bonus scenes.

[shecrows]

I.i.

Draco has been lying sleeplessly in his bed for hours, staring up at a dark, old ceiling, eyes adjusted to the lack of light enough to make out the beams, the jagged cracks in them. He hears the door slam a floor below, and then, more violent still, the sound of Blaise’s voice, raised in anger.

“-when you choose to.” The sound of something being thrown, a dull thump that shakes the wall. “When you think people deserve it.”

He’s tearing down the stairs before Blaise has finished speaking, pale hair mussed and shirt half undone, trousers hanging low on his hips.

Potter and Blaise are standing as far away from one another as the small space of the landing will allow them, pressed against their respective walls, shoulders tensed like a pair of predatory beasts bracing for a fatal sort of fight.

There is blood on Blaise’s sleeve. The sight of it stops Draco short for a moment, heart pounding fitfully in his chest.

“Pretty obvious when people don’t deserve it,” Potter says dryly, not quite managing to keep the venom out of it. “They’re usually the ones dangling Muggles by their ankles and bowing to a snake-faced git.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Draco spies a flickering movement, a soft shape in the kitchen doorway. He turns his head toward it, reluctantly, eyes meeting a pair of blue ones. Evidently he hadn’t been the only one losing sleep tonight.

Blaise sneers at the easy, arrogant tone. The temptation to throw a silent, violent spell at Potter is such that he has to cross his arms tightly over his chest to curb it, unsure even as he does it why, exactly, he is restraining himself. His arm hurts badly, but he can barely feel it through the anger that floods through his veins.

"How simple your world must be," he hisses, tone low and icy, "if you assume that everyone who follows a cruel leader is simply evil and deserves whatever they get. Are you that foolish, Potter? Do you really think that's how the world works? I expect once you heroically vanquish Voldemort, you'll line up every one of his followers, including the handful of Gryffindors there, and Avada them all?"

He digs his fingers into his own arms. He's sharply aware of Draco on the stairs, and Ginny caught in the doorway, watching them silently, but doesn't take his eyes from the coldly hostile gaze of the boy across from him.

Ginny edges out of the doorway, warily eyeing the two combatants.

None of them seem badly hurt. Yet. Nor particularly inclined to pay attention anything but each other. She has a sudden, odd sense of deja vu. She's seen Harry face off against Malfoy like this more times than she can count, before that enmity became something else.

Now Malfoy is poised on the stairs instead, looking like an unusually untidy version of his usual self, pale hair tangled around his cheekbones, ridiculously expensive shirt hanging off one shoulder. His expression is as smooth and cool as ever, but it's hard to mistake the guarded way he watches the two on the floor, the careful slant to his shoulders. Following an impulse she isn't certain of, she walks closer, carefully avoiding the shards of glass littering the floor.

"I didn't say that," Potter bites back, voice rising indignantly, hands clenched furiously at his sides. Draco is somewhat relieved to see that neither of his fists is closed around a wand length, though he isn't particularly eager to see the alternative play out either, should it come to blows. "I would never-- there'd be trials, I know it isn't always easy.”

Potter’s gaze leaves Blaise, once and for less than the space of a heartbeat, a jagged glance toward the stairs that doesn't quite land on Draco, because it catches on Ginny first.

Green eyes widen very marginally, then snap back to Blaise, too accustomed to battle to give up a target.

"I'm not saying they're all evil, but following someone like that becomes a choice. You can't-- slaughter innocent people forever claiming the bad man made you do it." Potter's breaths are tight, angry, but the lines of him are confident, relentlessly assured of the space he's taking up just now, in this moment, of the world and his place in it here. He does not look as though he believes he's in any real danger, or even could be. Draco frowns at it, a little. "And don't fucking tell me every Death Eater out there is a helpless victim, even you can't think I'm stupid enough to believe that."

Weasley is moving, inexplicably, toward Draco. He steps aside without looking at her, making room, an offer she can easily refuse without Draco having to admit that it was one. He can feel the weight of her thoughtful gaze on him, as though waiting to see what he might do.

After a moment's consideration, Draco leans his weight against the wooden banister, shrugging elegantly. He pitches his voice low, eyes never leaving the two boys squaring off against each other. "I'm really quite tired of refereeing, aren't you?"

Blaise shifts restlessly when Potter's glance strays towards Draco, some unspoken impulse making his hands clench hard, and there is almost a kind of triumph in it when Potter's eyes snap back to him unerringly, intent on their purpose.

