Work Text:
Draco discovers his attraction to Harry Potter through gratuitous fanfiction.
It starts, as so many things in Draco's life do, with his mother.
Since he's returned from Hogwarts, all he's done is complain about Harry Potter this and Harry Potter that. It's all he's talked about for a month and a half, so she suggests he puts his feelings into real, physical words. He looks at her funny.
"Like... a story?" he asks skeptically.
His mother smiles, laughs a little through her nose, and tells him yes, if that's what he wishes.
He's sitting in the window seat in his room overlooking the extensive manor grounds on a sunny afternoon in July, scribbling in his journal about the way he wishes things had gone between him and Harry.
He rewrites their first interaction on the train, but this time, Harry takes his hand. This time, Harry smiles at him. This time, they laugh together at Weasley being an ignoramus and Neville’s forgetful clumsiness. This time, they’re friends.
He spends the whole summer writing in his journal, filling in the gaps in Harry Potter's reactions that would have smoothed the way to an easy and felicitous friendship between them instead of the rocky and sometimes difficult clash of opinions and experiences it's wont to do in real life.
He returns to Hogwarts greatly uplifted and ready to try again. It doesn't go well.
As things continue to go wrong for Draco in real life, he goes back and corrects them, writes the reality he wishes had happened and creates this story of a connection that’s deep and soulful. In his fiction, Harry knows him better than anyone, and vice versa.
It’s only in the gap between fourth and fifth year that his writing starts to reflect that the relationship he’s building in his head is phasing out of childish friendship and into a different kind of friendship, that the nature of what he fantasizes about is changing.
Maybe it’s during sixth year when Draco just doesn’t know what to do anymore with all the stresses of what’s happening in his outside world that he goes back and rereads the story he’s spent nearly half his life penning. Maybe it’s then that he recognizes how much homoerotic subtext there is in the last two years, more or less, of what he’s written.
And Draco… Draco feels lost, because this version of Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy are very disparate from their real life counterparts, can’t reconcile their differences, and will never be able to achieve what he (and he realizes this only now, when it’s too late to do anything about it) dreams to be true.
Draco stops writing. He contemplates destroying the handful of journals he’s filled, but can’t even bring himself to look at them now that he knows about this… shameful part of his personality. This is an irrevocable flaw in his character, something to be hidden.
He changes after that. Now he’s more bitter, with no way to escape from the pressure he’s constantly under. Draco is scared all the time. He’s scared for his mother, he’s scared of You Know Who, and Dumbledore. He’s scared for himself most of all, for his future. He’s scared that the Dark Lord will look into his eyes and see. Draco is afraid to look into his own reflection’s eyes because now that he knows it’s there, his secret is painfully obvious. This, he finds himself thinking, is no way to live, but he does live, fear and all, and he doesn’t die, and no one finds out. He comes to accept it.
He still can’t destroy the journals, though. He doesn’t look at them, never opens them, can hardly bring himself to think about them, but they’re always there, pressing down on him.
Then Harry disappears and the world is chaos, and Draco tries his best to go through it and keep his head above the water for fear of drowning. He’s more scared than ever, and it’s bittersweet when his mother pulls him aside and asks, “Who is she?”
Because, she says, he’s been obvious: there’s someone special–he’s in love. He’s been so blind, and Draco chokes, feels like the air is being squeezed out of his body, trembles almost violently.
He can’t say, and she smiles benevolently and Draco feels like retching. She thinks it’s because of You Know Who. She thinks he’s protecting whoever she thinks it is. Even though he accepts that this part of him exists, he really can’t accept it at all. He is in love with Harry Potter, but not Harry Potter. It’s killing him. They don’t talk of it again, and Draco feels guilt, guilt, guilt.
And then Harry shows up in the manor, bruised, bloody, beaten, underfed, a million things, and Draco can’t help the pulse of sickening love he feels every time his treacherous beats while Harry is in his sights.
Is this him? Bellatrix wants to know.
Draco is sweating, he feels too hot and too cold at the same time. His mouth is dry, breathing is a chore, but still his heart beats, and beats for the swollen face of the boy he loves barely a foot away. It beats singularly for the green eye that looks resigned and so worldweary that Draco can’t help but hurt for him.
Is this Harry Potter? Bellatrix is shrill, delirious with excitement.
Draco thinks about being 11 again, sat in his window seat, replaying the version of events he hasn’t been able to get out of his mind for ten months. He thinks about his chronicles and the slow development, the burgeoning establishment of unwanted feelings that have led him to be mired in something he never expected or desired. He thinks about how passionate and strong and sincere the Harry Potter on his pages is, and how he doesn’t exist. Not really.
Bellatrix is pacing, breathing heavily, the whites of her eyes enormous in her face as she waits for his answer.
Is this Harry Potter?
Draco swallows. Harry Potter stares at him.
“No,” he says.
All Draco can feel is shame, pain, disgust, love.