Chapter Text
The first time Blaise had tried the binding spell, his hands had been trembling so much, he had almost hit his own throat. All the books had warned about the dangers of that, had advised to take precautions in case one actually managed to choke themselves with the spell, to guarantee enough air to murmur the counter spell.
Blaise, at the time, had been convinced it wouldn't happen to him, but here he was, his hands now shaking more violent than before, his chest uncomfortably tight and suddenly he knew why there were whole chapters about the dangers of this. All his usual confidence had dissolved into a puddle of sweat on the ground.
It took him a few minutes to get his breathing calm again. In typical Blaise manner, he had brushed back a strand of hair, raised his chin, and tried again.
Now, almost five years later, his hands didn't shake anymore when he did the spell. It had become morning routine. Put on your brave face, hide away your chest and wait for the day it would stay the way it was supposed to be all by itself. Gel back your short hair. Chin up.
Time to face the day.
Draco was the first up, as usual. Crabbe and Goyle liked sleeping in until the last possible moment, the only guarantee for them even attempting to leave bed was usually breakfast.
“There you are, Zabini,” he was greeted by the familiar sneer. “Honestly, you take more time in the bathroom than some girls.” He didn't notice Blaise flinching. He barely ever noticed anything going on around him, except for Harry Potter.
“I wanted to talk to you. Now, this is very short notice, I'm aware, but Potter....”
Ah, there it was. Potter. Blaise zoned out of the conversation, trying not to focus on his racing heart. He was already breathing harder and the morning had only just started.
They walked down to breakfast together, Draco still completely caught up in his rant about Potter, when, finally, he seemed to notice that Blaise hadn't spoken a single word yet.
He stood still, right in front of the doors to the Great Hall, and turned around, an offended look on his face.
“Honestly, what is wrong with you today? I made a brilliant joke about Potter's dead mother and you didn't laugh? Not even a giggle?”
“I'm just not really... in the mood for jokes,” Blaise sighed, deciding this was not the right time to explain to Draco the importance of variation. “Bit tired.”
“Yes, well, I can't exactly tell Potter that I can't insult him today because Blaise was a bit tired.”
All of a sudden, Blaise had enough. With a roll of his eyes, he snapped back, “Well, how about instead of insulting him, you finally man up and just ask him out? We all know you want to. Hell, I heard the Weasley twins have bets running on when it'll finally happen.”
Leaving a befuddled looking Draco behind, he finally entered the Great Hall, chest heaving, let himself fall onto a seat next to Pansy and started angrily gnawing at a piece of bread.
“He's talking about Potter again?” Pansy asked, with more empathy than most people gave her credit for – and only a shred of jealousy.
Blaise rolled his eyes.
“When doesn't he?”
“You know how they are, these closeted gays in self-denial,” she grinned.
Oh, he sure did.
When his teeth clacked together loudly, she finally raised a hand to gently lower his, looking him in the eyes earnestly.
“Come on, spit it out, what happened?”
“He said I take longer in the bathroom than girls,” Blaise burst out, then quickly looked left and right if someone had heard him. Some Slytherin second years were giggling, but he didn't think they'd read anything into his words. He let his shoulders slump.
“Well, clearly you don't,” Pansy gave back relaxed, her nose wrinkled up in quiet anger, as she looked around the table. “Because almost every Slytherin lady has arrived here way before you guys.”
She gave Blaise a comforting little jab in the ribs.
With a sigh, Blaise helped himself to some fried eggs.
“I just wish...” But he didn't finish the sentences. So many things he'd wished for and he'd long stopped to put them into words.
“I know,” Pansy muttered, her focus now on Draco, who stepped to the table with a dark glare towards Blaise and sat down as far away from them as possible. “Me too.”
He supposed that was as much support from her as he could expect. But Blaise couldn't help his little grin as he watched his best friend watch Draco, who pretended not to watch Potter behind the cover of his morning newspaper.
