perfectly fitted three-piece suit. A tiny posy is pinned on his left lapel, muted green hellebores with a few sprigs of privet berries. He’s dressed like a man in love.

Draco feels something he hasn’t felt in months at the sight. He’s trained himself to suppress it the moment it showed itself and has been relatively successful until now. The sting, without warning, bursts from within his chest, calling forth a slight wince. Potter’s brows furrow.

"How do you know where I live?"

“How long has this been going on?”

Draco frowns. “Pardon?”

“That,” Potter gestures at Draco’s chest. “The heartache.”

He rears back. What the hell is he supposed to say to that? At Potter’s unchanging expression, Draco shoves his hair out of his face with a quiet huff and puts a hand on the doorknob.

“It’s none of your business. Please leave.”

“It is, actually,” Potter stops the closing door with one arm.

“Excuse me? We haven't had a proper conversation in more than a decade and suddenly you want to act like we're friends? Leave, now.”

“Listen to me. How can it not be my business when I feel it, too?”

“Check with a Healer, then. If you can put past grudges aside, I can hand you Pansy Parkinson’s business card,” Draco grits through his teeth, pushing against the door with his entire body, his throw slipping to the ground.

“Draco, stop, I already know, stop.”

“Know what? No, I don't care. Leave at once, else I’d alert the Aurors.”

A rough slam sends Draco staggering back. Potter pants, hard lines on his face. His chest heaves under his crisp white shirt, its top two buttons unclasped, and he steps over the threshold, closing the door.

“You think they’d believe you?”

The pain shoots from his chest to the rest of his body, and for several seconds, his lungs wouldn’t work. He whips his head away from Potter, who groans and sags against the wall.

“I told you to leave.”

“I’m sorry, that was a shitty thing to say,” Potter says immediately, sweat dotting his temples.

After an uncomfortable pause, clearing his throat, he picks up the near-forgotten package from the carpet. His hand feels around the outline of the object within, rectangular and heavy. Glancing at Draco, he says hoarsely. “I know why you bought this book.”

“Know this, know that, you know nothing,” Draco lunges forward, only for Potter to twist out of the way and raise the package out of his reach.

“The Life-long Burden of Dark Curses: A Caution by Elise Arrowlane, limited edition,” he says, unbothered by Draco’s slackened jaw. “You ordered it from the new bookstore on Diagon months ago. You were small and old and grey, but I recognized you. I always could.”

“Okay,” Draco sneers, “so you’re a stalker. Old news. Anything else?”

“There’s no need to order one. I would’ve borrowed it from Hermione if you had only asked,” Potter says. “Instead, I got curious and read it for myself. That’s how I connected the dots about the heartache, how I realized we’ve both had it since that day years ago.”

“Oh, the day you slashed me into ribbons and almost cut through my heart?” Draco clenches his jaw.

Being able to shout this ugly kind of truth into the perpetrator’s face feels oddly liberating. That is, if liberation also comes with a specific kind of agony that makes Draco want to fall to his knees.

“Dark Magic leaves a mark on both the wizard and their victim, doesn’t it? No need for a book to tell us that,” Potter says, the harsh afternoon glow of him gentled by the soft lamplight in Draco’s hallway. “In certain cases, it even leaves a link. A connection.”

Draco bites the inside of his cheek and looks away. The only consequence from that horrid night was his fucked up heart and nothing else, nothing at all. Whatever Potter is insinuating, he hates it. He hates this. He hates him.

“How are you so sure there’s a connection.”

“I wasn’t,” Potter says. “The Healers said it’s a health thing I developed after the War and I just needed to avoid strenuous activity. I didn’t think much of it, but then I read the book and realized that it usually flared up whenever you watched me.”

Scoffing, Draco turns and stalks into the kitchen. Walking past the boiling kettle, he throws a cabinet door open and grabs a mug, his hand trembling.

“Interesting how my health suffers when I see the bastard who quite literally carved me open.”

“I was eating dinner when I thought I was going to die of a heart attack at 23,” Potter continues. Draco pulls the drawers out, unable to find a single bag of tea for several excruciating moments. “The next day, I was reading about your mother’s death on the Daily Prophet. That was the first sign.”

Grabbing a rag and wetting it, Draco wipes the countertop even as he’s just done so last night.

“When Ginny saw you on the street during our date and extended her hand toward you, you shook it. But your heart ached.

“I saw you looking at the picture of Ginny and I kissing on the front page of Witch Weekly. Your hair was brown and your back was curved, but I saw you. Your heart ached.

“When I announced my engagement to her on the Battle of Hogwarts’s 10th Anniversary, you were clapping along with everyone else. But your heart ached.”

Draco throws the rag on the counter. The kettle whistles, a piercing sound. “What’s your point? Are you here purely to flaunt your relationship and imply that I’m in love with Ginevra Weasley? If so, I got it. Thank you so very much, it’s been enlightening. Now get out.”

“The point is,” Potter says, lifting the kettle off the burner to pour it into Draco’s mug, placing his tea bag in, “unless the article about you being gay was wrong, Ginny isn’t the one you’re in love with.”

