Part Four of 'Company Manners'

[lomonaaeren]

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The Snitch streaked past Draco’s head as he stared into the distance, his mind brooding over Potter and what he should do in relation to him. He heard Blaise swearing, infuriated, in the moment before he pulled up next to Draco and yelled into his face.

“You were supposed to catch the Snitch! Why did you say you wanted to play Quidditch if you’re only going to stare and smirk at nothing?”

Draco turned his head to the side, blinking away the single drop of sweat that fell into his eyes, and smiled slightly at Blaise, who was clinging to his broom with a grip that whitened his hands and whose hair was flat with sweat. “I didn’t say I wanted to play Quidditch. You told me that we were going to play it because you ‘can’t put up with my sighing and staring and internal disappointment one second longer.’”

“Yes, but you didn’t disagree with me,” Blaise growled. “I expect you to pull your weight if you get into the air.”

Draco widened his eyes and looked around the Zabinis’ private Quidditch pitch with an air of surprise. “Pull my weight against who? The invisible Quidditch team you’ve invented?” He ducked suddenly to the side, shoving Blaise at the same time. Blaise fell for five feet, cursing again, before he managed to get control of his broom.

Draco looked solemnly down at him. “There was an invisible Bludger,” he explained. “It almost hit you in the head.”

“I give up,” Blaise said, speaking the words so harshly that Draco found it hard to recognize them, and then turned and dived for the ground. Draco followed him, grinning. Perhaps it was unfair to Blaise and his apparent desire to be a Quidditch star just shy of thirty, but the flight had cleared some of the cobwebs out of Draco’s head.

“So tell me, then,” Blaise said as he flung his broom to the ground and snapped his fingers for the house-elves to appear with glasses of water. “Have you actually decided anything? Or does your special, fragile little mind need some more time still to get over the wounds Breaker inflicted?”

Draco flicked him a rude gesture as he picked up a glass of water and sipped at it, but he didn’t really mean it, and Blaise could tell that. He stood a bit straighter, his eyes kindling with reluctant interest. “So tell me, what did you decide?”

“So interested in my sex life,” Draco teased him, fluttering his eyelashes at Blaise, who looked, briefly, as if he wanted to commit murder. “Anyone would think that you cared about me.”

“Any more of that, and Astoria can cope with blood on her floors,” Blaise said, returning the rude gesture. “I’m simply trying to determine how much effort we need to put into shepherding you away from disaster.”

“I’ve decided that I need to act like more of an adult with Potter.” Draco raised his shoulder in a shrug when Blaise looked at him in disbelief. “I know, that will be difficult. But either way has advantages. If I can actually apologize sincerely enough and not sound like an idiot when I talk to him, I might win him. If he still rejects me, it’ll be good for me, because it might teach me not to need someone quite so badly.”

Blaise sat back in the chair that one of the house-elves had dragged outside and surveyed Draco critically. “I have worried about that, you know.”

“My intense need for someone? Yes.” Draco swallowed more water, then snapped his fingers. “I want orange-flavored water,” he told the house-elf who appeared. She at once waggled her fingers over his glass, and Draco sighed in satisfaction when he raised it to his mouth again. “I think it started with Paul. He convinced me that love could be sudden, powerful, even overwhelming. It took me five years to realize that he hadn’t really taught me that, no matter how much it seemed he had at the time. And then I came back here and immediately tried to fasten myself to Potter.”

“Surely you aren’t going to tell me you love him.” Blaise’s voice had that extreme blandness it got whenever he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

Draco gave him a lazy smile. “No. Only that he has some traits that make me think I could. And I discovered something about him last night, when I followed him intending to inflict revenge, that only makes me think so more.” I discovered that he wasn’t perfect. I discovered that he might need me for something as much as I need him, and that I might be better at something than he is: accepting the limits of pure-blood life, enjoying them, without resenting them.

“Well?” Blaise rapped his fingers on his knee, and Draco realized that he was waiting for some kind of admission.

“It’s a secret between me and him,” said Draco. “And I want to court him more than I want to satisfy your curiosity. Sorry.”

Blaise snorted. “Court. He has traits that you could love. Explain to me how this is supposed to get you over your need of someone?”

