Chapter Text
Draco was sitting in the Great Hall on an ordinary Saturday afternoon, eating and talking with his friends, if you could call them that. In reality, Draco didn’t really consider anyone but Blaise Zabini as a friend. Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle were simply two boys dumb enough to boss around and whose status as purebloods pleased his parents. And Pansy Parkinson was nothing more than a girlish nuisance with her constant attempts to woo Draco, always batting her eyelashes at him and laughing at every other sentence he uttered.
What Draco wasn’t aware of, however, was that this was no ordinary Saturday afternoon. Pansy had come across something intriguing during the summer before term and was determined to use it to win over Draco without room for error. That special something was a love potion, a Kissing Concoction, courtesy of Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes. One would only need to slip this potion into the intended’s drink or food and ensure that they are the first person the receiver sees after consumption. It all seemed so simple that Pansy had bought two bottles of the potion and smuggled them into her trunk. Unfortunately, things didn’t go quite how she had planned.
Draco was so engrossed in his conversation with Blaise, a heated debate about the best type of broom, that he didn’t notice when Pansy put a few drops of the Kissing Concoction into his cup. Soon after this conversation ended, Blaise claiming victory in convincing everyone that he had the top brand of broom, Draco returned to his food in defeat, finishing up what was on his plate. But as Draco went to wash it down with his drink, something caught his eye across the dining hall: Harry Potter’s best friend, Ron Weasley, had just received his very unfortunate looking replacement broom for the upcoming quidditch match.
Draco stood and laughed for everyone to hear. “Weasley, don’t tell me you’re going to be flying on that?”
Weasley whipped around. “Shove it, Malfoy.”
“That broom looks like something out of my grandmother’s basement. You’re never going to win with it.”
“Don’t make me come over there,” Weasley growled.
But Draco took out his wand before Weasley could advance on him and flipped the broom over his head, batting at him with the ugly thing. Potter got up and yelled at him while their other friend, Hermione Granger, tried to free Weasley from his aggressive broomstick. Draco simply turned to his group and laughed at his handiwork, but as he turned back to gloat, Potter levitated Draco’s cup and threw its contents into his open–mouthed face.
Red faced and soaking wet, Draco left the Great Hall in a hurry, but not before locking eyes with Potter who was now wearing a wide smile. Pansy attempted to hold Draco back, insisting he stay and finish lunch, but he ignored her and rushed off to the nearest bathroom. Once inside, he angrily tried to rub out the stain on the front of his robes, not yet advanced enough to know a good cleaning spell. As he hastily splashed water on himself, Draco felt his heart rate gradually increasing. He felt his pulse with his hand, panicking internally. Steadying himself at the sink, he tried to take deep breaths to calm himself, but as he looked into the mirror all he could think of was one thing. One person. Harry Potter.
Then it hit him all at once, like someone doused him in hot water, and he was overcome with the strangest urge to exit the bathroom to find Harry— to kiss him. Draco’s stomach jolted and his face grew extremely hot. Oh god, I must be ill, he thought. He locked himself in a nearby stall and sank to the floor slowly as he tried to make sense of the new sensation taking over his body and mind. It seemed that Pansy was successful in giving Draco the love potion, but his affection was now directed at the wrong person, the worst person, in fact.
Ignorant to Pansy’s plan, Draco thought he might cry out of frustration. Why Potter? Why did he have to be so infuriating? Infuriatingly heroic, infuriatingly perfect, infuriatingly handsome. Draco shook his head violently. No, he couldn’t possibly be thinking about his sworn enemy in this way. This all had to be some kind of joke; someone had to have hexed him into this insanity, maybe one of Harry’s friends. But he didn’t remember being hit with anything and his crew had all been too busy laughing at Draco’s misfortune. All he could remember were Harry’s bright green eyes glaring back at him from across the hall, and the way his long hair curled around his neck, and his slightly crooked glasses that matched his slightly crooked smile. Draco bit his lip, feeling like his heart might leap from his chest. Why now? Why after all this time have I decided to go gay for Potter? The feeling in his stomach was so intense he felt nauseous.
