Work Text:
On weekends, Quidditch practice is usually reserved by two teams—one in the morning and another in the afternoon. When this happens, the Quidditch locker rooms become packed with two House teams—squeezed together, sweaty shoulders practically rubbing together in everyone's haste to leave as soon as possible. In particular, when the Slytherins shared the locker room, the boys’ locker rooms were particularly rowdy.
Harry rolls his shoulders back to ease some tension, feeling the strain on his arms and legs. After not playing Quidditch for much of the summer holidays, the rigorous drills around the pitch during their first practice hit him harder than the rest of his teammates. When he arrived inside, the rest of his teammates had already started changing their clothes along with the rest of the Slytherin team. The raucous laughter and the acrid smell of sweat when out in the sun for too long quickly permeate the stagnant air. Luckily, the sunlight that beamed in from the outside cast the room in the golden glow of the afternoon outside. Harry can't help but smile at the familiar sight, comforted by his team and his favorite sport after such a lonely summer.
Harry glances over at the Slytherin team, hearing their laughter as they change, jeering and sneering at any Gryffindors unlucky enough to catch their eye. At the very center of it all is Draco Malfoy, familiar drawling voice unmistakable amidst the raucousness of boys showering, changing, and attempting not to catch sight of anyone's prick. Seemingly, Malfoy had yet to figure out he was there as he distractedly shrugged off his robes from his shoulders. In his hand is his green and silver tie. He hangs both articles of clothing up, keeping them crease-free.
Harry looks into the locker he had just opened. Compared to Malfoy's neat row of hanging pressed clothes, the small pile of his robes he haphazardly threw in in his eagerness to start Quidditch practice makes him squirm. Just the thought of Malfoy sneering at the small pile, pretentiously commenting about his lack of manners, has him immediately irritated. He places his broom into the locker and removes his gloves, burning with the thought. He preemptively looks back at Malfoy, expecting him to notice him and have a rude comment to say, but the other boy has yet to even turn toward him. Instead, Malfoy is pulling off his undershirt from over his head, exposing lean muscle and pale skin and ruffling the usually perfectly coiffed hair so that a few strands of white-blond fell, a curtain over his eyes.
Now, Harry isn't a prude. The benefits of living in a dorm with four other boys for the past five years, barring summers, meant he had seen his fair share of varying stages of male undress. However, he had never seen Draco Malfoy in anything other than his perfectly pressed, perfectly tailored uniform and perfectly styled hair. And even when his clothes and hair weren’t up to par, Harry had never seen Malfoy in any measure of undress, even if they’d been sharing a locker room for the past four years. Somehow, he only managed to catch sight of his white-blond head just as he was already on his way out or wearing his Quidditch uniform.
As such, he is immediately caught off-guard by the sudden expanse of taut pale skin as he turns his head. Draco Malfoy has always been pale, but he was practically translucent under his clothes—the skin there a touch paler than his face and hands. Under the afternoon sun through the locker room windows, casting shadows over the long, lean planes of Malfoy's body, his skin was practically pearlescent. His skin also looked soft and unblemished from years of being pampered, never knowing the touch of hardship in his life. He must have been staring for an inordinately long time because Malfoy turns, curiously looking over his shoulder.
Harry knows that this is it. Now that he was caught practically ogling him, Malfoy will start to say something cruel and demeaning, not unlike the words Uncle Vernon would sometimes say at the telly. He would jeer and turn to his teammates, ready to laugh and mock him about it together. Then Malfoy would speak so loudly about it again in the Great Hall that he would all but announce it until the entirety of Hogwarts knew. Just the thought makes Harry’s blood boil, his hackles beginning to rise. Harry's nerve endings, after such a terrible summer, were rubbed raw, proving only to make his short temper even shorter.
Malfoy raises his pointy chin, lips pulling into a smirk. Harry readies himself for the verbal lashing and the casual cruelty that Malfoy had in spades, but he doesn't immediately say anything. Instead, his gray eyes, usually so cold and malicious, don't harden like he expected them to. An unusual look crosses over Malfoy’s features, eyes quickly flickering up and down—so quick that if Harry was not already staring so intensely, he likely would not have caught it—and he raises one fine eyebrow.
For one brief moment of madness, Harry is not reminded of Lucius Malfoy, whose glinting steel gray looked like the fluorescent light of the Dursley's reflecting off the metal lock of his cupboard door as it was closed and locked. When he looks at Draco now, his pale eyes are bright and silver as they catch the sun in his irises like the glow of a successfully cast Patronus charm. Harry loathes that he even thinks it.
“Like what you see, Potter?”
Harry feels stupid and mortified at the same time. Partly for being caught and partly because he did like it. He liked it enough to keep staring, not even the embarrassment of being caught or the knee-jerk reaction to anything Malfoy could pry his eyes from the alluring lines of his body.
His silence must speak volumes because Malfoy laughs. The familiar mean sound has Harry finally looking away. The tips of his ears are undoubtedly warm, tinged pink from embarrassment. He picks up his broom, school robes, and what was left of his dignity from his locker and slams the door shut. Harry could always change at the dorms before classes, thanks. He isn't keen on listening to the inevitable mocking.
“Piss off, Malfoy,” Harry says, not meeting his eyes as he walks out.
Harry had expected that, by dinner, everyone would be talking about it. By the morning, the Daily Prophet would be printing headlines containing "The Boy Who Likes Boys? More on Page 3" with howlers from devastated grandmothers who wanted to marry their granddaughters off to the Boy Who Lived. However, even after waiting days for the rumor mill to start turning with the news that Harry Potter was a pouf or that he fancied Draco Malfoy, of all people, Harry finds that no one spoke of it. Not in the Great Hall nor the hallways between classes. Not even the Slytherins.
Harry looks over at the Slytherin table just to be sure and finds Draco Malfoy accepting gifts from his mother and scratching his eagle owl as he thoughtfully reads the attached letter. His face is lax and his eyes soft as he smiles at the note. Malfoy looks up, smirking at him. Harry glares at him and quickly looks down at his food, mortified at being caught staring. Again.
Merlin, Harry really hated him, but maybe the Prophet was right. Maybe Harry was going mad.
He was never telling Ron.