“Because it’s possible that he’ll reject me in spite of all the tricks I can bring to bear,” Draco said. “And if that happens, then I’ll be able to accept it. It won’t be an irreparable dent to my pride, because I’ll know that he evaded me the same way he would evade any other pure-blood.”

He winced at the last words, fearing he had said too much, but Blaise only looked thoughtful. “It’s true that he prefers to date Weasleys and the like,” he said. “Yes, I can see what you mean. It’s a rejection, but a gentler rejection than you got from someone like Breaker, who seems as though anyone can please him.”

“Or rather,” Draco said, which was as close he would come to telling Blaise the truth, “who implied that anyone could please him, while degrading me for failing.”

Blaise looked up and met his eyes. Draco looked steadily back, relying on Blaise’s friendship with him and the knowledge and experiences they had shared to fill in the blanks of the words he would never speak.

Blaise nodded at last and turned back to his own water. Draco tilted his head to study the sky. It had been clear when he and Blaise played Quidditch, but now the clouds were crowding in, and he could hear a few distant, loud vibrations that spoke of thunder.

A stray thought of genius struck him, and he felt his lips curve into a genuine smile.

I wonder if Potter has ever been to a Rain Celebration?

*

Harry stared at the owl that had arrived for a long time. The bird was of a kind he hadn’t seen before, small and silvery and perfect, its feathers tipped with white and its eyes a startling yellow that reminded him for a moment of Hedwig’s. The paper was a thick, creamy parchment that resisted folding, to the point where Harry wondered how Malfoy had got it into the envelope. The seal was a white peacock on a dark background with the letters of the last name Malfoy worked into the widespread tail.

The letter itself invited him to participate in a Rain Celebration, adding a short description: it involved a dance in the rain and a ritual count of the number of times lightning struck the ground in a certain place.

Harry had never heard of it, and he’d heard of most pure-blood rituals and dances and kinds of parties by now, so his first reaction was that Malfoy was making it up. But when he investigated the thick books that he’d acquired during his training and which he still kept piled in one of the back rooms, they described the Rain Celebration in about as much detail as Malfoy had given him. The authors hadn’t thought much of the thing, Harry decided, weighing the books in his hands. Probably because it didn’t involve as much posh clothing and attempts to sneer at other people.

Harry snorted and put the books down on the pile of others. Surely he wasn’t thinking of going? This was supposed to be a day when he could relax, since no important parties were scheduled (well, one, but Kingsley had told him to cut that one as a means of insulting and infuriating the hosts, who badly needed those emotions). And Malfoy hadn’t given him enough notice to find appropriate clothing.

Then Harry paused, and chuckled in spite of his lack of amusement at Malfoy’s brashness. There was one set of robes that he’d been looking for an excuse to get rid of. They were a bright, flashy silver, and had blue accents in all the wrong places. Harry had bought them on the advice of one of his instructors in pure-blood matters and had regretted it ever since.

I won’t mind if those get wet. And Malfoy said nothing about certain colors or fabrics or types of robes.

Grinning, Harry wrote an acceptance for the owl to deliver and then went to find the robes. He did wonder, briefly, as he dug through his closet, why he was doing this when Malfoy had been so rude to him last night and had followed him home in the first place, probably for some nefarious purpose.

Because I’m curious, he admitted to himself. Either he’ll make mistakes in an amusing way, because he still won’t have learned, or he’ll do something unexpected and gracious. It would help me make up my own mind, too, so that I know whether to feel sorry for him.

*

Potter looked—not exactly hideous in his blue-and-silver robes, but close. Luckily, Draco knew that he’d worn them because he would be getting them wet, and not because he wanted to show contempt for Draco by wearing clothes that would make Draco look ridiculous by association.

At least, he hoped so.

“Potter!” he called, and lifted a languid hand as Potter Apparated in and stood looking around. He sat on a white chair under a pavilion roof in a corner of an open field that Blaise and Astoria owned but had never yet used for anything. A second chair was beside him, and plenty of room had been left in the middle of the field for the dance. No one else was about, and Draco knew that was what made Potter look around suspiciously as he glided towards the pavilion.

At least, he hoped so.

“All right, Malfoy,” Potter said, with narrowed eyes and a smile that barely hid his anger, “what is this? You claim that you want me to attend a Rain Celebration, but this doesn’t look like one to me.”

Draco tilted his head back and studied the cloudy sky. A drop of rain fell as he watched, and another rumble of thunder sounded. “Did you know that people rarely look up?” he remarked to no one in particular. “Even when they have reason to.”