Suddenly a wave of calm washed over him. Draco got up from the floor, smoothing his robes down, and unlocked the door of the stall. He decided that if he spent the rest of the weekend in the Slytherin dorms that everything would blow over soon enough and on Monday he would go back to tormenting Harry as usual. When Draco opened the door to the bathroom, he ran into Pansy who had been nervously waiting for his reappearance.
“Draco!” she exclaimed. “Are you alright? How do you feel?”
“I’m fine, no thanks to you. Couldn’t even stop Potter from ruining my favorite shirt.”
“Yes, but, do you feel any different?”
“I feel wet,” Draco grumbled. “I’m going to get changed and review my potions essay.”
Pansy trailed after him as he stormed off to the dungeons. “But Draco, how do you feel emotionally? I mean, have you changed your mind about us?”
“Would you mind your own business? I’m bloody upset and there is no ‘us’ to speak of.”
“Ugh, it didn’t work,” Pansy muttered to herself.
“What in the world are you on about?” Draco asked, descending the stone stairway.
“Nothing, nothing . . .”
Draco just shook his head; clearly what went on in that girl’s thoughts was beyond him and the sooner he stopped caring, the better. The two made it to the entrance to the common room, a stretch of stone wall that was seemingly empty. Draco told the wall the password, a tall door was revealed to them, and they stepped into the room. Pansy seemed like she had something more she wanted to say to Draco, but he was already on his way down the hall to the boys’ dormitory. Behind him, he slammed the door and immediately changed into dry clothes, sitting on his bed in a huff once he was done.
Now that he was alone he could focus on his essay, a needed distraction from the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears. As he sat down with his parchment and quill, Draco felt restless; his skin itched and replacing the normal quiet in his brain was a buzzing sound, a near deafeningly loud ringing in his ears while he wrote. His thoughts drifted and he fell into a semiconscious sort of daze in which his mind repeated the incident in the Great Hall over and over. Those eyes, Draco thought. Green had always been his favorite color, even before being sorted into Slytherin like his family before him. Draco’s quill moved across his parchment and before he realized what he was doing he had drawn something up that he never, in his right mind, could have thought of.
Looking down in shock, Draco saw the product of his unfocused mind, a sketch of Harry’s name with hearts around the margins and a set of small glasses paired with a lightning bolt. Mortified, he tore off the bottom of the page in a hurry and hid the crumpled ball under his pillow. Now he knew there was no way he wasn’t sick. Draco, convincing himself he just needed rest to help it pass, chose to hide under the covers rather than seek out Madam Pomfrey; as if he could explain to her what he’d been feeling. No, if he really was sick, he’d have to figure out a solution on his own.
The rest of the evening Draco napped uneasily, images of dark hair and lightning scars fading in and out of his dreams. Around dinner time, the other Slytherin boys came to fetch Draco, Blaise feeling particularly concerned, but he shooed them away and shoved his face beneath his pillow. He was in no condition to leave the safety of the dorm as he had no idea what he’d do if he saw Harry again in person, and besides, he didn’t even feel hungry. Replacing his hunger was another sort of feeling: a painful longing, but not for food.
As he buried himself deeper into his bed in shame, something tickled Draco’s face causing him to sit up instantly. Oh. It was just his paper from earlier, a small thing that seemed to have so much power, taunting Draco as it sat on the mattress in front of him. Slowly, he unraveled the ball of paper and looked at the drawing again. It’s really not that bad, thought Draco as he turned it over between his hands. Without a second thought, he reached for his quill again, adding something new to the sketch. A small image of Harry Potter stared up at him from behind the glasses that had previously been floating alone on the paper, along with Draco’s own signature now written next to Harry’s name.
Draco sighed. Why was he indulging his delusions in this way? Didn’t he know what would happen if he allowed himself to continue? But a voice in his head said he didn’t care in the slightest. Draco put the scrap of paper in his robes pocket and got up from the bed, leaving his blanket strewn about as he marched up to the door. After fixing his hair in the nearby mirror, he steeled his nerves, put one hand on the doorknob, and opened the door despite every warning bell going off in his head at once. He walked across the empty common room towards the exit and headed for the Great Hall. Draco didn’t know exactly what he’d do once he got there (after all, he still wasn’t hungry), but somehow he knew he had to go to dinner.
