Chapter Text
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For some reason, standing there in the middle of Madam Malkin’s little shop, Harry finds himself the most anxious he’s been all day. It makes sense on some level, he supposes; it’s the first time since entering the magical world that he’s been separated from Hagrid’s comforting, overlarge presence for more than a mere moment. Upon further consideration, the lingering memories of their cart ride at Gringotts are probably responsible for a not-insignificant part of the queasy, twisty feeling in his stomach as well.
There’s also the very pretty girl being fitted for Hogwarts robes of her own not an arms-length beside him, of course. Pale and porcelain-faced, with narrow, elegant features and a curtain of sleek platinum-blonde hair that falls down almost to her waist, pulled back away from her forehead by an emerald-green hairband. Standing there, straight-backed and arms raised, Harry thinks she looks for all the world like a princess surveying her loyal subjects, as her half-lidded eyes scan the tiny shop out of boredom.
Her gaze lands on Harry, and those piercing grey eyes widen just a touch; he discreetly swallows, hoping she doesn’t notice.
“Hello. Hogwarts too?”
And so begins the first conversation of his life with a fellow wizard his age.
Admittedly, the girl does the lion’s share of the actual conversing, smooth and effortlessly self-assured. Harry's fumbling attempts at sounding normal, meanwhile, yield a word or two in response at best. It might not be entirely his fault, though; as their little chat stretches on, he’s increasingly getting the impression that this girl is… more than just a touch vain, quite frankly. Briefly, Harry wonders if perhaps all wizarding children are like this; he can’t imagine why they wouldn’t be, to be honest.
He does notice, however, that between seemingly casual asides about her family’s wealth and influence, or her prowess in something called “kwidd-itch”, or her less-than-charitable thoughts about the “other sort” of wizard, her eyes keep darting back to his face, just for a moment or two, quick as a flash each time.
“Well, I’ll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose.”
The words come out nonchalant and altogether quite blasé, but as Harry’s pushing his way through Madam Malkin’s front door, he turns back just in time to catch her in the midst of giving him one last glance, weighty and considering. As soon as she notices, though, she blinks and turns away.
—
All at once, the surrounding chatter in the entrance hall dies down, and it takes a second for Harry to place exactly why. There’s the haughty, pale-faced girl from Madam Malkin’s again, making her way towards him, flanked on either side by a large, heavy-ish boy with matching scowls. Harry wonders—briefly—if they are perhaps less than pleased with their positions (for it’s plainly obvious, even upon a first glance, that the shorter girl is nevertheless the leader of their little crew).
Her eyes are positively glittering.
“So!” She declares, striding up to him with that already-familiar self-assuredness and fixing him squarely within her sights. “It’s true, what they were all saying on the train, then. It’s you! You’re Harry Potter!” She introduces the other two boys alongside her with barely half a breath, brushing their existence aside like lint on the hem of her impeccably well-maintained robes, before placing a hand on her chest, tilting her chin up and grinning imperiously. “And I’m Malfoy. Draco Malfoy!”
Beside him, Ron cracks a tiny laugh.
A faint pink tinges Draco’s pale cheeks. She rounds on the redheaded boy, her grey eyes flashing viciously. “Think my name's funny, do you? I've no need to ask yours. Red hair, and a hand-me-down robe? You must be a Weasley.” She hisses Ron’s name like a coiled snake, baring traces of her perfect white teeth.
Slightly more flustered than before, she turns back to Harry, and the grin returns, though she can’t quite seem to get it as confident as before.
“Hmph. You'll soon find out that some wizarding families are better than others, Potter. You don't want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there!”
Her little white hand hangs in the air between them, strong and cocksure, as if it is the most obvious thing in the wide world that Harry will accept it in his own; how could he not?
Long seconds pass. Malfoy glances down at her hand, then back up to him, as if there was perhaps something wrong with it, or wrong with him; there’s a definite note of hurt confusion creeping into her expression now. Harry swallows, glancing at Ron’s red, embarrassed face—Ron, his first new friend at Hogwarts, his first ever friend his age, really—and opens his mouth.