“I don’t count raindrops as people,” Potter said, leaning a shoulder against one of the slender white posts that supported the pavilion. “And to create celebrations, one usually needs people.” He paused, then added with delicate sarcasm, “Unless you’ve expanded your definitions admirably and are going to count the house-elves who obviously set this up as people.”

Draco took a risk and let the flash of temper show on his face. Potter raised his eyebrows, knowing enough to class that as unusual. Then he looked over his shoulder. Draco approved and felt insulted at the same time. Of course it was reasonable for Potter to suspect that this was a trap of some kind, or at least that cameras had been set up to record his reactions.

I don’t know exactly how I want him to act, Draco admitted to himself, as he stood from his chair and walked towards Potter. Like a pure-blood, because that’s the way I saw him acting and was first attracted to him, but also differently, because that would show he regards me as an individual and not part of the false world to be fooled.

At least my reactions should tell me a little more about what, or who, I want.

“A Rain Celebration is different from most other pure-blood parties,” Draco murmured when he stood a few feet from Potter. “It doesn’t need many people, because it doesn’t require conversation. Two dance partners, and two sets of eyes to count the flashes of lightning.” A flash broke overhead on cue, and Draco smiled. “Unless you object to being alone with me, of course.”

Potter raised his eyebrows. “Why would I? It seems that you only cause me inappropriate erections in front of an audience.”

Draco winced at the double statement implicit in that—that Potter would never get an erection when alone with him—but prepared to face up to the hardest part of what he had to do. He met Potter’s eyes and held them until Potter blinked. Draco wanted him to know how seriously Draco himself was taking this.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“What.” Potter made it into a statement rather than a question, and his voice was full of the flatness of disbelief rather than of rejection.

“I’m sorry,” Draco repeated. “Trying to take revenge that way was—stupid of me.” Potter continued staring at him, and Draco realized that he would have to speak more of his secret thoughts.

Either way, it’s good, he told himself firmly. It might play its part in winning Potter, and if not, it’ll teach me to stop flinching and being hurt all the time. I think that’s the worst thing Paul did to me; he made me too quick to react to injuries, even to overreact to them, and unable to simply adopt a posture of cool arrogance in response to them. He hurt me without my acknowledging it for a long time, and I should have responded earlier, but that doesn’t mean everyone is doing the same thing.

“I want you,” Draco said quietly. “You’re as nearly the opposite of Paul Breaker as you can be without deliberately setting out to be so. And when you rejected me, it felt like a rejection of me, not of the pure-blood deceptions and games, the way you explained it last night. So I thought I needed to get even.”

“You chose a childish way to do that.” Potter stood taller and tossed his head back, which gave him the impression of looking down his nose at Draco. It was one way to achieve that attitude, Draco thought, which surely couldn’t be natural for Potter.

Draco took a deep breath. “I know, and I’ll ask you to accept my apologies for that as well. I’m more ashamed on my behalf than you could ever be,” he added wryly. Lying awake last night, it had come home to him with unexpected clarity how stupid his revenge was. If he couldn’t refrain, he should at least have chosen something more impressive, so that Potter would feel some pain instead of simply humiliated. “But—the fact remains that I want you. So I’m asking you to give me a second chance. If you won’t, then tell me why, and I’ll see if I can give you what else you need. If not, we’ll part, and I won’t approach you again.” He watched Potter closely when he was done. He might easily see some subtle clue in the flickering of a brow or an eyelash, though it might not be a clue that Potter was aware of himself.

*

Harry felt as though someone had just unleashed a devastating flood on him, and the flood’s name was Malfoy. He stood there blinking, unable to respond, and felt the remains of his scorn cling and drip all over him like inconveniently wet clothing.

Not exactly the kind of rain I thought might destroy these robes, he thought, and stared unseeingly at the storm that had begun to fall on the field. His emotions cascaded back through him, flooding his head again, and with a different kind of material.

I never imagined Malfoy would apologize. It wasn’t something he had heard from any other pure-blood in the last five years. Sometimes one of them who had offended him would grovel to him and attempt to gain his favor back, but they seemed allergic to the straightforward words. I never imagined that he would tell me what he wanted and be so frank about it.