The Slytherins were surprised but happy to see Draco as he entered the hall and sat in his usual spot, Pansy, of course, coming to fawn over him. But Draco only had eyes for one person who just happened to be sitting directly across the hall from him. Now that he was in the same room as Harry, all of Draco’s emotions were heightened tenfold. He was right there, chatting away with that Weasley girl. Go over there, his mind whispered to him, but his thoughts were quickly interrupted by Pansy shaking his arm roughly.
“What could you possibly want now?” Draco snapped.
“I only wanted to ask you something important,” Pansy pouted.
She looked so upset that Draco gave in. “Fine, go on then.”
“It’s pretty clear to me that you absolutely don’t love me back, correct?”
“I mean, it’s not like I haven’t clarified that for you about a thousand times since the Yule Ball.”
“So then who do you love?”
“What?” Draco asked, face going hot. “Why do you assume I fancy anyone at all? That mushy stuff is for girls anyway.”
“Come on, Draco. You have to love someone, don’t you?”
“Absolutely not.”
“For the love of Salazar, it’s so obvious,” Pansy exclaimed.
Draco shifted in his seat. “What’s so obvious, Pansy?”
“For one, you haven’t even touched your food. And you keep staring off into space like you’re daydreaming. Something is definitely up with you.”
“Nothing is up with me. I’m just coming down with something, that’s all.”
“Yeah, you’re definitely sick alright,” Pansy laughed. “ Lovesick.”
She turned to her friends and giggled as if she had told the best joke in the world. Draco just looked in front of him, trying to push the thought out of his mind that maybe he really was in love. He grabbed a fork and shovelled food in his mouth, imagining that if he ate fast enough he could somehow drown out Pansy’s accusations echoing in his brain. He was not in love and he never would be, and certainly not with Harry of all people. Pansy took Draco’s hand, urging him to slow down, but he had already finished eating and got up. Pansy followed him into the hallway and so did Blaise, Vincent, and Gregory.
“Why can’t you just tell me who it is, Draco?” she asked again.
“There’s nothing to tell.”
Almost with perfect timing, as if to prove him wrong, Harry exited the dining hall and shouted after them.
“Oi, Malfoy. Fancy wearing pumpkin juice to the big match?”
Instead of responding, Draco fell silent, his usual wit escaping him and his mind going blank. Oh god no. It was all falling apart now. Draco couldn’t keep lying to himself when the lie was looking him face to face from just a few feet away, waiting for an answer that would never come. He felt the blush creeping into his face, but he couldn’t move, frozen to the spot.
“What's wrong, Malfoy? Scared of me now, are you?”
“N-No,” Draco spat. But in truth, he was terrified. Terrified that he might betray everything he was as a person, all so he could stride over to the boy standing in front of him and press their lips together.
“Come on, Draco,” Gregory encouraged. “Do him in already.”
“What?!”
No, idiot. He said ‘Do him in,’ not…
“Nevermind, just— Potter you ought to leave before I use my new hex on you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, and it’s a pretty nasty one. Might ruin your perfect face.”
Shit.
“Excuse me, my what?” Harry said in confusion.
“You heard me. Perfect Saint Potter shouldn’t want his face messed up before the next photo shoot.”
Saved it.
“Don’t worry about me and my face, Malfoy.”
God, even the way he said his name was…
“No you’re right, I bet they’d like the rugged look even more and put you on the cover.” Draco wished he could just shut up . “Better use it on Weasley then, or maybe Granger, and see how you like it.”
Harry drew his wand at the same time Draco did, not letting him have the upper hand. Draco just wanted this to be over soon, before anything more unhinged left his mouth. Mouth. Lips. Kissing. STOP.
Draco threw a spell across the hall and ducked as one was shot back at him, hitting Vincent instead of its intended mark. He started floating above Draco’s head and a full on duel broke out beneath the screaming boy, streaks of colored light flying back and forth. Pansy ran off as tapestries were knocked off the walls and a suit of armor exploded behind Blaise loudly.