"That isn't what I said. I said the world is not black and white. And when you throw yourself onto a pedestal where you can decide who lives and dies, who is worthy of saving and who isn't, you cannot afford to forget that. And yet here you are -- " Blaise drops his voice sharply, making it soft and cold where Potter's is loud, "Making careless judgements when you do not know what you're talking about."

He holds the other boy's hard, furious gaze, every muscle tensed, poised for a strike he keeps half-expecting. A part of him strains for Potter to give him a reason, an excuse, the barest provocation.

"Sometimes, Potter, sometimes there are no good choices. Not all of us are protected, not all of us are fortunate enough that the ones we love are all on the right side and safe. Have you ever considered how many people have no such assurance of protection? Or that the only way to take down a 'bad man' if he is strong enough is to get close?"

Ginny takes the few steps up to stand beside Draco, on the far end of the worn step, putting a little more distance between herself and the floor. There is a weary quality to the way she watches the two down there, as well as something a little unhappy in the curve of her mouth.

When she answers him, it's rather quiet. "Do you suppose it will be more effective to keep them from murdering each other if I throw myself in the way, or if you do?”

"I didn't throw myself onto anything," Potter says tightly. Even from where he's standing, paces away, Draco can see the muscles straining in his jaw. "I don't decide-- for fuck's sake, Zabini, we want the same thing!"

Broadly speaking, Draco supposes Potter's right about that. It says something about how little Potter actually knows Blaise that he seems to think it changes anything, or means they should get along. He sighs, leaning more heavily against the staircase, head tilting infinitesimally toward the sound of Weasley's voice, the folded, tired edge in it.

Before he can answer her, Potter adds, lowering his voice, "I don't want anyone to die. Just one person." He sounds gravely serious about it, and much older than he is. His eyes are lit up and furious on Blaise's, the lines of his face cut from stone, severe and imposing. "If you can tell me how to do that, I'm listening. You aren't an enemy, at least not to me. You can keep considering me one if you want, but this would be a hell of a lot easier if you realized I don't want to fight you." Potter's throat bobs over a hard swallow. "I offered to help you. You said no. That was a choice."

The air in the hallway feels impossibly thick with tension.

"I say we let them go at it," Draco says in an undertone, coolly and without much feeling, eyes flickering from Potter to Blaise, and lingering there.

He means it, mostly. To a point. Now that they're both back safe, every lost hour of sleep seems to be catching up to him, and he finds he doesn't quite have the energy to countenance yet another one of these displays between them. Blaise looks as though he's been hurt, though not badly.

Draco's heart aches at it anyway, the line of his mouth firming. "Care to place a wager?"

"Very fucking gracious of you, to give me a choice."

The words fall into the silence, sharp edged and taut with fury. Blaise has a sudden, vivid memory of a cool summer night not too long ago, facing this same boy in the darkness outside the school. How desperate it had been, to leave that place, believing he was leaving everything behind that might keep him alive.

"And you did not, as it were. You ordered me to stay in place, like one of your obedient friends, and we both know you wouldn't have cared one way or the other if Draco hadn't asked you to. You as much as told me I was evil."

The last word is a mockery. Blaise's eyes are dark and cold, all the color in them drowned out with black. His lips have thinned to narrow, cruel curves.

"You never ask why. It doesn't touch you. You don't care why I left, you only care that it wasn't what you happened to want. And you are terrifyingly good at getting your way, Potter. You just push until people fold." Blaise pushes off the wall, balancing on his feet, and lets his hands drop to his sides. "Of course you want to fight me. You want to fight the whole fucking world until it becomes exactly what you want it to be. You're just used to anyone that fights back being easily branded as evil. That's not noble, Potter, it's fanatic."

Ginny winces slightly, at the tone of Blaise's voice more than the words, which she has heard before albeit more softly spoken, and gives Draco a sidelong glance. She isn't sure what she expects to see. He is hard to read in a frustrating, uncertain kind of way, and rarely seems to say what he means. Right now, though, the weariness in the lines of his body seems genuine, and something she can wholeheartedly empathise with. She sighs, and follows the line of his gaze.

"My wager is on Blaise," she murmurs, reluctantly, but not without perhaps a touch of vindictiveness. "I think he's better at that sort of thing. Harry would try not to hurt him. Well. Too much.”

The curve of Draco's lips goes rueful, and he says nothing. She's right, after all.