That honesty appealed to Harry more strongly than anything else Malfoy could possibly have done.

He had to wonder if Malfoy knew that, of course.

But when he looked back at the quiet face in front of him, straining to conceal emotions that he suspected were as diverse as his own, Harry had to shake his head. No. At some point he had to stop the suspicions and accept that his own ability to read faces and postures was as good as it should have become through his extensive training. If he suspected every gesture someone else made and distrusted his reading of it, then there was no reason to stop. He would indulge in a spiral of paranoia all the way down.

Malfoy had seen the shake of his head, and evidently mistaken it for a negative response. He drew himself up, and said, “I understand. Will you explain?”

Harry reacted to the injured pride visible in that swift motion, something he doubted Malfoy would have wanted him to see, and reached out to put a hand on his arm. “I’m not refusing you,” he said quietly. “I’m just stunned by the pace at which this has moved. Most of my—negotiations—with pure-bloods take more time than this.”

By the time he reached the end of that sentence, some of his barriers had risen again. Yes, Malfoy had done something interesting and unexpected. That didn’t mean Harry could associate with him safely or productively. That didn’t mean that he would want Malfoy in return.

Except…

Harry didn’t like to admit it, but Malfoy—always assuming his emotions and apology at the moment were genuine—was more attractive than anyone Harry had met in several years. His friends were his friends, and Harry couldn’t imagine dating any of them, not now that he’d moved on from Ginny and the few women (and one man) Hermione had tried to introduce him to had all been disasters. His training had influenced him enough that he would like to date someone with politeness and some sense of aesthetics and culture, he could admit that. But he didn’t want the scorn for people like his mother and the short-sighted love of manipulation that always seemed to go along with that.

If Malfoy could shed that, if he could look past blood politics and be witty and charming instead of coldly courteous…

If, if, if. There was no way to know that.

But if Harry was looking to spend time with Malfoy to decide if he should date him, he didn’t have to use the same strict calculations that ruled him when he was performing for the Ministry. He was allowed to use different standards. He was allowed to think about what mattered to him, and not to Kingsley’s purposes or the goal of preventing war. He didn’t have to decide that any end he couldn’t foresee was a waste of time.

“Really?” Malfoy asked, and though, again, Harry doubted he meant to do this, his face showed hope as openly as naked bone showed dirt.

Harry smiled in spite of himself, flattered by the hungry way that Malfoy looked at him, and a bit worried. “Yes,” he said. “But tell me this, Malfoy. Do you really want me at your side, or would a substitute do? Do you want someone to date, or anyone?”

*

Draco winced again. Potter’s training didn’t give him the power of persuading everyone at first glance, the way Blaise had made it sound, but it certainly gave him a way to probe into Draco’s tender places with a scalpel.

You invited him to when you told him that you were sorry for what you’d done.

Briefly, Draco wished he could take back the apology. But since it had Potter looking at him with something like an appreciative light in his eyes, he doubted that he would, after all. He had to forge ahead.

“I want you,” he said. “But I might also want anyone. That’s one of the reasons why I’m talking to you the way I am, because it might help me figure out for myself how deep my neediness runs.” He looked directly into Potter’s face and held the gaze for an uncomfortable amount of time. Potter started a little. Draco doubted that he had expected that from a pure-blood. “I don’t think that you’ll let me continue in neediness for very long, if you agree to be with me on a test basis. You’ll drive it out of me, because you won’t be able to stand it. If you ultimately walk away from me, then I’ll get over it in the hard way, by suffering through the consequences of having no companion.”

Potter regarded him thoughtfully. Draco added, “I don’t think it’s the way you’d prefer to conduct a relationship, is it? But it will make me stronger. And I think that I might be able to provide some of what you need, as well.”

Potter gave him a slow smile with a hint of something self-mocking to it. “I’m not the same person I was five years ago,” he said. “I would have rejected you without a pause, because it would have seemed too rational to me. Not passionate enough.”

“And now?” Draco asked, hardly able to breathe for anticipation.

“Now I’ve seen the harm passion can cause.” Potter’s face shuttered for a moment. Then he shook his head and added, “Or even excessive friendliness. It isn’t always necessary to be friends with someone you’re going to date first, though it’s preferable. Yes, Malfoy, let’s do this. I’m curious as to how it’s going to work out, personally.”

