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Left. Right. Right. Left.
Draco wove through the corridors on the seventh floor in Hogwarts. He was looking for one specific room. He turned one final corner, and started pacing up and down the long stretch of hallway. The draft was cool and the shadowy corners were less than welcoming, but this is exactly where Draco needed to be.
‘I need a place to find something hidden.’
‘I need a place to find something hidden.’
‘I need a place to find something hidden.’
The weight of the green apple burned a hole in Draco’s pocket. He waited until the sun fell below the horizon to seek out the Room of Requirement. They were trialling the cabinet for the second time this term. Despite his efforts to stay hidden and unnoticed, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched. The brown door solidified in front of his eyes, he took one last glance over his shoulder before disappearing through the door.
The space was as cluttered as ever, but Draco remembered where the cabinet stood; Shrouded under a black cloth in one of the far corners, he just needed to navigate his way through the junk. He precariously made his way along his usual route through the vast room, but he still had that ever-present feeling that he wasn’t alone.
Draco’s hand knocked a teacup off a pile of books as he brushed passed. He swivelled around to the sudden sound of shattering china; He didn’t notice that it was teetering on the edge of the books until it crashed to the ground. Draco studied the three main pieces of the broken cup from where he stood- it was white with gold flecks and was surrounded by hundreds of smaller pieces of shattered porcelain.
He spotted a table about a metre over, it was covered in a black, floor-length tablecloth. Draco decided to sweep the broken cup underneath the tablecloth; It’s unlikely that anyone would miss an old cup anyways. As he lifted the tablecloth, letting a small amount of light seep in to the space beneath the table, Draco set eyes on the glint of a glasses lens in the darkness.
His heart thudded suddenly in his chest, and his stomach gave a painful lurch when a pair of familiar green eyes opened and narrowed at him. Harry Potter crawled out from the darkness underneath the table. Draco took a step backwards as he uprighted himself. He was a carbon copy of Potter, down to the spattered freckles on the tip of his nose.
But something was off. He held himself in a different way, there was a glint of something sinister in his emerald gaze.
“Death Eater scum,” Potter growled.
A boggart. With Draco’s lamentable luck, he managed to stumble across a boggart underneath an old table and tarp in this godforsaken room. Draco was fortunate enough thus far to avoid boggarts most of his life. He wasn’t quite sure if it would have shifted form from his last encounter with one in his third year. This confirms it.
“There’s something rotten inside you, Malfoy. There always has been wrong within you. You’re disgusting, diseased, abhorrent,” Potter rolled out these venomous attacks like doing so brought him pleasure. He relished in Draco’s flinching face as each new word cut deeper.
Draco pulled his wand from his back pocket, bumping the heavy apple in his robes as he moved. He brandished the wand, pointing it towards the boggart. Potter’s face was twisted in a sick mirth, so uncharacteristic for his downright annoyingly angelic demeanour.
“Riddikulus.” He knew it was worthless, he couldn’t think of anyway to spin this into a funny scenario. It was all true. Every single word. His pathetic attempt at willing away the fiend just made the boggart laugh harder.
“You think it’ll be that easy to get rid of me? You can’t get rid of me, never. Not until you look inside yourself and realise that the problem is you, not me. It’s never been me, you’ve always been the source of your own shortcomings. Even a fool like Bulstrode could will away a boggart.” Boggart Harry reached out to grab Draco’s face, a thumb pressed against his chin and a finger resting underneath. “But not you, the heir to the house of Malfoy.”
Draco breathing quickened.
“You’ve always been worthless, and the Dark Lord himself doesn’t think you’re worthy of the task at hand. You’re a disgrace in everyones eyes.”
The boggart dropped his hand, grinning at Draco’s crestfallen face.
“And I will never love you back.”
Silence.
Then, the boggart shifted. Boggart Potter turned away from Draco, focusing on something just behind him. The boggart stepped to the side and dissolved into a swirling, grey mess. The grey began to solidify, and moulded itself into a dementor. It unhinged its rotting jaw and drifted towards its target, right behind Draco. He jumped out of its path, almost knocking over a painting propped up on a lamp.
“Expecto Patronum.” Draco cringed, that was the last voice he wanted to hear. The dementor cowered against the silvery light of the doe patronus before it crawled back into the darkness beneath the table, pulling the tablecloth back in place.
Harry stuffed his wand back into his pocket, not taking his eyes off Draco’s face. Underneath his suffocating embarrassment, he realised that Harry must’ve been the one following him. He used a charm to diminish the sound of his footsteps, Draco knew his intuition was correct.
The silence stretched on, and Draco felt the need to fill the void with words. Noise. Anything. “After all this time, your biggest fear is still dementors?”
“You’re in love with me?” Harry asked, a tentative quiver laced his words. He internally groaned, he prayed that Harry hadn’t heard those words, but his shoddy luck struck again. Draco averted his gaze, focusing on the cup lying in pieces on the floor. He never got to throw the chipped pieces away.
Draco doesn’t know how or why, but Harry took his silence as a hint. He paced forward, once, twice, before reaching out to sink a hand deep into his blonde hair. Harry pulled Draco forward into an ardent kiss. Not skipping a beat, Draco brought his hands up to Harry’s face, cradling his jawline in his palms. Harry’s hands tightened in his hair, sending rivulets of pleasure down the back of his neck.
The soft glide of lips against his own drew a small noise from the back of his throat. The noise seemed to embolden Harry, he pushed himself flush against Draco as he deepened the kiss. Draco felt Harry shiver as he ran his hand down his neck to lay flat against his chest.
Harry was the first to pull away, hands still knitted in Draco’s soft locks. They rested their foreheads together, breathing in sync and cheeks equally flushed. Neither moved for a long moment, simply relishing in the tingling pleasure each other’s fingertips left on their skin.
Harry took a step back, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. This was the Harry he knew- all soft smiles and pretty eyes. Nothing like that boggart’s eldritch interpretation.
“Keep working towards facing your fears, Malfoy,” Harry spoke in a low tone, eyes soft and kind. Draco nodded, his eyes slipping down to the pinkish blush on Harry’s bottom lip.
Harry took a few hesitant steps backwards, never taking his eyes off Draco, before turning around and disappearing between the stacks of kitschy items adorning the Room of Requirement. He lingered a moment longer before deciding to ditch tonight’s vanishing cabinet event, it would look too suspicious to Harry if he hadn’t truly left the room.
Besides, Draco was far too distracted to focus on anything else besides the warm sensation on his lips.