Potter stays exactly where he is, back braced against the wall, holding his ground. Or perhaps-- not wanting to escalate it further, in spite of every sign to the contrary, the way the fingers of his right hand keep insistently twitching, as though already approximating the weight of a weapon in his hand. As though the ensuing fight is a foregone conclusion, but he's holding out some foolish hope to the contrary, cleaving to it by sheer, stubborn force of will. He stays quiet for longer than Draco expects, eyes locked on Blaise, barely blinking.

"I don't want to fight you," Potter repeats at length, voice even, and harder this time.

It jars something in Draco; this gilded calm isn't something inborn, it's something Potter has learned, and not very well yet. He wonders if their audience, he and Weasley, has something to do with it, wonders if this wouldn't have devolved into fisticuffs already were it not for the two of them, watching. The thought sours in his stomach, and Draco's mouth twists unhappily.

"You know what we're up against, we don't have time to-- I don't have time,” Potter says. “Not for this. You don't have to bloody like me, I don't care."

Potter isn't going to walk away. That fact alone undermines his words, somewhat, for all that he thinks he believes them. Blaise, Draco strongly suspects, isn't going to walk away either. For a moment, he wants to hit them both, badly.

"You're allowed to disagree. The Order will hear you," Potter continues, and Draco has to stifle a soft snort at that, eyes widening a little with bitter amusement, because, damn him, Potter actually does believe that one. He slides his gaze back across the narrow landing, regards their would-be savior thoughtfully. Potter's using a tone Draco keeps hearing more and more these days, a parody of restraint with steel behind it. The line of his jaw is twitching, hard. "But if you do that in the middle of an assignment again, you'll be answering to more than just me."

It's entirely the wrong thing to say. Draco looks down, hair falling softly into his face, curling his bare toes against the step.

Blaise curls his fingers sharply, nails digging into his palms. It's a bad idea. His palms sting with pain and silent magic, eager to be used. With an inward, brutal effort, he stays still.

"I do not answer to you. I don't answer to anyone here. Do you understand? I am not a part of this."

His hands are shaking. The right one is sticky with blood that's dripping onto the floor, drop by slow drop. He clenches it harder, feels it run down the inside of his wrist, warm against cold skin, kicking at his magic unsteadily.

"Everyone here knows I am not one of you. Who in the order will hear me if I speak out against you?" Blaise's voice has quieted again, to something soft and cold, taut with the strain of how he is keeping himself from moving. "Tell me. Who will listen? Is this the same Order that unhesitatingly agreed to question me under Veritaserum three consecutive times? Just to be certain I wasn't hiding Voldemort under my cloak. Are you aware that using it on anyone is categorically considered torture? Do you know how it feels? I noticed you didn't bother to stay past the first five minutes. I suppose you didn't have time for it."

He had been sick and shaking for hours and hours after, his body trying to rid itself of the insidious poison and the secrets and memories dragged up under its influence. The third time, he'd thought Lupin would object. He hadn't, so Blaise had made of point of watching him as he was questioned, and hadn't made any effort that time to suppress the way his hands were trembling as the potion took effect. They haven't suggested doing it again since he was wounded, but he is under no illusions. Everyone here, with the exception of Draco and Ginny, regard him with the careful wariness one affords a risk being taken.

And Potter -- try as he might not to, Potter looks at him like an enemy.



II.i.

When Draco opens the door to his room, it’s to pitch blackness. He blinks, unable to see a damn thing in front of him, and stands for a moment in the paltry rectangle of light thrown by one of the lit sconces in the hallway. Immediately, he knows two things: that Blaise is somewhere within these four walls, and that there isn’t a chance in hell he’s sleeping.

“Are you sitting alone in the dark?” he demands, equal parts exhaustion and exasperation making it come out harsher than he intends.

Blaise doesn’t know how much time has passed; has lost count, deliberately, of how many minutes - hours - it’s been since he slammed the door behind him, catching himself in the claustrophobically narrow little room in this broken house that is the only home he seems to have left.

Not long enough for exhaustion to overtake the heat in his blood, or even for the long gash along his forearm to start hurting in earnest, though he knows it will soon enough. Long enough for his heartbeat to start to settle, sitting still as he is on the one bed in the room, back pressed against the wall hard enough to feel the rough edges of wood against his spine, hard and unyielding. Long enough to feel the ache in his chest, hidden right beneath the anger, like the spell that nearly cut his throat earlier that night.

Long enough for Draco to have been here before now.