“I think I can tell the wrong sort for myself, thanks.” His eyes are stern, and there’s a newfound steel in his voice, surprising even him.
Malfoy blinks. Then blinks again, harder. She finally takes a look around at their surroundings for what seems like the first time—takes in the other students all around them, staring, beginning to whisper among themselves, now—and her hand jerkily retreats back down by her side, clenching into a trembling fist.
Slowly, inch by inch, her pretty face turns beet-red, from her cheeks up to the tips of her pale little ears.
For a fleeting moment, watching her dismay, Harry’s struck by the distinct impression of someone lost, blindsided, caught utterly off guard for perhaps the first time in their life, and feels the slightest pang of guilt for what he’s just done—for putting Draco in such an uncomfortable spot, for causing such a public affair… (even though she’d been the one to come up to him first!)
But those grey eyes are back on Harry now, and they are furious.
“Oh?” She bites out, eyes gleaming with spite and—wait, were those tears?
“Well, I’d be careful if I were you, Potter.”
Harry’s never heard his name spat with such vitriol before, and he’s spent the last eleven years living with the Dursleys of all people, which should really count for something.
“Unless you—” It seems like Draco really wants to continue letting Harry know exactly why he should be careful, but Professor McGonagall picks that moment to rejoin them in the entrance hall, and a simple “Hem,” from her throat silences them all in one fell swoop. As Harry’s turning back around to enter the Great Hall, the last he sees of Draco Malfoy is her bright, malevolent glare, trained squarely on him.
He must’ve been seeing things before; her eyes are completely dry now.
—
Ugh. Harry can’t believe he’d ever made the mistake of feeling sorry for Draco bloody Malfoy for a single bloody second. The preening during Potions was annoying enough—with all the sucking up to Snape, and the constant smug glances in his direction throughout, she was becoming worse than Hermione Granger—but now this, too?
“Come and get it, Potter!” She crows, her pale face flushed and exultant, waving Neville’s Remembrall tauntingly before her in one hand and gripping her broom tightly with the other. She’s hovering nearly fifty feet above their collective Gryffindor-and-Slytherin heads by now, completely unconcerned with the fact that her modesty’s exposed below to anyone who cares to look; the entirety of her focus seems to be trained solely on Harry.
She lets out a little squeal of vicious glee as he kicks off the ground after her.
“Come on, Potter! Try to keep up! We wouldn’t want you breaking your neck, would we?!”
Her laughter is ringing in Harry’s ears, clearer than the swell of babbling, concerned voices coming from the ground now far below, cutting through even the sounds of the rushing winds. She’s not a bad flier, that’s for sure; she swerves this way and that, zipping higher and higher, moving through the air with easy overconfidence and always staying just out of his reach. The broom beneath him responds like it’s practically a part of him, though, almost like magic, and within a few seconds he’s pulled close enough to see the look of surprise on her face.
“Give it here, Malfoy! Or I’ll—”
Oops.
Right as Harry puts on an extra burst of speed, Malfoy makes another sudden turn with her broom in midair, as if to evade him yet again, and he—completely inadvertently—makes good on his as-of-yet unspoken threat. He collides with her in profile, and the Slytherin girl’s knocked clean off her broom with a soft, breathless little ufff.
There’s an expression of blank shock on her face, visible for just a moment as she hangs there in midair, before she plummets earthwards, out of view.
Harry dives. It’s as if time’s slowed down to a crawl; he doesn’t feel the wind, doesn’t hear the screams from below, doesn’t notice the ground suddenly rushing up towards him like a solid wall, approaching faster than gravity.
All he can see is Draco, suspended in the air before him, aided by neither broom nor enchantment any longer. One small hand remains desperately outstretched, reaching for help. For anyone. For him. She’s lost her hairband, and her platinum-blonde hair is whipping violently about her like a billowing, undulating parachute. If only it could save her like one.
But only Harry can save her now. Careening wildly towards the earth, all other thoughts blown clean out of his mind, he throws his upper body fully off his broomstick and leans forward, far beyond anything he would ever dare with his wits about him, desperate to reach her in time.