Draco extended his hand without hesitating. Potter’s amused tone rankled, and yet, just as he would have scorned Potter for believing his story without resistance, he had to admire the way Potter held himself aloof from immediate emotional entanglements. Potter clasped his hand and shook it back.

Draco turned his fingers so that they brushed over Potter’s wrist, remembering that he’d liked that gesture. Potter let his eyes flutter shut and took a deep breath, as though reminding himself of where they stood. Draco repeated the brush of fingers. Potter pulled his hand away a bit more harshly than was necessary. Draco concealed his smile and nodded to the field. “Shall we?”

“We’re still holding the Rain Celebration?” Potter stared back and forth from him to the field. “I thought that was only an excuse to get me here.”

“I would never abuse the Rain Celebration in that way,” Draco said in a shocked voice, and waited until Potter’s mouth tightened, doubtless with his thinking Draco was a too-proper pure-blood, before he added, “Plenty of other ceremonies, but not this one. It’s too fun. And the dance is simple. Circles, with joined hands. Shall we?” He held out his arm.

Looking as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or run away, Potter laid his hand on Draco’s elbow. Draco stepped out into the rain, shivering slightly as it pelted onto his hair and slid down the back of his neck; it was colder than he would have liked.

“What about the Impervious Charms?” Potter’s voice was uncertain, as if he thought that mentioning the charms might be verboten at a ceremony like this.

Draco turned to face him, and let a smile widen across his face. “What charms?” He dropped his arm, leaving Potter’s hand to swing in air for a moment before he recovered control, and then took both Potter’s hands. “Come on. The rain is meant to be enjoyed. We’ll start moving left first. Go right when I tap your wrists. Can you do that?”

Potter, who had been listening with an intent look on his face that Draco could picture him wearing when he learned other new things, gave him an offended glance. Draco winked at him and began to spin to the left, laughing as he tilted back his head and the rain soaked into his eyes and mouth.

He had to blink several times to get it out of his eyes, but it was worth the effort to watch Potter. Potter was moving opposite him, his steps perfectly correct but mechanical, and his expression uncertain. It appeared that he hadn’t had fun in years and wondered how proper it was to have it.

“Relax,” Draco whispered, and tapped Potter’s wrist so that they had to start in the opposite direction. They shuffled, their robes dragging at their ankles as they grew heavier with water, their feet crushing grass with a soft squeaking sound.

*

I would never have thought that pure-bloods could enjoy something like this.

Yet no matter how many times Harry blinked—he eventually pulled his glasses free altogether with a wandless spell and tucked them into a pocket of his robe—Malfoy didn’t vanish or turn into someone else as his Polyjuice wore off. He was laughing, not seeming to care that now and then he had to pause to spit out rain. He was spinning like a child, and ruining a pair of green robes that were fine if not handsome, and he didn’t care.

Harry felt his own resistance begin to melt in the face of such a contradiction. The next time Malfoy shook his head so that his hair would flop out of his eyes and smiled at Harry, Harry smiled back.

Malfoy stopped their spinning just before Harry would have had to stop it himself—he was getting dizzy—and then took just one of his hands. “Now we proceed straight across the field, and dance back and forth at the same time,” he said.

Harry raised his eyebrows. “That’s not a dance, it’s a drunken stagger.”

Malfoy laughed at him. “Now you understand why Rain Celebrations are more uncommon than they used to be,” he said. “There are some people so uptight that they can’t stand the thought of looking less than dignified. Of course, they often do anyway, but they can tell themselves that it’s for some grand purpose in that case. Harder to do that when they know it’s simply to celebrate the rain.”

I’m not one of those pure-bloods, Malfoy’s smile said, and when he stepped forwards, wavering as though he walked an invisible line, his relaxed body confirmed it. Join me?

And Harry threw caution to the winds for almost the first time in front of a pure-blood since he’d become Kingsley’s gossip-hound, and did so.

They waded and stalked and staggered across the grass, their robes puddling around them now, their faces half-frozen with the assault of the cold rain. Malfoy kept laughing. Harry found himself joining in without intending to. He thought of what other people would say, including his friends, if they could see him behaving so madly, and he rejected it. It was more fun to feel the tug on his hand from Malfoy’s weight, to counter it with his own, and to see if they would actually make it to the other side of the field before they fell over.