The room is wrecked, heavy wooden table and chair, the two lamps and even most of the old, blurry panes in the window having all fallen victim to his fury. Glass shards and splintered wood showered across the floor. If Draco can’t see it yet, he will in a moment.

“I’m here,” Blaise says, voice low and rough around the edges, only just loud enough for Draco hear. He has his eyes closed, head leaned back against the wall. The other boy’s footsteps on the stairs have given him sufficient warning that he could have perhaps salvaged some of the wreckage. Instead he has kept still in the darkness, listening to each step, uncertain right until the sound of the door whether Draco would enter, or find some other place in this cursed house to wait for daylight.

The line of Draco’s mouth thins as his eyes adjust to the darkness, taking in the state of the room, a thing broken to pieces. Aside from that, there is no other hint of expression on his face, a pale smoothness like marble, though thin in places, a faint, fragile flickering like light beneath the surface.

“I see that,” Draco says, inflectionless, gaze sliding over glittering glass to settle on Blaise’s outline, limned in the pale golden glow coming in through the doorway. He folds his arms over his chest and settles there, shoulder braced against the wooden door, silent for a long moment. It is altogether better, he supposes, for the room to have borne the brunt of Blaise’s anger rather than the true object of his ire. Draco can still feel the weight of Potter against his chest, though it’s fading, sense memory he’d quite like to be rid of.

The path to the bed is littered with sharp edges. Draco looks down at his bare feet and frowns, refusing to clean up the mess himself.

His voice comes out a little sharp. “You could at least clear a path.”

Blaise doesn’t open his eyes. He doesn’t need to; can hear from the tone of Draco’s voice exactly what his expression looks like; smooth and cool, the finely shaped mouth thin, the lines hardened. Looking like his father. Some dark remnant of anger somewhere in his chest wants him to say that out loud, and he curbs the impulse sharply, tightening his hands around each other enough to make the knuckles go white, and blood trickle sluggishly from the cut on his arm.

“Sorry,” he says instead, the word clumsy and strangely shaped in his mouth, like something in a foreign tongue.

Still with his eyes closed, he pushes at the mess of sharp edges and broken things on the floor, and the debris moves with a sound like waves across small stones, coming up in miniature slopes against the walls. He should vanish it, but there is something strangely tranquil about the visible wreckage. An acknowledgement he doesn’t look at too closely.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

Draco’s gaze doesn’t flicker away from Blaise for a moment. He takes several steps forward, blindly trusting that the floor beneath his feet has been cleared of anything that could hurt or draw blood, cursory as Blaise’s efforts may have seemed.

“This is my room,” he points out, arms still crossed, frown deepening at Blaise’s closed eyelids, the oddly serene set of his mouth. Annoyance makes Draco’s fingers twitch against his forearms, curling into the drawling edges of his voice. “I see you’ve beaten it to a pulp, well done. Take off your shirt.”

He waves a hand at the door to close it, plunging them back into a forgiving cloak of darkness, the soft sounds of their breathing. Draco gracefully lowers himself to sit on the edge of the bed, unseen, several handspans away, tilting his head at some subtle change in the rate and depth of Blaise’s breaths. He hadn’t been stupid enough to venture downstairs without a wand, firmly anticipating having to stun one or both of them. He reaches for it now, meaning to conjure a light source, and hesitates.

“Take off your shirt, Blaise,” he repeats, softly. He says nothing else, eyes blinking against the dark, and he thinks, or perhaps he only imagines, that he sees the glint of Blaise’s eyes opening.

Draco does it on purpose. Blaise is certain of it, and part of him chafes hard against that, fighting the immediate, visceral response to the way his name sounds on Draco’s lips, the answering leap in his pulse at the simple fact of the other boy’s nearness. He seems to have opened his eyes after all. The darkness is an unexpected velvet curtain around them, only offset by a dim lightness coming from the window, a distant streetlight whispering faintly across the cracked ceiling. Draco is barely a shadow, an almost imagined outline of pale hair and slender lines, everything else hidden. He might be a dream, conjured out of memory and desire; Blaise doesn’t need light to know the precise shape and angles of him. He bites down on a memory; lying in his own bed in the pitch black dorm and listening to Draco’s breaths from the other bed, the shallow tension there, seeing the other boy’s hair tangled across the pillow, the sharp lines of strain in his face as vividly as if he was touching them.

He moves, slowly, his body protesting the sudden rush of sensation after having been kept tautly in place for too long. He undoes the buttons slowly, fingers finding them one by one, and finally shrugs out of the ruined shirt, the muscles along his left side pulling painfully, still sore from the weeks-old hurt there. The feeling catches at his thought with memory like claws, and his heartbeat stutters uncertainly.

