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Seeing Draco in a Oscar-nominated movie had been one of the weirdest things Harry had ever experienced. But at least there, his character had been a quick witted, broody type that didn’t stand out so much in comparison the kid Harry had known back in college. But then him and Teddy stumbles on an interview with Draco on the telly one night and suddenly there’s a diffrent person on the screen than Harry had excpected. The man Draco Malfoy has become is a polite, relaxed, openly gay man and Harry knows that this isn’t Draco acting for the cameras, because he’s seen Draco do this sort of act and it doesn’t even compete to the this. The real thing.
And then he says the thing. Puts the words “my”, “roommate” and “college” together and Harry’s heart almost stops. Because that’s him. That’s Harry Draco is sitting on national television and talking about, about a thing Harry had spitted towards Draco in a dark hallway the last night that they’d ever talked to each other. Years of anger and greif washes over him in a heart beat, things he thought he’d gotten over, past and left behind, suddenly choked up in his throat. All of a sudden he rememer that night so clearly, the way they hadn’t kissed and the hostile tone of Draco’s voice when he’d announced that he wasn’t gay. It’d taken them all of two seconds to go from practically best friends to spending their last year avoiding each other and spewing unpleasentries at each other whenever they had to face one another.
Harry doesn’t know what do to with himself. He watches the rest of the interview, Teddy munching on popcorn beside him but Harry can’t make himself eat anymore and he doesn’t even think he can think straight anymore. Not that he was ever straight to begin with.
It’d taken Harry at least a couple of years to understand where the deeply rooted homophobia Draco presented had come from. But seeing Lucius Malfoy talk to interviewers and talk show hosts, he’d put two and two together. Draco’s father hadn’t exactly been open with it, but if you read between the lines, there was a clear message to be seen. Men marries women and that’s that. It served only as an catalyst to Harry’s beliefs that this thing with Draco sexuality was revealed now, because it had escaped no one that Lucius Malfoy had passed away a few months ago.
He’s sure he wasn’t meant to have heard it. Seen it. Known about it. Draco wouldn’t throw him a bone like that, because Draco probably thinks that Harry still hates him. Draco doesn’t know that Harry never did.
Teddy doesn’t throw a fit when Harry asks him to go to bed, for which Harry is immensely grateful. Harry sits on his own bed for an hour then, staring into space for the first thirty minutes and then he stares at his phone for the following. The name is still in the contacts. He taps it up and then stares at that for a quarter. He hasn’t been sitting like this for years, but he did a lot when Draco started going into acting. When he wanted to call and tell him that he was proud Draco was pursuing his dream and that they should meet up and talk and he’d never once dialed.
He doesn’t know where in the world Draco is, if he’s twelve hours ahead or two hours away; he doesn’t know if this is still Draco’s number or if he’s had seventeen in between this and his new one. But he takes the chance. It’s worth the risk. It doesn’t matter if he gets the “the number you have dialed cannot be reached at this moment”-speach because it will only mean that he tried. That he, for once—
“…Potter?” Harry starts crying without realising it. Too many emotions runs through his head and his fingers are shaking and doesn’t say anything for a while. Get yourself together, Harry. He takes a deep breath and the words finds his tongue before he can start overanalyzing.
“Never thought I’d hear you say that again, Malfoy.”