Something about the consistency of their morning routines was weirdly reassuring. He had somehow become part of this. Somehow found a place in this elaborate morning theatre unfolding every day. He was one of them, as himself, and his eggs tasted good.
Draco didn't talk to Blaise for the whole of double potion, which was a weekly occurrence and tended to help his marks a lot – It was rather difficult to focus on the task at hand, while Malfoy was having his third tirade of how shiny Potter's ebony black hair was and who did he think he was?
As usual, it didn't last long.
While everyone else was still packing their stuff together, Potter had already grabbed all his things and stormed out of the classroom. Blaise couldn't blame him, he supposed, with how Snape had teased him again all lesson long.
Draco, freezing for a second as a the boy rushed past him, stood there, looking unusually lost, before he left his things, rushed out behind Potter and then called, loud enough for everyone in the class to hear, his words echoing from the bare stone walls,
“Potter! Did you know, my father wanted to invite your father for a match of wizarding golf, but then he remembered he's dead and he laughed for over half an hour! If you want to, I can tell you more about it on our Hogsmead....-”
His voice faded away, and, Blaise imagined as he hit his head on the table and groaned in gentle disbelief, so had Harry Potter.
“I still can't believe I listened to you,” Draco repeated for the tenth time, while Pansy was still battling the occasional giggle fit, the words “then he remembered your father's dead...” occasionally leaving her lips in a breathless whisper between laughs.
“How many more times, Draco?” Blaise called from out of his book. “That was not my fault! I told you to ask him out, not to talk about his dead father.”
“I don't even want to ask him out,” Draco hissed, his cheeks flushing lightly pink. “It's not like I'm... I'm...”
“Gay?” Pansy asked helpfully, before being washed away by another giggling fit.
Draco regarded her with a deadly stare, the pink in his cheeks now visibly turning red.
“She's not laughing at you,” Blaise hurried to tell him, because oh, he knew the feeling he could read on Draco's face right now, he knew it so well. “Well, she is,” he added. “But not about you possibly being gay, just about how bad you are at asking a boy out.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” Pansy managed to bring out, turning a bit more serious again. “Be gay all you want.” She even tried her best not to sound sad, poor thing.
“I'm not... I don't....” Draco looked from her back to Blaise and back again. “... Am I?”
Blaise just shrugged, Pansy snorted and got up to walk to the window.
“I mean...” Blaise tried cautiously. “Have you ever considered that the reason you're giving Potter so much of your attention every single day is.... not exactly hate?”
Malfoy looked at him thoughtfully, his forehead pulled into a frown.
“... No?” he finally said.
Blaise rolled his eyes.
“Well, maybe you should.”
The next day, Blaise got up half an hour early to finish in the bathroom before Draco. His chest bound up carefully, his hair perfected, and his chin raised, he sat in the common room when the Slytherin finally came down, looking exhausted and slightly less perfectly manicured than he knew him.
“There you are,” he greeted him with a cheeky little grin. “You take almost as long in the bathroom as the gays do.”
Draco opened his mouth as if to say something, stared at him, then shut it again.
That'll teach him to apply stupid stereo types, Blaise thought, feeling only a little bad.
“Breakfast?” he offered and his pale friend nodded.
They actually managed to walk into the Great Hall together today and Blaise could've sworn, as they passed the Gryffindor table, he could hear the Weasley's discuss over whether it counted as “asking Harry out or not”.
He wasn't going to be the one to tell them it had counted. He had put his money on “never” ages ago.
Draco was avoiding looking at Potter today, which was a first, as far as Blaise was aware. Generally, he seemed very quiet, just staring at his breakfast, fork aimlessly digging through his eggs, until Blaise had enough and laid a hand onto his shoulder.
“Hey, are you still thinking about what we talked about yesterday?” he whispered, knowing Draco wouldn't want the general public to know about his inner chaos.
Draco simply looked at him.
