36

Harry groaned as the light hit his closed eyes, disagreeing firmly with his hangover. A soft breeze ruffled his hair into his face, sending shivers down his spine. Instinctively, he huddled back into the warm arms enveloping him, taking comfort in them as they shielded him from the cold.

"Are you awake?" a familiar voice murmured and Harry forced himself to swim further forward into consciousness to answer it.

"Mmhm," he managed, idly wondering where he knew the voice from.

"We should be getting back indoors, before we get pneumonia," the voice said and Harry frowned. Indoors? Why were they not indoors? He cracked one eye open and peered at his surroundings. There was white. A lot of white. And were those... trees?

"Why are we outside?" he asked groggily, turning around in the warm arms.

"Because that is where you fell asleep," Draco answered, quirking an amused eyebrow at the Gryffindor. Harry stared at him, his hung-over brain struggling to compute the information in front of him. But then it clicked.

"Fuck a donkey, you're Draco Malfoy!" he exclaimed, leaping to his feet. Snow crunched under his dragon skin boots and he shivered; out of Draco's arms it was a hell of a lot colder, especially as he only had on what he had been wearing the night before. Draco quirked an eyebrow, an amused smirk playing around his lips.

"After four years, you've finally learnt my name. Well done. Now, can we please go inside and get some breakfast before I freeze to death?" Harry frowned, still at a loss as to what was going on.

"Whoa, mate. Wait a minute," Harry held out his hand as Draco stood up, in an effort to stop the blonde from walking away, "You're not going anywhere. What the bloody fuck happened last night that I woke up in your arms in the middle of the grounds? Why are you being nice to me? Why didn't you just leave me out here to freeze? Oh, and while we're at it, I've been thinking and why the hell do you have half a ton of pictures of you and Blaise and Andromeda in the muggle world? And why have you been avoiding me? And why are you fucking smiling?" For Draco had begun to smile halfway through Harry's list of questions, and by the time the Gryffindor had finished it was a full blown grin. Draco couldn't help it though; he was reminded all too much of his own demands for answers that night at the owlery.

"One at a time, Potter, or I won't answer a thing," he smirked, wondering if Harry would remember their other conversation. It took a minute to sink in, during which time Harry frowned, annoyed, at Draco. But then a look of comprehension set in, and Harry sighed.

"Fine. Make fun of me. But give me some fucking answers, would you?" Draco nodded and began walking at a slow pace towards the castle without looking back, assuming correctly that Harry would fall into step beside him.

"Of course. I'll give you answers. But you have to know that you asked all the wrong questions just now," the look on Draco's face was smug and Harry tried his hardest not to allow it to rile him up. He failed, of course, but managed to keep his retaliation to a nasty scowl.

"My father beats me. He curses me and hexes me and occasionally locks me in my room for weeks on end with nothing to do but read the dark arts books he leaves me with," Draco began in a distant voice, the smug look falling off of his face. Harry may have slept the night through, but Draco hadn't. He had stayed awake, staring at the boy in his arms, casting warming charms and thinking. About Harry, his father, his Aunt Andy. About the Dark Lord and the dark arts and Harry. He had known this conversation was to come (although he considered more than once or twice the option of leaving before Harry awoke and avoiding it altogether) and he knew that if he didn't say all of this now, he would never say it at all. He was not a Gryffindor (thank Merlin) and would never pretend (even to himself) that he had the kind of courage they possessed.

"I started running to my Aunt Andy pretty early on. Lucius doesn't know it, but she and my mother stayed in touch occasionally, and she seemed to like me. I was young and scared and she was my only option. She didn't mind looking after me and soon started to take me and Blaise out, in the muggle world of course, so that we wouldn't be recognised. She gave us a childhood.

"Then I started Hogwarts and you wouldn't be my friend. You were my way out of it all. But that didn't work," Draco chuckled bitterly, "In fact, it's probably good that it didn't. Lucius would probably have killed me that first Christmas. Not that he won't now anyway."

"What do you mean? He's your father- he won't kill you," Harry said, confused. Families died for you, they didn't kill you. Okay, so they sometimes beat you and starved you and locked you in cupboards, but that wasn't proper families. Not like he had thought Draco's was.

"Yes, he would," Draco snapped, before abruptly changing the subject, "I told Lucius about Sirius in the holidays." Harry tensed up; it was a mark of how hung over he was that he couldn't be bothered to yell at Draco about it.

"I know," he said shortly instead.

"I thought it would make him happy with me for a while. It didn't." Harry nodded, trying to keep his inner Sirius restrained whilst allowing his inner Hermione free reign. He, Harry, would never have betrayed another to try and save his own skin. But Draco was different; he didn't have that courage, that strength of mind that Harry had always possessed in buckets, and Harry had to remember that. People were not perfect, and he had to stop thinking that they should be.

"For the record, I think it's kind of fucked up," Harry muttered, "But I get why you did it. What I still don't get is why I woke up in your arms."

"Oh. Yeah," Draco blinked in slight shock. He had almost forgotten about that, lost in thought (and fear) of his father. "You got completely wasted last night, and Fleur and Blaise thrust you upon me. I brought you outside for some air, to try and sober you up a bit and you fell asleep. I didn't have much of a choice."

"Well," Harry grinned, trying to lighten the mood up, "You had quite a lot of choices really. You could've thrown me in the lake. Or left me in the forest. But you chose to cuddle. I think that's a sign." Draco rolled his eyes, before turning and planting a kiss firmly on Harry's lips.

Harry's eyes went almost comically wide for a second before he was kissing back. It was messy, and it was desperate and it was anything but gentle but it was so perfectly them that neither boy really minded.

Draco didn't quite freeze to death outside that morning, but he never got his breakfast either.