“EVERYONE LOWER YOUR WANDS,” a loud booming voice said.
Draco turned his head to see Professor Dumbledore descending the stairs from his office. He strode over calmly and with a flick of his wand all the items on the floor went back to their correct positions, and Vincent, who looked very relieved, had been returned to the ground.
“This is most certainly not how students should behave at Hogwarts.”
Dumbledore looked over his half-moon glasses at the group of young wizards in front of him.
“Free use of magic is a privilege, not a right, and you all have abused it.” He turned to Draco. “And besides, this does not appear to be a fair fight. Four to one, Mr. Malfoy? You know better.”
Draco narrowed his eyes. As if the numbers were important when the ‘one’ in question had literally faced off with the Dark Lord himself multiple times.
“Fifty house points will be taken off for each person involved here and you’ll all be in detention tomorrow evening. Now I presume I won’t have to ask you all twice to return to your common rooms.”
Dumbledore went towards the dining hall, leaving the boys staring at each other in silence. Harry’s friends ran up to him, ensuring he was alright. Draco watched them for a second before turning and ushering the other boys towards the dungeons.
Blaise talked the whole way back, boasting about his wand skills and how he neatly hit Harry square in the face with one of his spells before the Headmaster had shown up, Vincent and Gregory laughing and agreeing with every word. Draco, however, was ruminating again; this time he was focused on Pansy. He found it quite suspicious how much she had been interrogating him at dinner, not to mention her odd comment earlier that day. When the boys arrived at the common room, Draco walked right up to Pansy who was sitting with her posse by the window playing with makeup. Draco took the mirror out of her hands, forcing her to look up at him.
“Give it back, Draco!”
“I won’t unless you tell me the truth,” he said. “Why have you been acting weird around me since lunchtime? All the questions about how I’m feeling, about fancying someone. You’ve never cared before today.”
“That’s not true,” Pansy whined. “I’ve always cared about whether you liked me back.”
“But you haven’t actively tried to ask me out in a whole year, so what gives?”
She tried to reach for the mirror, but Draco snatched it farther away.
“Alright, alright,” she sighed. “I may have slipped an eensy weensy . . . bit of a Kissing Concoction in your goblet when you weren’t looking in the hopes that it might make you fall in love with me.”
“You what?!” Draco yelled.
“What’s a Kissing Concoction even do?” Gregory asked.
“Later, Greg,” Draco snapped. “You little monstress. Now you’ve gone and poisoned me.”
Pansy stood. “Well clearly it didn’t work, Draco, because you’re standing here yelling at me instead of kissing me. So quit your worrying.”
“Only it has worked, Pansy, and I’ve only been tormented all day with these god awful thoughts and feelings, and you don’t even know the half of it.”
“Then who the hell do you fancy now, because it can’t be any of us, can it?”
Draco paused for a second. “That’s none of your concern,” he said quietly.
“But I am concerned, Draco. Because I won’t rest until I find out which girl it is and how she managed to hijack my potion.”
“But it isn’t a girl!” Draco shouted, before he could think.
The room grew silent and Draco felt about a thousand eyes burning holes into him. A hint of understanding seemed to shine in Pansy’s eyes as she began to work it out. She leaned in closely so only Draco could hear her.
“Your reaction in the hallway,” she whispered.
“Shut it.”
“That’s why you froze when he showed up,” she smiled. “. . . why you were so afraid to answer my question.”
“I said shut it, Pansy.”
“Oh, I won’t tell, Draco. But you owe me big time.”
Draco scowled at her and angrily withdrew, leaving Pansy smiling to herself.
“What’s a Kissing Concoction?” Gregory asked again in a hushed voice.
“Don’t worry about it, Greg,” Blaise said before following Draco to the boys’ dormitory.
Draco was pacing back and forth across the room when the other boys arrived. If Pansy knew and told everyone, there was no way he’d live it down. Imagine if it got out that Slytherin’s prince fancied Gryffindor’s golden boy; seeing as rumors spread fast at Hogwarts, the whole school could know by the middle of next week.
“Cool off, Draco,” Blaise said. “No matter who it is, it’s only a potion, right? Just get Madam Pomfrey or Snape to help.”