He just barely manages to wrap his arms around her and yank his broomstick up by the crook of his knees before they hit the ground. They tumble gently through the soft, damp grass of the Quidditch Pitch, end over end, tangled together in an inextricable mess of limbs and long silver hair; throughout, his arms remain wrapped immovably around Draco. Cradling her, pulling her close, pressing her head into his shoulder. He thinks—deliriously—how maddening it would be for her to break her neck now, after everything he’s gone through to save her life.
Only when his back has been pressed against solid earth for long seconds, and the rattling in his skull’s all but subsided, does Harry begin to realize that they’ve finally come to a stop. Suddenly self-conscious of just how tightly he’s embracing the most irritating girl in Hogwarts, he flings his hands up with a cough and a jumble of stammered, half-formed words—Accusations? Apologies? He’s really not sure, to be honest.
The huddled figure curled up on top of him remains silent; with a start, Harry realizes two things.
One: despite the fact that they are decidedly on solid ground by now, Draco Malfoy is still clinging onto him as if for dear life, clutching at his robes even tighter than he’d been holding onto her previously.
Two: Draco Malfoy is sniffling.
“M—Malfoy?” Harry breathes, hesitantly, scarcely believing his ears. “Er, are… are you—”
Like lightning, Malfoy’s head snaps up to glare at Harry, and the hot, angry tears in her eyes are plainly visible this time.
“You—you—Potter—you—”
As the pitch of her voice climbs higher and higher, words seem to fail her utterly; she throws herself back into Harry’s chest, her slight frame shuddering with tiny, heaving sobs that seem to knock his brain loose from its moorings like a series of incoming waves.
He simply lays there, adrift, for what feels like an eternity, his most bitter and despised rival at Hogwarts continuing to cry quietly into his sweater.
—
They don’t speak of it again. The students whisper among themselves, Professor McGonagall arrives to awkwardly pull them apart, and Draco hides her face, puffy-eyed and streaked through with tears, in the sleeve of her robe.
She’s bitter when he gets his Nimbus, oh, she is. The mocking taunts between classes only seem to redouble in their intensity.
But during that first Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Slytherin, as the scarlet Seeker’s broom bucks and bends beneath his grip, there’s a girl in the stands wearing silver and green who has to stuff her hands into her pockets so her friends don’t notice her clenched fists, notice her nails digging crescent grooves into the meat of her palms. Has to turn away as the jinxed broom drags him ever higher, unable to bear a single second more of him struggling to stay on. Oh, she’ll tell herself later that it was all merely nasty memories from that day in Flying lessons, coming back to torment her. And in truth, it is, but at that moment, thoughts of her own peril could be no further from her mind.
And even later—months and months later—facing the dark, yawning maw of the Forbidden Forest with nothing save a flickering lantern and a whining, oversized boarhound by their side?
A small white hand, nails carefully painted in Slytherin green, slips into Harry’s own without a word, and in the darkness it doesn’t feel anywhere near as wrong as he thought it would have. Her intertwined fingers only lock tighter around his as they walk between the trees in silence; her first few half-hearted attempts at bravado earlier have long since faded into the night.
They don’t talk about that either.
And as the school year draws to a close, when Harry wakes in the Hospital Wing after a rather more involved final exam of his own, there’s an elegant little box of outrageously expensive-looking French macarons among his little collection of get-well-soon presents, tied with a green ribbon, that no one seems to want to take credit for. Unsigned and remarkably conspicuous among the heaps of pre-packaged Honeydukes sweets, it’s almost as if the gift is challenging that thick-headed Potter to figure it out for himself; so would this mysterious sender opine, perhaps.
Of course, if asked, Draco Malfoy would say that Potter could drop dead for all she cared, and the only reason she could possibly think of for wanting him around would be so she could flatten him herself, Seeker to Seeker, on the Quidditch pitch next year; that she will make the team upon Higgs' departure is, naturally, a given.
Of course, no one does. Harry opens the box that afternoon, undoing the ribbon and sweeping everything aside into the wastebasket without a second thought.
The macarons end up being the tastiest ones of the whole bunch, he thinks.
—