The broken windows have left the air in the room cool with nighttime chill, and he shivers when it touches his bare skin, very aware of Draco, silent and motionless and almost near enough to touch with a casual brush of his hand. The shirt’s fabric clings briefly to the dried blood on his arm, and he pulls at it, almost grateful for the simplicity of the pain when it tears free.

“I’m fine,” he murmurs, his voice coming out a little rougher and softer than he intended. It’s harder to stay angry with the darkness wrapped gently around them both, but the quiet in his chest leaves too much room for the mute, miserable ache lodged there. His next breath comes out a little unsteady.

“You’re tired. Go to sleep, Draco.”

Draco smiles a little, the curve of his mouth small and strained and not entirely humorless, lingering for a moment and gone.

“This is my bed,” he says, voice remote and flattening, without a hint of that smile to soften it. But when he reaches out it’s almost careful, fingers closing around Blaise’s wrist, the strong, beating pulse there, vitality and heat. He pulls on Blaise’s arm, less insistence and more persuasion, eyebrows drawn gently as though waiting for the inevitable resistance. There is none. Draco’s brows draw down more sharply at that, only for an instant, eyes flickering from Blaise’s upturned palm to the bow of his lips, the steady, watchful window of his gaze, lids just slightly lowered in defense.

The gash on Blaise’s arm is still trickling blood. He is waiting to see what Draco will do. Draco imagines, with a sharp, unpleasant twist beneath his ribs, that Blaise supposes there is a likely reality in which Draco takes the offered exit without further argument, leaves this room, the bed, leaves Blaise bleeding there against it without so much as a backwards glance. Even now. Perhaps especially now.

“I am tired,” Draco admits, and touches his fingers to the wound, a barely there pressure. “Do you know I’ve lost count of the number of times you’ve said ‘I’m fine’ while actively bleeding on me?” He looks up, lips drawing down. “I find that tiresome. I found that display downstairs positively exhausting,” he adds, a little archly, and then, sharp and preempting, “Don’t. I don’t want to talk about that now.”

He presses down lightly, stemming the sluggish flow of blood with only his fingertips.

Draco holds Blaise’s gaze. “Potter told me how this happened.”

Blaise can’t help it. The muscles in his arm tense under Draco’s fingers at the mention of Potter, and his gaze sharpens. He makes a small, commanding gesture with his other hand, and light blossoms in the one surviving lamp, throwing a warm glow and deep shadows across Draco’s face and the guarded, intent expression lingering there. It’s a familiar one. He’s seen it often enough when Potter is mentioned, or is in the room. If he dwells on it, Blaise thinks he could probably decipher it; Draco’s expressions are rarely what they seem at first glance, and it is the small details that give it away. Tension in the lines around his lips, a hint of something in his gaze that shifts too quickly to be certain of. The pulse in his throat. Potter told me.

It is fucking intolerable.

“Did he.” Blaise’s arm is still resting in Draco’s grasp, which is much too light to keep it there if he moves even a little. His expression twists, the delicately slanted eyes narrowing and he briefly and strikingly resembles his mother.

“And what was that? I’m a terrible soldier, I should be reprimanded, i should be interrogated, I should be locked in the dungeon pending further investigations into my traitorous activities? Potter seems to have willfully missed the fact that I am not here to fight for him.”

The last word is shaded with icy contempt. Blaise draws in a sharp breath and deliberately turns his gaze away, silencing the other words burning in his throat. The back of his hand rests against Draco’s thigh, shaking slightly.

A muscle in Draco’s jaw clenches very slightly, a slant to his expression that looks almost like rebuke before it softens into understanding, and then vanishes altogether, leaving behind a smooth, unyielding plane. He looks down at the blood staining his fingers, bright and gleaming in the low light. He sighs almost inaudibly, and raises his wand, frowning against some faint strain of corruption the waylaid spell left behind. It feels a bit like oil in water, other and strange, unruly. Draco sets his own magic against it, fighting the urge to recoil, the feeling crawling up his spine as he begins to siphon away the dregs of dark magic preventing the wound from healing.

"No, actually.” Draco’s tone isn’t as neutral as he wants it to be, clipped almost to the point of abruptness. “He said you fought well. And that he owes part of his intactness to you.” He lays a hand over Blaise’s palm to still the infinitesimal tremor, bleeding away the corruption like a slow, reluctant poison. His frown deepens, cloud cover darkening his expression. “You’re being stupid. Hold still.”