They didn’t. Malfoy tripped over his own robe hem and rolled on the ground with a little yelp. Harry followed, unwilling to break the tight grasp of his fingers on Malfoy’s wrist. They rolled together and mingled sleeves, arms, and legs.

Malfoy lay flat on the ground, not seeming to care about the giant dirt smear that would certainly give him on the back of his robes, and laughed aloud. Harry propped himself up on an elbow and grinned down at him. Their fingers were still intertwined.

That was when he realized for the first time that Malfoy was beautiful. Yes, his beauty had some of the elegance and sharp angles always associated with the other pure-bloods Harry had met, but there was a—a resilience that expressed itself in the freshness of the skin and the jut of the chin that Harry hadn’t seen before. He wondered absently if that was why Malfoy had got out of his entanglement with Breaker so ready to take on another one, in the form of a possible relationship with Harry.

“That was fun,” Malfoy said, when he finished laughing. He laid an arm across his forehead, somewhat shielding his eyes from the flow of water, and smiled up at Harry. “That’s the purpose of the Rain Celebration, you know. An excuse for fun.”

Because his hand was cramping and for no other reason, Harry pulled his fingers free from Malfoy’s. He sat up and finally cast an Impervious Charm so that his robes would stop dripping on his hands. “I’ve never heard of a pure-blood ceremony like that.”

“There are several of them,” Malfoy confessed, flipping himself up on his own elbows but still lying full-length in the wet grass, “but this one is the most openly laughter-inducing. I admit, of course, that a large part of the fun is in knowing that you can go home to a warm shower and a change of clothes afterwards.”

“Of course,” Harry said, quirking a smile again at the open, shining face Malfoy regarded him with. It had to have borrowed some of the shine of the rain, he thought. No one with the last name of Malfoy could look that bright naturally.

Malfoy paused thoughtfully. Then he added, “And it let you unite the two aspects of yourself that you regard as separate, you know.”

Harry stiffened. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said, though he had an excellent idea of what Malfoy meant.

“I meant that you were participating in a pure-blood ceremony,” Malfoy said, “and yet you acted less stiff and more open. And you were in front of me, a pure-blood, and yet you weren’t constantly checking for traps.”

“That’s because we were alone.” Harry stood up and moved a few steps away. Maybe this is a bad idea after all. “If we were in public, then I wouldn’t have acted like that.”

“I know,” Malfoy said gently, scrambling to his knees, “but I think that you don’t need to divide yourself quite so deeply. You can have the virtues of our society and get rid of the faults, if you want. You don’t need to make yourself dirty because that’s ‘real.’”

“My house isn’t dirty,” Harry snapped, folding his arms.

“I know,” said Malfoy, “but the way you spoke, you made it sound as if it should be, because you’re so against the pure-blood values that you shove all of them to the back of your mind the moment you leave our parties. And yet, your house is clean, and your speech remains well-mannered even when you’re speaking to someone who tried to humiliate you, and you’re perceptive whether or not you want to be.”

Harry turned his back. “I don’t need to listen to this,” he said flatly.

“Not even if you’re trying to date me?” Malfoy asked. “Not even if I’m complimenting you, instead of speaking an insult? I do find the ‘natural’ you the more attractive one, but that’s simply because I can understand your emotions better. I don’t think you need to live in dirt and be rude to be genuine.”

“I’m not rude—”

“No, and I think you should value politeness,” Malfoy said, standing up completely this time. “But arguing that you hate all pure-blood values and then staying polite, when you consider courtesy part of those pure-blood values, is a bit disingenuous, I think.”

Harry turned and Apparated from the field without speaking. Anger surged through him like the flood of emotions that Malfoy had first unleashed in him.

He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He wouldn’t like the real, genuine me, and probably, this dating experiment will end with the result that neither of us wants, because he simply can’t stand me.

*

Draco watched the spot where Potter had disappeared thoughtfully. It seemed strange that he could be so threatened by hearing positive statements about himself, and gentle accusations.

Then he remembered how much of himself he had had invested in the perception that he was a person Paul loved, that Paul was only testing the strength of his commitment and would come around eventually, and that the very stubbornness Paul showed “proved” that he cared more about Draco than a person who simply and straightforwardly loved someone else.

He has a lot of himself invested in the perception that he’s really an outsider to pure-blood society, not one of us.

I’ll have to show him that he can be both.

Part Five.