“What arti—” Draco stops. “That was years ago.”

His sexuality was leaked to some irrelevant gossip rag, not even making the front page. Nobody noticed, nothing changed, and it hasn’t entered his mind in what feels like forever until Potter reminds him.

“I remember.”

“You—” Draco frowns. His eyes strain on the cup of tea until they hurt. He squeezes them shut, sighing. “It doesn’t prove anything. Perhaps I’m jealous of my childhood nemesis having a better life than me, ever thought of that?”

“Yeah,” Potter says, “I’ve thought about this a lot. Which is why I’m here. To make sure.”

Draco takes it in, then, unable to help himself, curls his lips at Potter and his attire. At his artfully gelled hair, his hanging bow tie, the elegant boutonniere on the lapel of his dark blue suit. His empty ring finger.

“Couldn’t you have chosen a better date to make sure? Preferably before your wedding day?”

Potter steps closer. A respectable distance away, but closer.

“I could’ve, but I spent most of those days in denial. Then the dots connected and I couldn’t deny it anymore, so I decided to just go through with the wedding regardless, be with the woman I loved. Hoped that maybe the odd emotions I had would go away,” he shrugs, raising his eyes to meet Draco’s. “Saw Ginny at the end of the aisle and, well, I couldn’t stop thinking that it should’ve been someone else. All this time, I’ve thought that she didn’t feel… right in my arms, but I pushed it down. And there she was in that white dress.

“Seeing that today was the last straw. I had to leave.”

Draco’s breath catches in his throat. Swallowing it down, he grabs his mug, scooping out the tea bag just to have something to do. He takes a sip without blowing, ignoring its scalding heat.

“That was stupid.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re so fucking stupid,” Draco can feel a headache building. “That was a horrible decision. I never imagined you—you!—out of all people, could be this irresponsible. What the fuck.”

“You’re right.”

“Of course I am. Merlin, that poor fucking woman. If your purpose here is to make me feel bad for Ginevra and all 300 of her relatives for once in my life, you’ve succeeded, congratulations.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say that to me, say that to—oh, you’d do what you want no matter what I say, wouldn’t you?”

“Depends on the situation.”

“‘Depends on the situation,’ he says,” Draco mocks, getting a carton of milk from the fridge to save his bitter, bitter tea. Potter doesn’t reply. Stirring the milk in, Draco lets out a heavy sigh.

“What do you want me to do about this?” He says. “I didn’t make you run out of your own wedding. If you expect me to take the blame for your inane decisions, the first person I Floo wouldn’t be the Aurors, but Ginevra Weasley herself.”

A small smile graces Potter’s lips. “I don’t expect anything from you but honesty.”

Draco squints.

“And how will you know if what I say is a lie? Will you reject my genuine answer if it’s not what you want to hear?”

“That won’t be a problem,” Potter says. “I trust your heart will speak the truth for us both.”

There’s a pang in Draco’s chest, and judging from the twitch of Potter’s brow, he can feel it too. Not another word is said, the two men merely facing each other from across a tiny kitchen, considering. Draco can feel the warmth of sunlight beaming through the little window and coating his nape as he leans against the sink, earl grey on his tongue. Lovely citric notes of bergamot drift up his nose. He closes his eyes. What to do, what to do.

Weightless oxfords clack against the yellowed tiles, clear and bright in Draco’s ears. Fabric rustles as Potter slips a hand into his pocket only to retrieve it a second later. Draco lets himself be cornered, barely glancing at the wool-clad arms caging either side of his waist. A clink catches his attention, however, and he tilts his head to the left.

Millimeters beside Draco’s hand on the counter, glinting in the sun, is a wedding band. Draco knows Potter and Ginevra’s in and out, has examined the picture on that day’s issue of the Daily Prophet more times than he should have. He knows the marquise droplets of Ginevra’s gems and the chevron curve of her ring, the blankness of Potter’s own band a dream and a question in his mind.

The band that’s resting on the counter is different. Rustic gold and a fissure in the middle, the fertile earth splitting open to reveal a stream of diamonds, a sparkling river. Draco sets his mug to the side and holds the ring up close, his finger smoothing over the grooves of its texture.

“Did you make a stop at a jewelry store before breaking into my home?” He asks.

“No,” Harry murmurs. Draco looks at him in surprise. “I’ve had this with me for months.”

A pause.

“I thought you said you were in denial.”

“I was, but I knew, somewhat, that I wanted someone else,” Harry’s head lowers, slow and careful, until his forehead rests against Draco’s shoulder. “I told myself that I just liked the way it looked, had to get it in case I didn’t want the other ring anymore. But I got it a size smaller. Been carrying it in my pocket ever since.”

Draco’s heart throbs and throbs. Large hands circle his waist, bunching up the back of his sweater and pressing him close, chest to chest. A blanket of pure heat envelops his body as he breathes in the timeless saffron and neroli of cologne, half-lidded eyes pinned on the band he’s given. Oh, dear, he thinks, and again when it settles at the base of his ring finger with ease, as if it belongs there and never left. Oh, dear.