“It's okay, you know? If you like him? You're still our slightly obnoxious buddy.”
He still simply stared at him.
“Anyway,” Blaise sighed, feeling a bit uncomfortable under his insistent gaze. “If you ever want to talk about it... I'll be there, yeah?”
A short nod.
That was better than what he usually got out of Draco, so he let him and his poor eggs be, instead looking over to Potter.
There he was, sitting between his two friends, chatting with them, a rather annoyed frown on his face as he did. He seemed tired, too.
Blaise couldn't blame him. The world had to be a rather tiring place for the Boy Who Lived. But he couldn't help but think it was a bit tiring for the Boy Who Was Trans, too.
They ran into Potter in Care for Magical Creatures again and somehow, despite that occurrence being scheduled for the same time every week, it seemed to take Draco by total surprise.
“This is petty, even for you,” Potter hissed. “Just let me through, Malfoy.”
Blaise doubted that Draco had even noticed he was standing in his way. Completely silent, he just stood there, mouth moving open and shut again as if he was speaking words no one but him could hear.
Blaise quickly grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the way.
“Come on, Malfoy,” he whispered through gritted teeth. “Get yourself together, you're losing it.”
“You're poor!” Draco suddenly drawled out loud, whirling around to where Potter stood, who stopped in his tracks and turned around with obvious confusion on his face.
“Are you talking to me?” he asked.
“You're poor!” Draco repeated, his voice becoming more desperate now. “You have no money, what a sad existence you must be leading.”
“Draco,” Blaise hissed, trying to hold back a laugh.
Harry raised an eyebrow.
“Actually, I'm not,” he finally gave back, confusion still audible in his voice. “What's wrong, gotten confused with your two pages long insult script?”
“I can take you out to dinner, if that would save you from a horrible death of starvation, though,” Draco continued to dig his own grave. “My father says it's important to do charity.”
“Uhm, thanks,” Harry replied, still frowning. “But even if my parents hadn't left me an inexplicable large amount of money, I'd still get school meals to help me through.”
Half the class was giggling now and Draco, his cheeks as flaming red as any Weasley's hair, finally let himself be dragged to the back of the crowd by Pansy and Blaise.
That night, he could hear Draco sniffling under his sheets. Blaise wished he could do something, he had offered to talk, to help, to write down better lines for him, all evening long, but Draco seemed to have barely registered his existence.
He had just stared blankly ahead until the first rays of the sinking sun had fallen into the magicked windows of the common room and then excused himself to bed.
Now, they both lay awake next to each other, both caught up in their own reality.
It must be scary, he thought, being Draco Malfoy and finding out you were gay. They shouldn't have laughed about it, earlier, they really shouldn't have. He himself had been lucky, his mum had never paid much attention to him and when he had started cutting his hair and binding back his breasts, she had barely noticed him changing.
Here, no one else knew him as anything but a boy. Here, he could be himself without having to be scared and when he returned home, he was facing another soon-to-be-mysteriously-deceased man his mother had brought home, maybe looking at him in confusion when his mother had, in a half-sentence, mentioned a daughter, and that was it.
Draco Malfoy returned every holidays to an attentive family with high prestige and even higher expectations. What would they think, Blaise wondered, about their son being in love with Harry Potter?
Probably nothing good.
“Blaise?” a weak voice called for him in the darkness.
“Yeah?” he whispered back without missing a beat.
“I think I might be gay.”
Blaise smiled. He knew it must feel good to be able to just admit it, just once, for the first time, in the safety of the night covering for him.
“Yeah,” Blaise replied.
A little pause set in and Draco sniffled again.
“Hey Draco?”
He heard the other boy swallow.
“Yeah?”
“I'm trans.”
Another little pause and Blaise was holding his breath, trying his best not to regret his short-fused decision, praying that no one else was awake with them right now and then he heard Draco's sheets rustling as the boy sat up in his bed.
“Wait. What?”