This was why Blaise was his closest companion. “Right. I forgot about Professor Snape. He’d give me the antidote without asking too many questions.”
“Exactly. And you were always his favorite.”
Draco smiled a little smugly. He didn’t need anyone to confirm what he already knew, but sometimes it felt good to hear it anyway. He made for the door and headed to Snape’s office as quickly as possible, trying to avoid another detention for missing curfew.
Arriving at Snape’s door, Draco knocked tentatively, admittedly a little nervous to ask a favor of the most feared Professor at Hogwarts. The heavy door swung open, surprisingly fast for its apparent weight, and revealed a small room with windows tinted green from the lake water outside. Professor Snape sat behind his desk, writing away on some paper, likely a student’s assignment. He barely looked up to acknowledge Draco as he entered.
“Aren’t you cutting it a little close to curfew, Draco?”
“Yes Professor, but I had something urgent I needed to ask of you. It couldn’t wait until tomorrow.”
“And what, pray tell, would that be?”
Draco fidgeted with his tie as he looked Snape in the eye. “I need an antidote of sorts. Someone slipped something into my drink earlier today and it’s been . . . causing problems, to say the least.”
“Were you poisoned?” Snape sighed.
“No, but–”
“Then I hardly see how this is an emergency. You should have brought this to Madam Pomfrey instead of interrupting my personal hours.”
“I can’t trust her like I trust you, sir,” Draco tried.
Snape looked Draco over for a minute, then set his papers down, conceding. “Tell me exactly what you need the antidote for.”
“A love potion?” Draco cringed. “Specifically a Kissing Concoction.”
“We’ve had a lot of those get in ever since those blasted Weasleys set up shop in Diagon Alley.”
Draco watched as Snape flourished his wand and a large bottle floated down from one of the various cabinets behind him.
“This is the counter potion,” Snape explained as he poured out the bottle’s contents into a small glass. “You should feel its effects instantaneously, so please let me know how you feel.”
“This is brilliant, Professor,” Draco said, happily gulping down the potion. It tasted awful, but anything to get rid of this feeling. Draco felt himself slowly deflate, the color leaving his face altogether and a sense of dread settling into his bones. His head felt heavy and his eyelids drooped. Did he really just say anything ?
“Professor Snape, why do I feel so—“
“It’s quite normal,” he interrupted. “Love potions produce quite a high amount of very intense emotions. Now that you are being brought back down to your normal, it feels like you are being brought much lower despite this being your baseline. It is not unlike having too many sweets and crashing afterwards.”
Snape handed him a piece of black licorice. “Ironically, it is sugar that helps most after experiencing a love potion’s effects.”
Draco ate the licorice begrudgingly, hating the taste even more than the potion. It did seem to help though and returned some of the color back to his face.
“Now, when you think of the person who inflicted this potion on you, do you have your usual amount of like or dislike towards them?”
Draco stopped for a moment to think. He pictured Potter in his mind as best as he could and he felt . . .
“Nothing, sir. I feel nothing.”
“And did you before?”
“No, I very much disliked them.”
“I see. Well, your dislike shall return in due time. This is all a temporary side effect, I assure you.”
Draco sighed in relief. He didn’t think he could handle being this painfully neutral about a person for much longer. Professor Snape sent him on his way with a hall pass in case a Prefect was monitoring the halls and Draco returned to the dormitory where everyone was getting ready for bed.
But that night Draco couldn’t sleep. While the other boys snored away, he lay awake in his bed, watching the moonlight stream in between the gap in his bed’s curtains. He wasn’t sure if his alertness was because of his nap earlier or because of how that feeling, or lack thereof, left him more sick than he had felt before. Now when he pictured the events of the day concerning Potter he had no love, but no anger, no pointed hatred, no jealousy, either; none of the messy feelings that he once took for granted were there and he craved to have them back.
Draco turned over under the covers, willing himself to sleep, but his eyes opened just as he closed them. He remembered seeing something flying out of his pocket during the fight earlier that should’ve flagged him as important, but didn’t until right then. He got up and checked his robes’ pockets and sure enough, the drawing was missing.
Oh god…I’m dead.