Draco’s grip tightens, eyes flashing. Blaise’s features tighten in challenge, stark and beautiful, but his arm remains motionless in Draco’s grasp, and Draco feels a breathless thrill at that, in the back of his throat.

“Think, for a moment. What good does it do you to make Potter your enemy? We’ve little enough room to stand here as it is.”

It’s a cynical thought, exacting and cruel. It feels wrong to think of Potter’s regard as an asset or liability and nothing else, but part of Draco does think it, though he has never before said it out loud. He can say it here. He can say it nowhere else.

Draco’s touch and the subtle, clever magic in it feels like the warmth of early spring sunlight against Blaise’s skin. He had been too preoccupied before to pay much heed to the remnants of the malevolent spell clinging to the wound, but now that it is drained away, relief shudders through him like a tremor under the skin. Paradoxically, the pain sharpens, his own body and magic now at liberty to call attention to the damage there. Draco’s expression shifts minutely, and for a few breaths there is quiet, Blaise’s attention caught and held by the bloodstained fingers against his skin and the delicately woven magic slowly mending the wound. Draco’s magic is elusive and complicated; Blaise can feel his own settle against it, and heat thrills up his arm, warming cold skin and muscles, catching at his breath.

He meets Draco’s eyes, but the other boy’s gaze is nearly opaque, his features carefully composed. There is a slight, unhappy draw to his mouth, though, that makes Blaise ache to reach out and brush his fingers over it, make some attempt to smooth out the tension and the quiet discomfort there. It’s tempting, to give in to the unspoken gentleness of the other’s boy’s touch. To lean into the partial truth Draco has offered him and pretend it is the whole story.

Blaise doesn’t know how to do that.

“That isn’t true, and you damn well know it. I have little room to stand on. I have you, and that’s all.” He pushes past an uncertain roughness in his voice, his shoulders set aggressively taut. His fingers curl up and twine tightly with Draco’s, the gesture precariously suspended between prayer and possession, a feeling like a stone lodged in his chest, stealing his breath.

“But you - there is nothing you could do short of handing the Dark Lord the key to the front door that would rattle Potter. Do you think I don’t see him watching you? Do you think I don’t see you watching him, and pretending not to? And don’t say you’re playing him, don’t. Don’t lie.”

Draco’s eyes narrow sharply. “I wasn’t going to. I only meant-”

A muscle in his jaw moves, and he looks away, blowing out a tight, frustrated breath, mindful of the half-finished healing spell, its progress arrested for the handful of seconds it takes him to gather himself. It’s strange to be called on something he had to defend not an hour ago. The difference gives him a faint sense of whiplash and, at the same time, soothes some small, shivering part of him that struggles to make itself known in ways he can understand.

He shakes his head, a small, contained movement. Resumes the spell, edges of flesh knitting themselves together at its quiet insistence. Draco’s gaze keeps pulling down to the sight of Blaise’s fingers interlocked with his, not tentative but strong, extinguishing the weak tremor from before. What Blaise says is partly true. Potter trusts Draco, or thinks he does. He trusts his feelings more than anything else, which has so far worked in Draco’s favor, and will likely be the first thing to work against it, if it comes to that.

Draco finishes the spell. Wordlessly, he lays his wand aside, on top of the threadbare coverlet, hand steady. Blaise’s grip on his other hand is unrelenting. Draco thinks, for a moment, that he feels it tighten, fine bones grinding, as though, task completed, Blaise expects Draco to pull away from him.

Again, the sense of whiplash, something leaden turning over heavily in the pit of Draco’s stomach, drawing the corners of his mouth farther down.

Draco swallows, and squeezes back, not gently.

I stand where you do, he thinks but doesn’t say, throat dry. He doesn’t imagine there is anything he can say that will keep Blaise from throwing himself against the invisible bonds of their current precarious arrangement, strategy and common sense be damned. So much for survival instinct. Draco can only plant his feet here, refuse to budge, and hope it’s enough of a tether to hold them both.

Draco looks up. Something in his gaze has hardened. “You promised.”

The quiet words take Blaise’s breath away for a moment. Draco’s tone isn’t particularly kind and there is more than a hint of challenge or rebuke in the firm set of his lips. As if he genuinely isn’t certain Blaise remembers, or thinks it is a promise he might seek to break.

The unfairness of it stings his throat.

Blaise says, "I haven’t forgotten.”